A lightly edited version of The Desmond Allen Interviews featuring Ambassador Barrett on May 1, 2005. Ambassador Barrett passed on Friday, November 15, 2024. She was 87.

Hard as it is to picture, Ambassador Madge Barrett would have chosen a different path, would have rewritten the script which is her life and have nothing to do with the dazzle and the glamour of walking side by side with some of the world’s most powerful men and women. What she wanted more than all was to be a loving wife and a doting mother living a quiet existence far from the maddening crowd.

But who could imagine Madge Barrett as a housewife? A beauty contestant perhaps, because she was extremely fair to behold, and the evidence, even at 67 years old, is still palpably so. In fact, one gets the impression that Barrett could have been anything she had chosen to become, but for the limitations imposed by poverty, especially after her father died, forcing her into the role of main breadwinner for her family of 10, at the height of blossoming womanhood.

A life of distinction in the foreign service of her country might not have been Barrett’s burning childhood dream. But she played the role with a poise and dignity few have matched and has made her countrymen and women tingle with pride, as she hosted the rich and famous, among them royalty and presidents, on their behalf. The list is deep and long enough to spark envy: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip of England; Prince Charles; Prime Minister Tony Blair; UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan; Cuban President Fidel Castro; South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki; Nigeria’s Olesugun Obasanjo; Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe; the prince and princess of Japan, and a host of other leaders, including all the current Caribbean prime ministers.

She recalls the heady days in Washington, DC, her first overseas posting at the Jamaican embassy under Neville Ashenheim, followed by Sir Edgerton Richardson; the frosty reception she received there, and Sir Donald Sangster smashing the artificial barrier between the ambassadors and the staff. And then the challenge of the Miami Consulate in the United States city Jamaicans have dubbed “Kingston 21”, where she bravely faced thorny issues like the deportee problem. But there were scary moments too, like the time when Antiguan Prime Minister Lester Bird fainted in the oppressive heat at the funeral of Michael Manley at National Heroes Park and when the Surinamese president began choking on seafood to which he was allergic at a G-15 meeting in Montego Bay.

And yet perhaps, the darkest hour for Madge Barrett was the infamous Joseph Burey affair, when an innocent man they knew and loved was implicated in an unreal drama that painted him as a man clandestinely passing secret information to Soviet and Cuban operatives. She remembers the pain, the suffering and the copious tears of the foreign ministry staff as the drama unfolded before their very eyes and in the Jamaican Parliament in the early 1980s. Close to Burey, she saw his transformation from a vibrant man into a broken human being who hid himself in a Wolmer’s classroom for 22 years until death. Burey might have been comforted by her warm thoughts.

Buggy rides and fried dumplings

Madge Barrett began life as Madge Joyce Fairman, on November 15, 1937, the second of nine children born to Roslyn Beatrice Fairman nee Bertram, a former store clerk and later housewife, and Dudley Staton Fairman, a staff sergeant in the army, then under British rule. Her siblings are Norma Fairman (now deceased); Patsy Fairman; Doreen Fairman married Rhoden; Yvonne Fairman; Milton Fairman; Patrick Fairman; Howard Fairman, and Richard Fairman. Her mother hailed from Liberty Valley and her father from Aboukir, both in St Ann. At the time Madge was born, they were living at Orange Hill, about three miles from Brown’s Town, also in St Ann.

Madge was still a babe in arms when her parents moved to Kingston, on account of her dad being in the army. They lived at Campbell Town between Woodford Park and Race Course until she was seven. She recalls it as a nice area where she was happy. The family lived in a house in what is regarded today as a tenement yard. The owner sold newspapers and the children were always happy to pick up the ‘bad pennies’ he threw away while counting out his money from newspaper sales.

He drove a horse-drawn buggy on which he would give them rides. Madge loved the fried dumplings and fritters usually served with chocolate tea on Fridays, remembering how one day after a terrible thrashing from her father, for being stubborn, she could not even eat her favourite meal.

She attended Calabar Elementary School at Sutton and St James streets in downtown Kingston. Madge was a fretful child and even at that early age would worry about the quality of life and “how I was going to be able to help out my mother”. She recalls being in the same class with Winston Williams, the famous radio disc jock, and Lushington Ewan, among others. At 15, she passed the Jamaica Local Examination and was taken on as a pupil teacher at Calabar Elementary.

Hurricane Charlie

Madge has vivid memories of Hurricane Charlie, the vicious storm that struck Jamaica in 1951. The family was now living at 2 Lake Lane in Rollington Town, east Kingston. They watched in abject terror as the hurricane took off, inch by inch, bits and pieces of the house until only the maid’s room was left standing. Sergeant Fairman rushed outside to a neighbour. They agreed to take them in from the storm but Mrs Fairman refused to leave the house, so he took the children over and returned to wait out the storm with his wife.

“I remember we were clinging to daddy as the rains pelted and the wind howled,” Barrett recounts.

The next morning, a Saturday, the full measure of Charlie’s devastation was unveiled. Water and electricity were gone. Trees were felled and roads were inundated. Life as they knew it was changed. A few days later, the army sent for the family and her father turned up in a truck to remove their belongings to Up Park Camp. But again her mother refused to leave the house and he gave up. The soldiers returned to do repairs on the house and brought food for the family.

Young breadwinner

After Calabar Elementary, Madge and Norma, her elder sister, were sent to the Catholic-run Alpha Academy. But their parents could not keep up with the school fees and after one term Madge was shifted to the Alpha Commercial College where it was felt she could acquire secretarial skills in order to go to work. After two terms there and more school fee problems, she was again shifted, to Commercial Academy at Central Avenue where the fee was lower. She spent just under two years there. Then another calamity struck, this time worse than Hurricane Charlie.

Her father who was battling cancer, succumbed to the disease in 1963, at age 57. Madge Fairman, now 19, suddenly found herself the main breadwinner in the family. She took a job as a typist with AE McCallum, accountants and auditors at 7 Duke Street. She recalls that even though she had been offered four pounds a week, McCallum, a very exacting taskmaster, had carried out a threat to deduct money for errors made in typing the documents. She ended up taking home only two pounds each week! She recalls offering her first pay packet to her mother who smiled and told her: “No darling, you will need it for bus fare and lunch.”

Among the small staff there was Keith Lyn, not yet the famous musician he would become. McCallum also ran the International Correspondence Course from his office and Madge decided she would do some of the courses. After two years, she left for a job as a stenographer at the Ministry of Industry’s Marketing Department which handled shipment of Jamaica’s world number one ranked pimento, from Fourshore Road, now Marcus Garvey Drive. She ended up as secretary for the manager and father of AB Tony Lindo, the future managing director of Scotiabank.

She moved on from there to become a stenographer with the Police Headquarters at East Queen Street next to Central Police Station, under Police Commissioner Noel Croswell and later Gordon Langdon and his secretary, Beryl Murray. Madge remembers joining with the other women in the office to request uniforms — grey suits with white blouses. They also got permission to wear police badges on the lapel and felt tickled pink when people asked them if they were police officers. Two years into her employment there, Madge saw an advertisement in the newspaper for a secretary to work in the foreign service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The ad was placed by the Chief Personnel Office run by AB Smith.

Foreign service beckons

It was not clear even to Madge what made her decide to apply, because she had not yet qualified as a secretary. But she did, and was called in for an interview. On the day she arrived for the interview, her heart sank when she saw five other women there “all well dressed and seemed ready to take flight”.

“I didn’t think I could make it over them,” she confesses.

But Smith and his panel, which also included George Martin, later to become the chief personnel officer; Ivor deSouza and Peggy Robotham, were impressed by the young woman. Interestingly, deSouza was at the time chief of the Protocol Division of the foreign ministry but neither he nor Madge could have foreseen that in time she would become famous in the very position he now occupied. They agreed to her request to let her sit the secretary’s exam to formalise skills she already had. After the exams, they wrote to her, offering her the position and Madge Fairman began making plans to go overseas in the foreign service of the Jamaican Government.

Up to that point, she had wanted to be a housewife, like her mother, thinking that she would get married and raise children. When she confided that to her mother, the wiser woman had sternly told her not to stop working, no doubt regretting her own decision to become a housewife. But now, Madge was filled with the urge to take flight. This was 1962. But she would have to endure a three-year wait.

She was placed in the political department, working with Mary Ritchie; Carmen Parris, Jamaica’s first female ambassador; and Jimmy Lloyd. The permanent secretary was VC Dodd. And then in 1965, the moment came. She was sent to the Jamaican embassy in Washington, DC to serve under Ambassador Neville Ashenheim and Minister-Counsellor VC smith.

Madge still remembers the chilly reception she received upon her arrival at Connecticut Avenue which housed many embassies. And it was not only from the weather. A member of the locally (US) recruited staff had been acting in the position to be filled by Madge and showed she was clearly upset when Madge came to take over.

“She took my desk and typewriter and generally created a miserable environment for me,” Madge recounts. “But I did not retaliate and always showed her respect.” Today, the two women are good friends.

Sir Donald Sangster’s visit

Madge also remembers that the ambassador — at the time Sir Neville Ashenheim — and the embassy staff did not fraternise. Staff members were not invited to the many receptions and other social events hosted by the embassy, except to work in the background. All that would change with a visit by Sir Donald Sangster, the deputy prime minister. One evening, after she had finished typing some documents for him, he surprised her when he said: ‘Okay Madge, see you later at the reception’. She explained that that was not allowed. Shocked, the deputy prime minister called up the minister-counsellor on the line and put an end to that sordid affair. Henceforth, all members of the embassy staff were invited to social events. “He was such a nice person,” she says of Sangster.

Madge worked under two ambassadors — Ashenheim and Sir Edgerton Richardson. She loved Washington and the interaction with the staff, especially the registrar, Michael Subaran who invited her out on weekends with his wife, and Stanley Morris, the office manager who helped her to settle in and made her stay there very comfortable.

“The real fun began when I met the Jamaicans living in Washington and began attending the parties. I also enjoyed mixing with the diplomatic staff from many embassies.”

She noted that there was a love-affair between Jamaicans and Africans, especially the Nigerians, and all the African embassies employed Jamaicans among their staff. There was much interaction with the staff of the World Bank which had a habit of poaching Jamaican staff from the embassy. But they paid well and nobody complained.

The day I married my friend

Madge Fairman came home in 1967 to marry her longtime love, Arthur Edmund Barrett, brother of Emerson Barrett, the former Mayor of Kingston. The couple have one child together, Bridgette Barrett who followed her mother into the foreign service but recently returned home, got married to Ryan Levy and started a family of her own. Madge also regards her four stepdaughters as her own. They are: Betty Barrett Thompson, formerly of NCB; Gail Barrett of Jampro; Andrea Barrett Belgrave and Kimberley Barrett.

After the wedding, Madge returned to the embassy in Washington, mostly to tidy up her affairs. She returned to Jamaica after a few months to begin life as Mrs Madge Barrett. But remembering her mother’s advice, she decided to continue working and was placed in the foreign ministry’s Protocol Department as a senior secretary, noting how all the overseas allowances no longer applied and how small the salary now seemed. The director was Ivor deSouza. Their immediate boss was Dr Neville Gallimore, the parliamentary secretary in the ministry, and Mandison Jones was the principal assistant secretary. Not long after, the outstanding civil servant, Louis Boothe succeeded deSouza as director of the Protocol Department.

One of the events Barrett remembers most was the staging of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Kingston in 1975. It was a huge undertaking and the ministry staff worked overnight to see that things went right. In attendance were some of the world’s most known leaders, including The Queen, the head of the British Commonwealth. Barrett recalls her department bringing home Donald Davidson from England and hiring people like Merrick Needham who headed up the broadcasting services. Louis Boothe shone and earned himself the title “Master of protocol” from Dudley Thompson. More importantly, the conference came off with a bang and Jamaica looked good.

The Joseph Burey affair

In time, Davidson replaced Boothe as director. Barrett continued to make progress in the protocol department and in 1984 was promoted out of the secretarial and into administrative ranks as an administrative officer. That kind of jump was rare in those days. But it had been preceded by dark events that would ruin the life of a young man she had come to admire. His name was Joseph Burey, the employee who handled IDs for diplomats. Barrett’s tears for the young man’s travails could have filled the many brandy bottles she discovered during that time of torment. The events would represent a blot on the ministry and the nation’s Parliament, and Burey would go to his grave without his name being cleared.

It was no secret that the administration of Prime Minister Edward Seaga had despised the Communist Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. In 1981, less than a year after attaining power over Manley’s democratic socialist People’s National Party (PNP), the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government broke diplomatic ties with Cuba and sent home the ambassador, Ulises Estrada. In October 1983, in the midst of the unravelling of the leftist revolution in Grenada, drama unfolded in Jamaica and Burey was at the centre.

“It was a sad moment for us, knowing what was happening. You could see it building up,” says Barrett who was responsible for training in security measures and had trained Burey. “Frank Francis, who was the permanent secretary, called four of us, including Burey, into his office and said ‘Go to your desk and listen to the radio’.” What they heard sounded unreal. Prime Minister Seaga, under parliamentary cover, announced that Burey had been having unauthorised contact with Soviet and Cuban diplomats here and the life of an unnamed foreign ministry officer was in jeopardy. The claim was never substantiated.

But Burey lost his job.

“We cried a lot because we knew he was innocent,” says Barrett. “We were especially torn when he told us that his ageing parents were handcuffed and taken to the police station for interrogation. We were instructed not to visit Burey’s home.”

Burey dies

Burey spent one night in detention and was released without any charges. His dismissal from the job followed. He was never the same again and nobody would hire him, until Wolmer’s School gave him a teaching position. Burey died April 16, 2005 from leukemia. Barrett thinks his name should be cleared to bring closure to the affair.

But life went on after Burey, and Barrett, as administrative officer, assumed responsibility for, among other things, visas and passports for diplomats, then took over the preparation of credentials for ambassadors going overseas and receiving letters of introduction and letters of credence from incoming diplomats. From that desk, she was promoted to deputy director of protocol.

Consul General to Miami

In 1991, David Coore, the foreign minister, offered her the choice of becoming the consul general in Miami. She had been expecting to get the job as director of protocol but that went to Cecile Clayton, who was returning home from an overseas assignment. She spoke with her husband and both agreed she should take the assignment.

“It was a good move and it became the high point of my stay in the foreign service,” she says on reflection, although admitting she had to make special preparation to deal with the “very fussy five-flights a day Jamaican folks who were living there”. She succeeded the famous and popular Marie Wray, mother of Dawn Young of the Office of the Prime Minister. Her deputy was John Atkins. From the Miami consulate she had oversight responsibility for all the southern states of the United States and quickly won the support of the large number of Jamaican groups there — 25 in south Florida alone — with her message of unity.

The job also entailed visits to Jamaicans in prison; farm workers to see the conditions under which they lived and worked and much travel, especially at Independence time when she was in great demand. During her time, the issue of deportation of Jamaicans from the US heightened. “That was the horrendous part,” she admits.

She assigned John Atkins to handle the matter and supported him when he had to suffer threats from deportees who didn’t feel their requests were being adequately met. Barrett also stayed glued to the radio stations beaming Jamaican programmes, wanting to be on top of the complaints regularly aired on the talk shows. And she worked closely with the Americans in encouraging qualified Jamaicans to apply for US citizenship.

The PM calls her home

In 1994, Prime Minister PJ Patterson, through Dr Paul Robertson, the foreign minister, called Barrett home to take over as director of the Protocol Department. This was familiar territory and she brought style and elegance. She is grateful to Patterson and Frank Francis before him for seeing what she could do and allowing her the opportunity to do it.

Jamaica is a favourite stop for many world leaders and famous people, and Barrett’s winning smile and easy disposition won them over time and again. Of her favourite leaders, she says she is in awe of Fidel Castro and fond of Kofi Annan and his children. Some leaders she found “tedious and childlike”, needing to be waited upon hand and feet. But she caused everyone to feel special.

In recognition of her outstanding service, Barrett was awarded the national honour, Commander of the Order of Distinction (CD) and then crowned with the title of Ambassador Special Envoy. She retired from the position in 2002 but offers consultancy in protocol in her private capacity and writes a regular social column for the Jamaica Observer.

Raymond Wolfe, Paul Robotham

If there is one thing she regrets, it is the low regard that Jamaicans have for people who do not have university degrees, even if they are outstanding in their jobs. Barrett had hoped to further her education but had instead been diverted to help feed her large family after her father died. She never recovered sufficiently to resume the quest, but through natural genius reached the top of her profession. She receives much satisfaction from seeing people whom she taught — like Raymond Wolfe and Paul Robotham — rising steadily in the foreign ministry. Maybe now Barrett can become the quiet housewife that she wanted to be, that is, if the demanding social whirl will allow it.