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Sunday December 5, 1999
No man of straw
Book explains Gordon's drive for success
YOUNG KEN GORDON
By Raoul Pantin
THE first surprising thing about Ken Gordon's just-published autobiography
is that it's well written. Not so much in a "literary" as in a
clear, concise style that keeps the story moving without too much clutter.
For a man whose "writing" for the past 30 years or so has
largely been confined to office memos, aide memoirs and point-by-point
letters to the Express board of directors, the ease of reading in this
book is a welcome surprise.
But then, one tends to forget that Ken Gordon started out his career as a
radio announcer, a man of words and proper diction, which he paid $30 out
of a $50 a month salary to learn from Mrs
Carmen Acham-Chen who lived on Pembroke Street.
Gordon himself spent the first 24 years of his life at No 47 St Vincent
Street, where he grew up with his mother, the late Stella Fowler, to whom
this book is lovingly dedicated.
People, including Express reporters, who have tended to see only the
sterner side of Ken Gordon would both be surprised and touched by his
obvious tender love and deep respect for his mother, a Guyanese who
migrated to Trinidad.
"She was an extraordinarily hard-working, proud and giving woman who
from the time of my birth ceased all further contact with my father,"
Gordon writes.
This woman, he wrote, "lived her life to protect and love me and
later my children and grandchildren...I had it drummed into me from
infancy with both tongue and strap that, 'you shall never tell a lie';
'always accept the consequences of everything you do'; and 'always be
prepared to share with others whatever you have'."
Admittedly no "academic" at school, Gordon was a game
competitor.
The cadet corps, football, cricket. St Mary's College table tennis
champion, island runner-up in the Junior National Tournament. Selected to
go on to Guyana on the national team, his "over-protective"
mother forbade it.
The "over-protectiveness" cut both ways. Gordon related an early
and painful story of his being virtually called a "bastard" by
an Irish prefect and when he got home that afternoon and asked his mother
what the word meant, she "burst into tears and sobbed to break her
heart".
That, Gordon says, "was one of the most defining moments of my
life...I came to the conclusion that my life must be structured to
insulate myself from hurt".
Self-discipline was Gordon's answer to this dilemma. It included his
refusing to drink water at the end of playing a hot, thirsty cricket game,
so as to hone his will.
Those early moments in Gordon's life-the "hurt" mother, the
"iron resolve" of the "illegitimate" son-are perhaps
far more revealing than the author suggests here. It certainly explains
Gordon's almost single-minded drive over the years to "succeed",
to be Number One.
KEN GORDON
Today, the "little black boy from St Vincent Street" can look
back on his successful spell as CEO of the Express and latterly chairman,
as well as chairman of the Neal & Massy Group of Com-panies, one of
the largest conglomerates in the Caribbean.
How did Ken Gordon do it?
This autobiography, Getting It Write: Winning Caribbean Press Freedom,
goes a long way in answering that question. From actively promoting
Caribbean integration, and helping launch Carifta, the predecessor to
Caricom, to buttressing "press freedom" from Jamaica down to
Guyana, to his taking the Express from virtually nothing to a leading
Trinidad newspaper-the details are all here.
His life has been dogged by "controversy", ranging from his
battles with Prime Minister Eric Williams to Prime Minister Basdeo Panday.
At various points, Gordon fought with the Express board over
"editorial freedom", with former editor Owen Baptiste, over a
decision not to publish the 1970 army mutiny story, and even with Express
founder and first chairman, Vernon Charles.
Throughout it all, Gordon exhibited a firm attitude to getting it both
"right" and "write". He would come close, in his
"fallout" with Charles, to having his career seriously derailed.
As for his fight with former Express chairman and legal luminary Tajmool
Hosein, Hosein was later to describe Ken Gordon as "a man who
obviously didn't like controls. He didn't like anybody putting any kind of
controls on him. I think that's his natural tendency".
The "fallout" with Vernon Charles, in which Gordon was virtually
accused of "dishonesty", if not "fraud", would be a
"narrow escape" for Gordon. It was eventually resolved,
attributed largely to a "misunderstanding" on the part of
Charles but what, Gordon mused, "would have happened to the career of
a young managing director who was thought to be unworthy of trust?"
It was his own careful habits-he'd kept a record of correspondence on the
issue with Charles-that saved his bacon on that occasion. As invariably,
it would do, repeatedly, over the long and controversial ups and downs of
his career.
The second surprising thing about this book is that it also reveals a
gentler, kinder, compassionate side to Ken Gordon (even a practical
joker!) whose corporate "image" has sometimes suggested the
exact opposite.
That he has served it with distinction is entirely to his credit, and to
the credit of the mother who "lived her life to protect and love
me".
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