Can William Mahfood afford a jacket?
Published:Monday | May 18, 2020 | 12:06 AMJovan Johnson/Senior Staff Reporter
A dry sense of humour, a fiery, sharp wit and an unwavering commitment to Jamaica’s development thread the memories of three former business associates of Oliver Clarke, one of Jamaica’s most powerful media bosses for the past four decades.
Clarke died on Saturday at age 75.
“I always remember some incident some long time ago,” recalled Errol Ziadie, “where somebody said to him, ‘You know, you should pay the man a little bit more than what he had asked for.’ He (Clarke) said, ‘Oh, no, no. This man knows his work and that was his charge. He should know how much to charge, not me.”
“That was just him,” he said, chuckling.
The two shared a decades-long relationship. Ziadie is a former chairman of the JN General Insurance Company, a member of the Jamaica National Group, which Clarke once led.
“Everything he did in life was always aimed and geared at making Jamaica a better place for everybody to live – rich and poor, black and white,” said Ziadie.
Clarke learned from his experiences, and Elizabeth Ann Jones, chairperson of the JN Group, said there was one that stood out.
“Long ago, he told me that one of the hardest lessons that he had learnt was that someone whom you disliked could still have a good contribution to make, and so he never let differences in personality get in the way of the pursuit of larger goals,” she shared.
Knowing the man for more than 40 years gave her a bit of time to confirm that ‘yes-people’ were not among his favourites.
“He liked strong people who were not afraid to challenge him, irrespective of any remarks he may make to the contrary,” said Jones.
Why does William Mahfood say he will never forget his first Jamaica National annual general meeting as a board director? “I didn’t wear a jacket, and he introduced me to the AGM and said, ‘I’d like to introduce our newest director, member, Mr William Mahfood, and, hopefully, by the next AGM, he’ll be able to afford to buy a jacket.”
The chairman of Wisynco, a manufacturing and distribution company, said he found out by “accident” that Clarke was “renaissance man”, huge collector of art and books.
“I found out by accident that he was bidding against something on eBay that I was also bidding on. When we found out it was each other, we got a good laugh out of it. He was so rounded,” Mahfood told The Gleaner.
Clarke, 75, affectionately called ‘OFC’, had been battling cancer. He is survived by daughter Alexandra and widow Monica Ladd.