Lorna Wainwright has been playing an important role in the reggae music industry for many years, but most of her work has been behind the scenes. She's now the manager of the Tuff Gong recording studio on Marcus Garvey Drive in Kingston, but it took several years of hard work to get there.
It all started one weekday evening in the early 1970s when she had her first encounter with the Tuff Gong himself.
"I was staying at an apartment next door to Bob Marley's home on Hope Road then. One evening, I heard some music coming from over there, so I climbed up on something and was looking over the wall. Bob was in the yard and saw me looking over and yelled, 'is who dat?' Wainwright chuckled at the memory.
"I tried to run, but Bob told one of the men over there to bring me over. When I went over there and told him my name, Bob told everyone that I was family and could come over there whenever I wanted," she said. "It turns out that my father's mother and Bob's grandmother are first cousins."
After that, Wainwright was a regular at 56 Hope Road and would sit in on rehearsals all the time.
I-threes fan
"Anytime Bob saw me there, he would tell me that Sister Rita soon come. He knew that I was a big I-Threes fan."
It was her fascination with the female trio, and Rita Marley in particular, that would eventually land her her dream job.
"I remember being at Hope Road one day and waiting for Sister Rita, as usual. When she arrived, she hailed everyone and went upstairs. She was working on her album Who Feels It at that time. About 15 minutes later, she came back down and told the people in her office that she needed to have a letter typed. They told her that there was nobody there at that time who could do it. Of course, I offered to do it. I was a graduate of Alpha Commercial College and was eager to help Sister Rita in any way," said Wainwright.
Fateful moment
That was a fateful moment in Lorna Wainwright's life that immediately put her in Rita Marley's good books and initiated a strong trust between the two.
"In 1981, she went on tour and left me at Hope Road as her secretary. I got a lot of fight. People were saying, 'what Rita need a secretary for?' But that is life, you always have fight in life," she said.
Since then, Wainwright has been a staple in the Tuff Gong family. She had been Rita Marley's secretary and road manager, as well as road manager for the I-Threes.
In 1992, she took on the post of studio manager at Tuff Gong and has been there ever since. She is also project manager for some of the Marley family charities and is a consultant for the Bob Marley Trust.
For her, the leadership roles she plays in all these organisations is fulfilment of prophecy made by Bob Marley only days after she first met him.
After being turned down for a job at a prominent technology company in the 1970s, Wainwright told Marley that she believed she was being unfairly judged because of her Rastafarian beliefs.
"Bob told me that I shouldn't worry, because one day he would set up a company run by Rasta and I would be able to work and be true to my God and my faith."
She now dedicates much of her time to working with pregnant teenagers through the Rita Marley Foundation. Many of these teenagers are victims of incest and rape. She has three children and two grandchildren.
Lorna Wainwright - Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer
