DT: the perfect ship’s captain

Tributes flooded the airwaves on Thursday as stunned colleagues, listeners, and relatives saluted broadcaster Daniel ‘DT’ Thompson, who passed away after falling ill earlier this week.

For 28 years, the St Elizabeth native’s smooth, rich, and velvety baritone was a constant for listeners of Radio Jamaica 94 FM.

Through the decades, he worked across every time slot on the station and had his own show.

His most recent assignment was providing continuity on the station’s call-in programme, ‘Hotline’. He was well known for a special feature he did on Thursdays and Fridays alongside host Emily Shields, reminiscing about their rural upbringing from different parishes.

“It’s so hard to even compute that this is somebody I would be referring to in the past because it hasn’t sunk in and I don’t know when it will, but DT was just a model of a human being,” Shields told The Gleaner yesterday.

“He was so reliable, calm, patient, just unfazed by whatever the circumstances might be. And I just developed such a deep love and admiration and synergy with DT from behind this glass that was fixed between us, which then led to just a different level, different kind of reasoning about, you know, every single thing,” she added.

According to Shields, they would often speak loudly in the language of silence.

“We were so connected to the point where we just knew each other by silence. I didn’t need to speak. I didn’t need to say anything. Whatever songs DT selected when something was happening, the songs were just right with my mood because he had so sort of enmeshed himself with my spirit and I with him. So it was an absolute joy – an absolute joy – going to that studio to have DT as my technical operator,” she said, noting that this synergy led to the development of the popular ‘X and Y’ feature during the programme.

“It was just created organically. And the name came to me because it just seemed right,” she said.

Shields told The Gleaner that her family hosted Thompson for dinner following the death of his wife, and they mourned together.

When she got an emergency call some time after 6 a.m. on Monday, she wasted no time in seeking to mobilise medical help at the University Hospital of the West Indies and from the Jamaica Constabulary Force. In the midst of her grief yesterday, she thanked the medics and police.

Surgery could not be performed on Thompson as despite all the efforts, he could not be stabilised.

“So what consoles me, if there’s anything good that I take away from this is that for the 20-odd years that I have known DT, there’s nothing bad or unpleasant or off-putting that I can think about or remember related to him,” she said. “And then I know that his faith was so strong in God, and I believe that we have a place in the afterlife. We either go to eternal bliss or we go to eternal damnation. And without being the judge, I think DT was in a good spiritual place, and it gives me a lot of comfort. And if he wasn’t, then he had a little time because it wasn’t a sudden death, to just do that repentance prayer.”

Another ‘Hotline’ host, Dr Orville Taylor, noted that they never had a disagreement that wasn’t settled before the end of the day.

Veteran broadcaster Fae Ellington recalled training Thompson at CPTC to enter broadcasting.

Describing him as “quiet, confident, and respectful”, she said they kept in touch, and she offered suggestions and advice where necessary, and he was always receptive.

Praising his country upbringing, she said the way he conducted himself made it easy to respect him.

Former colleague Coleen Douglas said only last Friday she saw him at Broadcast House at Lyndhurst Road and complimented him on how good he looked. She never imagined it would be their last earthly encounter.

“Some people will never fully understand the value of a continuity announcer – the steady hand, the quiet professional who keeps everything flowing when things fall apart behind the scenes. The one who steps in when the announcer is late, when the boards feel like chaos to some of us. That was you,” Douglas said in tribute.

“I met you in 2002, and from that moment, your warmth, your smile, your giving spirit never changed. Even when your shows were pulled in the name of ‘keeping things current’, you stayed gracious. You stayed present. You stayed dependable. You weren’t just a picture of health. You were a picture of loyalty, of consistency, of quiet excellence,” she added.

Several colleagues also remembered him as a doting father, a devout Jehovah’s Witness, and a mentor to many in the industry who was also health-conscious and carried his lunch to work.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com