OBITUARY
Wordsworth A.
McAndrew
"Those who weave color into our lives, leave us with a tapestry of beautiful memories. The only source of comfort is our memories. Only time can heal our pain.” The McAndrew family
and 1966 (he wrote a daily column under the pen name “Damon”), and as Information Officer at the Guyana Information Service from 1960 to 1967 (under the directorship of poet A.J. Seymour) put him in contact with the broad range of Guyanese who would become his folk teachers. And after training with the BBC in London from January to July 1968, he went on to serve as broadcaster and program director at the Guyana Broadcasting Service from August 1968 to December 1979. Over those eleven years, he created popular radio programs like “What Else” that allowed him to do what many folklorists never get a chance to do—educate hundreds of thousands in the intricacies and joys of our native “culchuh.” He also educated his fellow Guyanese through other means, as he did in the memorable Language Forum lecture on “Folk Music in Guyana” that he delivered at the University of Guyana in April 1975. Mac was also an accomplished poet, partly influenced by A.J. Seymour and the Wednesday night poetry gatherings he hosted with poets like Martin Carter, Ian McDonald, Ivan Van Sertima, Alex Best and Henry Josiah. His poems include the legendary “Ole Higue,” and other published but less widely known works, like “Barriat,” and “Legend of the Carrion Crow.” Under the tutelage of Celeste Dolphin, who met him at the GIS, he also went on to win verse-speaking competitions at the Guyana Music Festival on several occasions. Wordsworth McAndrew moved to the United States in 1980. His newspaper experience helped him find proofreading work that sustained him for more than two decades. But he was never fully at home in the US, and failing health eventually took its toll on him. He was cared for in his final years by a cadre of devoted friends and family. Among the highlights of his stay in America, however, was a 1984 visit to the Commonwealth Center in Kensington, England (arranged by poet John Agard) at which he read his poetry, and the creation of the Wordsworth MacAndrew awards at the New York-based Guyana Music Festival in 2002 to recognize him as a Guyanese “National Treasure” (in the words of Festival organizer Professor Vibert Cambridge).
Wordsworth Albert McAndrew, one of Guyana’s best known and most loved sons, was born November 22, 1936 in Georgetown, then British Guiana. He died April 25, 2008 at East Orange General Hospital, New Jersey, USA. Over the seventy-one years of his life, he distinguished himself as poet, folklorist, newspaper columnist, radio broadcaster and personality, gyaaf-man, people person, family member and friend. In almost anything that involved the artful use of words, Wordsworth excelled, living up to his name. Wordsworth was the son of the late Winslow (a headmaster, pastor, and like his son, a Scout and raconteur) and Ivy McAndrew (née Phillips, a seamstress and homemaker). He had eight siblings, three of whom predeceased him (sister Winifred Stout, brothers Winston and Ian Rudder), and five of whom survive him: Waveney Allen McAndrew (England), Carmen Daly (Queens, N.Y.), Enid McAndrew (Guyana), and Nigel and Wilton McAndrew (New Jersey). Mac, or Scouta, as people referred to him, was the father of Arnold Singh (Colorado), Roseanne Zammett (New Jersey) and Shiri McAndrew (England), and grandfather of George, Mario and Ryan Zammett, Natasha Singh, Levi McAndrew, Alexander, Alexandra, Christopher and Nicholas McAndrew. He was also great grandfather of Christian and Makaila Zammett; uncle of Carlton, Leslie and Beverly Allen (England), Terry Stoute (New York), Newell and Norville McAndrew, Neville McAndrew (Belize), Barbara Clarke (Barbados), Idalia Maxwell (Queens), Cassandra McAndrew (Brooklyn), June, Grace and Andrea Rudder McAndrew. He was the brother-inlaw of Yvette and Yvonne McAndrew (New Jersey), Lena McAndrew (Guyana), Doreen Rudder McAndrew (New York), and Ricky Daly (New York). Also left to mourn him are several cousins and legions of friends and admirers, in Guyana and across the globe. Wordsworth received his preschool and primary education at Marshall’s Prep School and Christ Church Anglican School in Guyana, and his secondary education at Queen’s Mac, the legend, has died, but his memories and works College, beginning in 1948. His higher educatio, included live on. May we honor both by carrying on the a degree in Communications at the University of Guyana. programme he started, of studying and sharing Guyana’s But his greatest teachers were the ordinary men, women folkloristic and cultural riches. and children of every race and creed in his native land, whose folktales, ghost stories, legends, songs, proverbs, jokes, riddles, oral histories, beliefs, ceremonies, games, --John R. Rickford, Stanford, with help from Roy Brummell, foods, superstitions, holiday customs, magic, ways of Claire Goring, Ingram Lewis, & Scouta Mac’s family. healing and hurting, birthing and burying he made it his business to study, in infinite detail, over his lifetime. His position as editor and columnist with both the Guyana Graphic and Daily Chronicle newspapers between 1955