THE editor and publisher of The Tribune, Eileen Dupuch-Carron, has been named a Companion of the Order of the Bahamas in this year’s Independence awards.

The honour recognises her fearless work over the years at the helm of The Tribune. She is the world’s longest-serving editor and publisher, with her 60-year record eclipsing that of her father, crusading journalist Sir Etienne Dupuch, who served for 54 years in that role.

Mrs Dupuch-Carron is also a pilot, the most senior female barrister-at-law in the nation, an artist, mother, and was described in the Wikileaks cables as “one of the most powerful women in the country”.

In 2012, she was recognised at the International Press Institute World Congress in Trinidad and Tobago along with her father, with organisers noting their “extraordinary and remarkable courage under most difficult conditions, for their lifetime dedication to the freedom of the press set them as global flag bearers for the principles of integrity, justice and human rights”.

She has been called the “Iron Lady”, and was hailed as a “Living Legend” by the Zonta Clubs of New Providence – while former PLP Minister of Works Bradley Roberts described her in the House of Assembly as one of the “reigning practitioners of terrorist behaviour using The Tribune as her weapon of mass destruction”.

Her editorials have been read into the record from the floor of the US Senate, by then Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) in honour of her support of US Foreign Policy.

In 1993, she also became the first chief executive officer of a private radio station in The Bahamas, with the launch of The People’s Radio Station (100.3).

Mrs Dupuch-Carron graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, and joined The Tribune as editor in 1962, the same year she became the second woman and the first Bahamian born to be called to The Bahamas Bar.

She is the eldest of six children of Sir Etienne and Lady Marie Dupuch. Her father ended racial inequality in The Bahamas by tabling a resolution in the House of Parliament outlawing discrimination in public places. He also fought for women’s right to vote.

Mrs Dupuch-Carron is the widow of Roger Carron, who worked beside her as managing editor of The Tribune for 30 years. She has not taken a vacation in 20 years – while “always wanting just to stay at home, paint and be a wife and mother”. She has a son, Robert, a daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, and a grandson, Aidan Roger Dupuch-Carron.