Wynter succumbs to crash injuries
published: Wednesday | January 1, 2003
By Balford Henry, News Editor

THE HON. Hector Lincoln Wynter, O.J., a former Senator, educator and Editor-in-Chief of The Gleaner from the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s, died on Tuesady in the University Hospital of the West Indies, Mona.

Mr. Wynter, 76, was admitted to the Intensive-Care Unit there on Friday, after being injured seriously in a traffic accident in the Liguanea area of St. Andrew. He suffered injuries to a lung, and broken ribs, and after undergoing surgery on Friday night, had been heavily sedated, because of the terrible pains he was suffering, according to his wife, Diana.

Mrs. Wynter's realisation of the desperate shortage at the Blood Bank when blood was needed for her husband, led her to appeal to the public to give donations, a message which has been strongly supported by The Gleaner Company.

Mr. Wynter died around 8 a.m. He is survived by six children and several brothers and sisters in addition to his wife, the former Diana Rosetta Ayee.

After he retired from The Gleaner in 1985, he continued to contribute columns such as "Mary Smith" on correct grammar and pronunciation and the historical "Colin T. Bryan," which appeared in the Overseas Gleaner.

"Hector Wynter had an outstanding mind and a most retentive memory. His knowledge of Jamaica and Jamaicans was encyclopaedic. He led with great success, The Gleaner's editorial team through the difficult 1970s. The team of columnists he published was without parallel in The Gleaner's history," said Oliver F. Clarke, chairman and managing director of the Gleaner Co., Ltd. "I am proud to have worked with this unusually talented person. Our sympathy is with his wife, Diana, and all his family."

Hilma Brown, the senior secretary at The Gleaner during the 1970s, recalled him as a workhaholic. "He worked from morning 'til night and even in his later years he did not lose his zest for work. But he was a very charming man," she said.

Ken Allen, who was Associate Editor of the newspaper then, recalled him as "affable, erudite and a well-known public figure."

"He was already an established public figure when he came here. That wealth of experience served him in good stead as Editor," Mr. Allen said.

Lloyd Williams, who was News Editor during much of Mr. Wynter's tenure, remembered his sense of humour. "It softened the stresses of the job and he was a very intelligent man, too".

Mr. Wynter became Executive Editor of The Gleaner in 1974, during Theodore Sealy's tenure. In 1976, he succeeded Sealy as Editor-in-Chief and was immediately caught up in a confrontation with the Michael Manley-led People's National Party and its socialist policies.

During the State of Emergency introduced by Mr. Manley in June 1976, the media were instructed by government to submit political statements to the head of the military or the head of the police force, another situation which created a major conflict between Mr. Manley and Mr. Wynter in the 1970s.

However, by the time Mr. Wynter resigned in 1985 to return to teach and to head the Bustamante Institute of Public Affairs, an agency which sought to promote the ideals of Jamaica's first Prime Minister, many of the wounds of the past were healed.

Born in Camaguey, Cuba, on July 27, 1926, he was the son of Percival Wynter, a tailor, and Lola Maud Reid-Wynter, who later remarried - to E.C.L. Parkinson, a solicitor, and Jamaica Labour Party Member of Parliament and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Mr. Wynter would later chair the JLP.

He was educated at St. Simon's College, Wolmer's Boys' School and Havana, London and Oxford universities. He was trained as an international civil servant at the United Nations, was a resident tutor, registrar and director of extra-mural studies at the UWI at various times.

In 1948, Mr. Wynter gave up the Issa Scholarship for that year, and it was eventually awarded to Meredith Murray of Kingston College. Instead, he took up the Rhodes Scholarship.

He was awarded the national honour of The Order of Jamaica (O.J.) in the 1980s. At the time of his death he was a trustee of the JLP, part-time lecturer at the UWI and at Campion College, a teacher at Priory Community College, a director of Sangster's Bookstores as well as of the Foundation of Inter-Self Help, the International Press Institute, Burger King Jamaica and several other organisations.

He was a member of first Jamaican Senate after Independence, chairman of the Jamaica Library Board, chairman of the Social Development Commission, vice chairman of the board of the now-defunct Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, Minister of State for Education, Minister of State for Youth, chairman of the Jamaica Labour Party, Ambassador to UNESCO and chairman of the Council of the former College of Arts Science and Technology (CAST).

Also, he led the committee appointed by former Prime Minister Hugh Shearer in the mid-1960s to organise the celebration of the International Year of Human Rights in 1968, a proposal which originated with Mr. Shearer at the United Nations.

As a Senator in 1962, Mr. Wynter joined the likes of Vivian Blake, Rudolph Burke, Clifford Campbell, Kenneth McNiell, Dudley Thompson, Sir Frank Worrell, Sir Neville Ashenheim, Hugh Shearer and Wilton Hill in one of the most remarkable assemblies of local parliamentarians in the history of Gordon House.