JOB WELL DONE
THERE ARE many who would say that this is the well-deserved commendation of a man whose name has become synonymous with Meadowrest Memorial Gardens. The initiation of the UCJCI Cemetery had had a stormy start. However, with astute and confident leadership, like a steadfast captain, LeRoi Lorde steadily steered the Meadowrest ‘vessel’, into the sea of success.
A member and elder of the Meadowrest congregation, out of which the idea for a cemetery was born, after 22 years, as he retired, he had good reason to be proud of the achievements of Meadowrest. It is a cemetery which is described even by the competition as one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Jamaicaif not the most beautiful – and also one of the best operations of its kind.
This former educator, who first came to Jamaica from his home country Barbados, to study at the University of the West Indies, later studied politics, government and economics at Oxford University and attended courses at the World Bank, the Irish management Institute and in the Netherlands.
With this outstanding educational background, he made his mark in both the public and private sectors, serving as permanent secretary in the Ministry of Trade and managing director of Jamaica Nutrition Holdings, and in the private sector as executive director firstly of the Jamaican Institute of Management and then, of the Jamaica Manufacturers’ Association.
As managing director of Meadowrest, LeRoi Lorde quite rightly focussed on customer service to be the competitive advantage – after ensuring that the cemetery took steps to integrate itself into a formerly protesting St Catherine community in which it was placed.
He further differentiated the Meadowrest business offer, by providing grief counselling to those who chose Meadowrest to inter their loved ones.
In marketing, he wooed funeral directors, from which the cemetery receives a large percentage of its business, in an Annual Funeral Directors Appreciation Brunch, which he hosted annually from 2003. Despite the early difficulties, he was able to steer the business venture into profitable waters, so that today it is the leading entity in this respect of the three members of the UCJCI holding company, the United Church Mission Enterprise (UCME).