Weekend mornings on this patch of land in front of Gloria Addison’s El Paso Nite Club in Tema has always been a busy hangout of the local kids. The old nightclub itself has lost its glitz and nightlife, but its front yard is where the kids these days have uninhibited fun in endless games that spontaneously spring up at the sight of the first few kids who show up with a decent soccer ball. This is where Judy Akosua Larbi Osei grew up, and on this long trans-Atlantic flight back home with her twins to visit her mom she wondered what her mom, Gloria would think of her. Mother and daughter look alike and from a distance you will think you are looking at the portraiture of the same person when you look at their pictures at the same age. It’s surreal. Judy has no grand narratives or tales of self-mastery to share about her life, instead she will tell you hers has been an act of faith of a girl who grew up with the simple ambition of making her mother proud. Afterall, her older brother is the revered Ghanaian political activist and journalist Abdul Malik Kwaku Baako whose near-mythical reputation must have been inspiring and overwhelming for his siblings. She slowly pulled the airplane window shade down and dozed off with arrival at Kotoka airport some five hours away. The last of five kids on her maternal side of the family, Judy, her close friends call her Akosua, grew up with two things instinctively serving her well: being tough and being suave in equal measure. Beyond the usual sibling squabbling these traits will later be her shield in journalismand a life in the senior leadership rungs of corporate America. She was born at a time when her mom had just moved the family to Tema and was finishing plans to set up a restaurant and a night club which she would name after El Paso, the Texan frontier city. Tema in the early 70s was still a new city which had been built from the ground up by the Nkrumah government only a decade before. With a modern harbor as the anchor business in the new industrial town, Tema attracted gritty blue-color and itinerant types who needed a water-cooler to socialize. That was El Paso. This is where the young Judy watched her mom fight to carve out space and thrive in the male-dominated entertainment business in Tema. This is where she learned how to use resilience and candor to build character. It served her well as a high school student at Akosombo International and Archbishop Porter Girls in Takoradi. Beyond her good looks, resilience must have been the motivating reason for participating and coming close to winning the 1995 Miss Ghana Beauty Pageant. “My mom participated in a beauty pageant in her days, so I did it to honor her” is always her response when the subject comes up in casual conversations with her friends. After journalism school in 1995 Judy got a job as a news anchor and reporter at Joy FM, one of Ghana’s premier radio stations. The radio job was her first one after some encouragement from her radio jockey dad, David Larbi. It’s hard to tell whether she gets her mastery of public speaking from her dad or the studios of Joy FM. Some of the friendships she made at Joy FM still endure “I catch up with them when in Accra and remain friends with them online” she recalled as she half-giggled through pages of WhatsApp postings from the Joy FM platform. When in the mood, Judy tells some of the funniest newsroom jokes. Some birds are not meant to be caged after five years at JOYFM; Judy moved to Minnesota in 2000. Like most first generation immigrants her life has not been a tidy arrangement of happy milestones. In 2006 she lost her first child Naasei who was born 22 weeks early but hasn’t worn the experience as an invitation to others to lament her loss with her. Instead, she uses her story as an inspiration for other women and couples struggling to start families. As a spiritual person who believes in the timely interventions of God, Judy’s The Akosua I know By Kofi Opare Addo Former pioneer Joy FM Sports Journalist 54 The Birthday Journal
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