A tribute to Anthony Downes

When I first met J A (Tony) Downes, he was the youngest recruit, as a Booker cadet, into the early ranks of personnel officers of the then Bookers Sugar Estates. If I am not mistaken, he was still a teenager at the time. While his youth may have accounted for his precociousness, he matured into being both provocative and innovative during a remarkable career which climaxed in his becoming an administrative manager in the now Guyana Sugar Corporation.

If ever the history of the Personnel Management Function (since enlarged into the Human Resource Management Function) in the sugar industry gets written, the identification of young Downes as a future major contributor will have to be credited to inspired foresight of our mentor at the time, Harold Davis. It was he who identified and arranged the development of much of the Guyanese talent that was fast taking over the mantle of leadership from their colonial predecessors. To quote one of those talents, Nowrang Persaud, writing since Tony’s departure:

“Thankfully, our structural and moral leader at the time was the indefatigable Harold B Davis, who above everything else that he did, gave us space to grow and show what we can do.”

With his sense of readiness for the development of indigenous managerial skills, Harold Davis organised for special training in the emerging methodology of job evaluation, at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, of a triumvirate of hyperactive performers – Tony Downes, Nowrang Persaud and Earl John.

Etched in my memory is an experience of special bonding between the three of us. It was the week of the Edinburgh Festival. The night of the Tattoo which climaxed the festival revealed Tony at his charismatic best. Standing in front of Edinburgh Castle, he rescued a despairing Scotsman who, during the earlier week, had only managed modest sales of his sheets of poems. Tony took over the pile and set about engaging the multicultural, multilingual throng of passers-by. Once attracted, they paused, and were charmed into purchasing his wares. Over the surrounding din we couldn’t hear the words that engaged particularly those for whom English was a foreign language, but it was an enthralling theatrical performance, to which we were dumbfounded witnesses.

Later that night Scotsman and Guyanese got drunk in celebration of ‘Tony’s theatre.’ The next day the university staff complained that they turned on the fire alarm, but still could not wake us.

Tony’s was a personality that could only be celebrated. At our several personnel managers’ conferences, his passionately articulated views often differed from the majority perspective, so much so that too frequently respondents were distracted from the topic under discussion to his ‘celebrity’ standing.

His was a restless mind persistently determined to dismantle the trodden and all too comfortable mental boxes occupied by the more pedestrian of his counterparts.

It will be remiss of this all too brief recital, not to recall the other triumvirate which Tony D and I shared – this time with Tony V – that is Tony Vieira, also an ebullient sugar man of our generation. Together we shared many an inebriating night. The two Tonies were, and continued to be, as close as the popularly advertised ‘Tony Twins.’

That Tony D should pass away at the editorial desk of VCT Evening News, is, perhaps, in a public way, eloquent testimony of the mutual dedication that characterised their relationship. And if, perchance, one was perceived to be an employer, the other was certainly recognised as the ‘celebrity.’

Nowrang e-mailed me from Pakistan, pouring out his feelings in a poetic validation of what I have said before.