Rapheal John-Lall

Long­stand­ing Port-of-Spain busi­ness­man Jim­my Charles Aboud, who was the fa­ther of Gre­go­ry Aboud, head of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion, passed away yes­ter­day.

In a state­ment, Gre­go­ry Aboud said his fa­ther passed away in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing."Mr Aboud had been ad­mit­ted to the Car­diac Care Unit of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi Hos­pi­tal for an emer­gency valve re­place­ment pro­ce­dure that was spe­cif­ic to his con­di­tion and avail­able in on­ly a few cen­tres in the Unit­ed States. He sur­vived the surgery, but be­came com­pli­cat­ed with vary­ing is­sues re­lat­ed to his ad­vanced age. He fi­nal­ly suc­cumbed peace­ful­ly with his fam­i­ly around him this morn­ing."

He was 87. He was al­so the fa­ther of High Court judge James Aboud, and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea Gary Aboud.The busi­ness­man, who owned the icon­ic Jim­my Aboud fab­ric store, and who called him­self The Tex­tile King, at the cor­ner of Queen and Hen­ry Streets, Port-of-Spain, es­tab­lished his busi­ness in a sin­gle door­way rental shop on Char­lotte Street in Sep­tem­ber 1949 with a $50 over­draft from Bar­clays Bank."He be­came one of the first clients of The Bank of No­va Sco­tia who in­creased his over­draft to $500 af­ter they vis­it­ed his shop and liked his am­bi­tion and en­thu­si­asm. He took ex­am­ple from the suc­cess­ful mer­chants of the day and would al­ways try to see what he could learn from them, even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ing that the path to suc­cess meant em­u­lat­ing suc­cess­ful peo­ple, work­ing hard­er than your com­peti­tors, mak­ing sure that every trans­ac­tion ben­e­fit­ed both the buy­er and the sell­er, al­ways tak­ing per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for his fail­ures and at­tribut­ing the suc­cess of oth­ers to their per­for­mance be­ing su­pe­ri­or to his."

Steve Sama­roo, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sama­roo's on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day told the Guardian that Aboud's pass­ing was a great loss to the lo­cal busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty."It is sad as he was a big busi­ness­man in this city. He con­tributed a lot to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Our con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly."Sama­roo said that to some ex­tent, there were peo­ple in to­day's so­ci­ety with Aboud's work eth­ic, but the world is dif­fer­ent to the one in which Aboud start­ed off his busi­ness."You must re­mem­ber in to­day's world, with all the tech­no­log­i­cal changes, it is a dif­fer­ent type of busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment as op­posed to the old days where peo­ple like Aboud used to sell in the coun­try­side from a van. Some still do it, but now we have Web sites and new tech­nolo­gies to as­sist busi­ness own­ers," he said.

Sama­roo said the Sama­roo Group was an ex­am­ple of a mod­ern busi­ness that car­ries on the work eth­ic that Aboud be­lieved in and lived by."I still do it. I work from ear­ly in the morn­ing to late at nights. It is not easy, but suc­cess does not come easy but through hard work and Mr Aboud was a hard work­er."Abrahim Ali, for­mer pres­i­dent of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, said T&T has lost an in­flu­en­tial busi­ness­man and the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion ex­tends its con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly."We are all sad­dened by his death. Not on­ly did he con­tribute to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, but he stood up for na­tion­al is­sues like the fight against crime and the peo­ple of Laven­tille. He was very vo­cal for the Port-of-Spain busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty," he said.Ali is con­fi­dent that Gre­go­ry Aboud would con­tin­ue his fa­ther's lega­cy."My friend Gre­go­ry Aboud is con­tin­u­ing his fa­ther's work as he has pi­o­neered the cause of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty," he said.