The woman many Barbadians called an angel and the island’s leading social worker, Dame Olga Lopes-Seale, is dead.
The Guyanese-born, Barbados-based community worker, radio broadcaster and singer affectionately called Auntie Olga, died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital early yesterday at age 92.
She was hospitalized since December 9, when she fell at home and broke her hip.
She was made a Dame of St Andrew in 2005, in recognition of the almost half a century she dedicated towards helping thousands of people, especially needy families. Last November the Barbados Association of Journalists (BAJ) inducted her into the BAJ Hall of Fame for her pioneering work as a broadcaster, her dedication to service and the successful blending of her media career with her philanthropic work.
Dame Olga has been looking after almost 200 needy children a year, along with their parents providing food vouchers, school uniforms, shoes and textbooks.
The Needy Children’s Fund which she launched here in 1963 has been one of Barbados’ social successes.The fund was started in Guyana in 1952 almost by accident. During a singing appearance for charity, she learnt of five boys who were unable to attend a Christmas concert because they did not have enough clothes. She aired an appeal for garments. She was so persuasive that she received more clothes than expected. So she then aired an appeal for needy children to come forward and then had more children than clothes. The fund eventually became a massive effort that sustained 1 500 needy children a year in Guyana.
Dame Olga’s media career began in Guyana with Radio Demerara. From being paid 75 cents as a teenager to sing on what was the first sponsored programme on Radio Demerara, she moved into broadcasting. Early in her career she was known as the “Vera Lynn of the Caribbean”. Lynn (now Dame Vera) was the English singer and actress whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II.
Dame Olga went from hosting hit parade programmes to becoming a radio announcer, news presenter and programme producer. She was Guyana’s first female news announcer .After she moved to Barbados in 1963 with her Barbadian husband Dick Seale, and children Marcia and John, she worked with Barbados Rediffusion, a wired radio network that was eventually replaced by Starcom Network Inc. She hosted a popular weekly children’s show as well as a number of adult programmes.
She was a woman with “a golden voice, a charming smile and a caring spirit”, Starcom Network Inc.’s chief executive officer Vic Fernandes said in a tribute aired on radio yesterday. He described Dame Olga as a woman with “a will of steel”, “a lady of impeccable integrity” and “a true professional” who wanted only the best engineer and music for her programmes. “Her life was truly a blessing and an inspiration to us all,” he said.
Former Executive Editor of the Nation Publishing Company, Roxanne Gibbs, who met Dame Olga in 1979 after joining the newspaper, called her “a wonderful humanitarian” and “a woman with a passion for life, a passion for people and a passion for excellence” who “took care of thousands of people”. “She had a wonderful sense of humour and this she maintained in hospital, despite her condition,” Gibbs reported. “She was still cracking jokes and she told nurses that she had lived a full and satisfying life.”
The BAJ, in a statement, said that to think that she was still in the media in her 90s and with a career spanning 70 years “is extraordinary and ample testimony to her passion and unparalleled commitment”. According to the BAJ, “her passing will undoubtedly leave a vast chasm in the broadcast and print media, one which will be a challenge to fill”.
The Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) and the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) said they were “deeply saddened”. The regional broadcasters described Dame Olga as “one of our champions”. “From early in her broadcasting career it was evident that she had a passion for improving the human condition and this turned out to be a centrifugal force in her life’s work thereafter,” the CBU said in a statement.
Anglican priest Father Laurence Small, in a tribute, called Dame Olga “the queen of broadcasting”.“Dame Olga could aptly and justifiably be described as the Mother Theresa of the Caribbean, as she was a humani-tarian par excellence…,” he said.
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