Terry Wilmot 'sees' no more

History buff and clairvoyant Terry Wilmot is dead.

Her brother, Professor Swithin Wilmot, told The Gleaner that her body was discovered at her St Andrew home Friday morning, but gave no cause of death.

Wilmot, who would have turned 62 on August 11, was one of several seers who made predictions at the start of each year in The Gleaner. Her predictions last appeared in the newspaper in 2009.

Wilmot had been making predictions for more than 30 years. In 2009, she told The Gleaner that "God shows me some of the things, not everything."

She 'nudged' Jamaicans in January 2009 that they would "need a new governor general". One week later, Sir Kenneth Hall announced he would be stepping down as independent Jamaica's fourth head of state.

In 2008, as one of her 27 predictions, Wilmot named underachieving sprinter Usain Bolt as "blessed". He won three gold medals in world-record times at the Beijing Olympics in China later that year.

Though many persons associated her with clairvoyance, Wilmot was also a respected historian. A former head girl of Alpha Academy, she earned a degree in history from the University of the West Indies (UWI).

She then worked with the Jamaica National Heritage Trust and the Institute of Jamaica.

The second of four children, Wilmot was born in Charlton, a district just outside Ewarton in St Catherine. Swithin Wilmot, dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the UWI, described her as a "spiritual person".

"She was generous to a fault. She had very little materially but she gave a lot," he said.

Terry Wilmot is also survived by older brother, Bernard, who lives in Germany, and youngest sibling Hugh.

No funeral arrangements have been announced as yet.

- Howard Campbell