Avid reader buried with his favourite newspaper

For most of her 42 years of life, Rochelle Neil-Nesbeth watched her father, Sydney Robert Neil, avidly read The Gleaner every day.

So when he passed away at age 82, she saw it fitting to bury him with some copies of his beloved publication. Neil, also known as 'Forda', from Dunder Hill, St Elizabeth, died on January 5, leaving his wife of 42 years Eyvonne Neil, five children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. From the day of his death to the day he was buried on February 3, Neil-Nesbeth purchased a copy of The Gleaner every day and buried her father with more than 20 copies of the paper.

"I give him all of them, he's gone with every one. I bought it on the 5th, the 6th, the 7th; I bought them straight until the day of his funeral, and I wish I could continue to give them to him, but there's no way I can," Neil-Nesbeth said.

"Yuh see all the crosswords in The Gleaner, he had to complete them. He would sit with his dictionary if he comes up on something he doesn't understand. He would turn to the dictionary, and I think that's what kept his vocab and his memory. It kept him going," she added.

Neil-Nesbeth, who lives only five minutes away from her childhood home, told THE STAR that a day could not pass and her father did not get his copy of the daily paper. Although he did not pass his significant love for reading onto her, other members in their family have got the 'bug'.

"I wish I loved reading like daddy, [but] my niece loves it like daddy. One of my brothers loves it like daddy; but there was not a day that ... daddy doesn't read his paper. My mother even said it to me the other day; and she said it to him that 'If you were to count all of these $100-odd for Gleaner we would be rich'. He could not miss a day," she said. Neil-Nesbeith added that her father had so many old newspapers that he used to give them to market vendors to pack their produce.

"And if yuh eva dear give out the one him buy last week ... ," her voice trailed off. "You have to give the one that is changing colour, that's how much he loved the paper." She theorised that he loved the publication because it kept him informed.

"It kept him abreast with what was going on in the country, it really did; and he liked the puzzles, the crosswords, and the challenges that they gave," she said.