Prominent St. Lucian journalist, Guy Ellis, was pronounced dead at hospital on Sunday night after collapsing at his home from an apparent heart attack, his relatives have confirmed. He was 78 years old.

His widow, Tina said he had complained of feeling unwell and was taken to the Owen King EU Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Ellis, who last year celebrated 60 years in the profession, was the former managing editor of The Voice newspaper, the oldest on the island and the St. Lucia Mirror.

The Voice newspaper described        him then as the longest serving St. Lucia journalist still active, editing and producing books for local writers.

Ellis, who began his career in 1962, had also served as a correspondent for several foreign news agencies including the Associated Press, Reuters, the Venezuelan News Agency, and in 1976 became a founding correspondent for the Barbados-based Caribbean News Agency (CANA) now the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).

“My years with CANA did a lot for me professionally and enabled me to become one of its most prolific news features writers,” he said last year.

Ellis also wrote a number of books, including a Tourism Guide for St. Lucia in 1981, St. Lucia-Helen of the West, and a History of St. Lucia, published in 2012.

Guy Ellis also wrote the script for a comic book on the life of St. Lucia’s first Nobel Laureate, Sir Arthur Lewis published in 1981 by the Trinidad-based Inprint, a subsidiary of the Trinidad Express.

Ellis is survived by his wife, two children and several grandchildren.