JOHN NORONHA
A keeper of memories
OKAY on this particular occasion, being the Season of
Christmas et al, I am treating myself to a little bit of bias. I only came to
know John Noronha just a few years ago. However, during my years in East Africa,
his name was often mentioned with some respect, not only for his tenure at
Makerere University in Kampala but also as a budding musician and cricketer and
a dabbler in hockey and all the other club sports that one tried one’s hand at
least once or twice or more. Make no mistake, they did not say he was a sports
star in the making but one of the guys.
What they did not know until much later was that our Man from
Makerere was a super sleuth. No not a spy but a seeker of truths, especially
sports truths. As the years rolled by, he accumulated heaps and heaps of pages
with notes of this game or that bout or the emerging profiles and records of
the leading athletes in East Africa. To this day, he still has one of the best
newspaper and magazine collections about Seraphino Antao, the Kenyan Goan British
sprinter, the first to win a set of double gold sprint medals in the 1962 Commonwealth
Games in Perth Australia.
I guess his biggest gift is the instant-recall memory he has
been blessed with all his life. Anyway, there is always heaps and heaps of clippings
and his personal notes about particular events to fall back. He has often been
described as a one-man, talking, writing library.
More than that I have always enjoyed his writings. He
dedicated to the principle of journalist ethics, which is quickly disappearing
from around the world, where the truth is often raped by social media and
so-called journalists themselves continue to erode the sanctity of truth.
Hence, John Noronha will always serve the truth and nothing
but the truth.
Stay strong, John. The world needs you.
I will publish a much fuller bio as soon as I get a copy.
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