Letter of the Day | Elevating Miss Mable Tenn

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I was struck by the tribute given to Mable Tenn by Douglas Orane at her memorial on Tuesday, January 14. I knew Mable very well starting in the ‘80s in the emerging days of Caribbean feminism, as I was writing Blaze A Fire: the Significant Contributions of Caribbean Women (1988). It included women from 13 Caribbean countries. I chose four women from Jamaica; Miss Tiny, a higgler, Edna Manley, noted sculptor and artist, and wife of Jamaica’s first premier Norman Manley, and culture icon Louise Bennett-Coverley.

I felt that Miss Tenn was way ahead of her time and broke the proverbial male glass ceiling in the 1970s as a director of Grace Kennedy, and director on possibly more than 20 other boards. Her status as a board member of a company which is now a pillar of the Jamaican economy, was not only ahead of its time here but ahead of its time globally.

This book published in 1988, written for high school students, will be 40 years old almost vintage in two years. I have the Quixotic idea that the book will be taught in high schools in the region, that boys and girls will learn about these women, and voila we will change the status of women in the Caribbean. That process continues. It will have been a great accomplishment if Caribbean and Jamaican high schools are able to read about Mable Tenn and the others.

She rose out of the economic genius of the Jamaica Chiney shop. This was her front-line education in business. She did shorthand in school and stopped there.

As she succeeded, she found that the praxis of the Chiney shop and its success were somehow unmodern under the guise of old school. She was a little too abrupt, too disruptive, harsh. Time has shown that old school was what built the foundation of GraceKennedy. It may have been true that her compulsion to expect perfection was unrealistic, but it was the idiosyncrasy of being a pioneer carving the path that they trod.

Orane highlighted her major contributions so I will not add to this list as they are innumerable but I will briefly give a glimpse of her commitment to work ethic, and the tribulations in pioneering the canning of Jamaican produce in Jamaica.

After working with Carlton Alexander, the head of GraceKennedy for nine years she left to manage her family business. Among them was a canning factory which was a fiery test that consumed her. This was in 1959 and it had eaten up a lot of her capital and she had losses for several years. The concept of quality control, standardisation of product, sanitation, mechanical efficiency and work ethic, required a modernization of Jamaican factory production that had little history.

This also required a close relationship with farmers, and learning the kind of products that were required for canning. She could disassemble a piece of machinery and reassemble it by herself, and to ensure sanitation standards she would sometimes clean the bathrooms herself.

“I would rearrange that factory like women rearrange their bedrooms. When I was down in the factory, I actually used to clean the toilet and the walls and showed them how it is to be done. And you did this because it was important. You showed by example. And one of the things is I don’t talk down to people, and I would not ask them to do things I would not do,” she said.

Slowly she brought the factory back and brought the company into GraceKennedy and began to use her skills for Grace. At that time agriculture became a major policy focus in the country. It was the Zeitgeist of agro culture, Grace Kennedy’s factory plans and the expertise of Miss Mable.

Tenn that catapulted the burgeoning Grace canned products. The good fortune of Jamaica was that Mable was ready for the moment.

Miss Mable Tenn is a builder of Jamaica. Visit a Caribbean store in any part of the world and pick up a can of Grace ackee or pineapple, and you are touching Mable’s hand. She has been undervalued and certainly has earned the Order of Jamaica.

I recommend that the Grace warehouse facility in Spanish Town, her initiative, a purchase for which she was maligned, and which is now the biggest warehouse in the country – be named the Mable Tenn Warehouse – and beyond that, she deserves the Order of Jamaica. I recommend publishing Mr. Orane’s tribute if this call needs more substance.

She was a empowered woman and was comfortable with it. “People have to understand that when you’re in charge, you’re in charge and it doesn’t matter what your status is”, Mable Tenn

NESHA HANIFF