Richard Lord

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards says the con­tri­bu­tion of Sir El­lis Clarke to the birth and de­vel­op­ment of T&T can­not be erased. Richards said so dur­ing his trib­ute to the first pres­i­dent of the coun­try, dur­ing a state fu­ner­al at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. Sir El­lis died on De­cem­ber 30, two days af­ter cel­e­brat­ing his 93rd birth­day. He suf­fered a mas­sive stroke on No­vem­ber 24 and nev­er re­cov­ered.

He was buried yes­ter­day at the Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery in Port-of-Spain. Richards said the most ap­pro­pri­ate trib­ute to Sir El­lis would be "for cit­i­zens to em­u­late his high stan­dards and hu­mil­i­ty. "He had to get it right and he did," he stressed. Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, in his trib­ute, re­called the fi­nal meet­ing he had with Sir El­lis at his Mar­aval home two days be­fore he suf­fered the stroke.

Archie said he went for ad­vice from Sir El­lis on "a del­i­cate mat­ter." He said the sched­uled 45-minute meet­ing last­ed more than five hours. "He was the mas­ter, I was the stu­dent," Archie said, with­out giv­ing de­tails. "Con­scious of the sig­nif­i­cance of what I was hear­ing, I said to him 'But Sir El­lis, you must write your mem­oirs,'" the CJ said.

"He de­flect­ed my sug­ges­tion in a man­ner char­ac­ter­is­tic of the man who was al­ways the con­sum­mate diplo­mat. "With a lit­tle chuck­le, he said, 'But Ivor, if I do that I will an­noy too many peo­ple.'" Archie spoke of the need for the work of Sir El­lis to be re­searched and cap­tured in the in­ter­est of all. "His true lega­cy lies not in his sev­er­al ac­com­plish­ment, but in the im­pact of the many lives he has touched," he added.

(RL)