Kali­fa Clyne

Hun­dreds of peo­ple, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, fam­i­ly, friends and well-wish­ers, turned out to pay trib­ute to tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Allyson Hen­nessy yes­ter­day.Hen­nessy's close friend crick­eter Bri­an Lara de­liv­ered an emo­tion­al eu­lo­gy at St Fin­bar's RC Church, Diego Mar­tin.Mu­si­cal trib­utes came from Hen­nessy's favourite steel­band Des­per­a­does, Ja­son Seecha­ran of H2O Ph­lo, pan­nist Len "Boogsie" Sharpe and Hen­nessy's col­league, Wen­dell Con­stan­tine.Lara told the con­gre­ga­tion that al­though Hen­nessy was al­ways very close to the women in her life, the bond she had with "her boys" was a very spe­cial one.

Lara, who along with sports per­son­al­i­ties Dwight Yorke and Rus­sell Lat­apy formed part of that spe­cial group known as Allyson's "boys", ap­peared emo­tion­al as he spoke about his close friend.He said Hen­nessy aroused in him every­thing a moth­er, sis­ter and friend would.He said af­ter scor­ing a cen­tu­ry dur­ing a crick­et match he turned to the stands where Hen­nessy was sit­ting and gave a salute with his bat.He said the mo­ment struck him as di­vine be­cause a few years pre­vi­ous­ly he had made that ex­act ges­ture to his moth­er who had sat in the same spot as Hen­nessy.

Many well-wish­ers felt mere words could not de­scribe Hen­nessy. The litany of pos­i­tive ad­jec­tives ranged from gen­er­ous, pa­tri­ot­ic and vi­va­cious to sin­cere and gen­uine­ly car­ing.Sal­ly Hospedales, who de­liv­ered a eu­lo­gy as did Lara, said Hen­nessy would be re­mem­bered for her be­lief that T&T did not need to copy for­eign ideals to be ex­cel­lent.She re­called that every Mon­day Hen­nessy would gath­er food and go to Port-of-Spain to feed the poor.Hospedales said Hen­nessy would be re­mem­bered for her love of sport, steel­band and es­pe­cial­ly Car­ni­val.

She said she could re­mem­ber Hen­nessy say­ing the day you don't see her play­ing mas would be be­cause she was dead.This elicit­ed smiles from sev­er­al fam­i­ly mem­bers and well-wish­ers.Hospedales com­mend­ed the staff of the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre for their care dur­ing Hen­nessy's month-long stay.Of­fi­ci­at­ing priest, Fr Ja­son Gor­don, en­cour­aged the large con­gre­ga­tion to live life as ful­ly and as gen­er­ous­ly as Hen­nessy did."If Trinidad had a heart and that heart resided in a per­son, then Allyson Hen­nessy was as good as any­one to car­ry that heart," said Fr Gor­don.Al­so at­tend­ing the fu­ner­al were Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley, Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts and oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters.Promi­nent per­son­al­i­ties in­clud­ing fash­ion de­sign­er Meil­ing, Wendy Fitzwilliam, Pe­ter Min­shall, Pene­lope Spencer, Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter and count­less oth­ers were present.The ser­vice end­ed with a tear­ful farewell as David Rud­der gave a per­son­alised per­for­mance of Spar­row's Mem­o­ries.Hen­nessy's rel­a­tives could be seen smil­ing through tears as Rud­der sang the mod­i­fied lyrics: "Allyson I'll al­ways re­mem­ber you, jump­ing when a steel­band pass, play­ing mas."