Gail Alexan­der

The fu­ner­al of John Spence, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus and for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, will take place on Tues­day at 10 am, his grand­son Stephen Spence said yes­ter­day.Spence, 83, died of a heart at­tack on Wednes­day.The fu­ner­al will take place at UWI's Sports and Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre, St Au­gus­tine.

Spence has been hailed as T&T's fore­most ex­pert on agri­cul­ture. For­mer head of the Fac­ul­ty of Agri­cul­ture at UWI–with UWI from its in­cep­tion–he lob­bied for the sec­tor as well as de­bat­ing na­tion­al mat­ters dur­ing his three terms in the Par­lia­ment as an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor from 1987 to 2000. Mem­bers of all po­lit­i­cal sides have laud­ed his na­tion-build­ing con­tri­bu­tion.

For­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Ken­neth Ram­c­hand, who served with Spence at UWI and in the Sen­ate, said: "He was an in­formed, dis­ci­plined and car­ing pub­lic in­tel­lec­tu­al who wrote and spoke on a wide range of na­tion­al is­sues with pa­tri­ot­ic hope, and with be­lief in the des­tiny of T&T."He knew in his heart and in his brain that agri­cul­ture and ed­u­ca­tion were the foun­da­tion of a civilised so­ci­ety and he spent all his life try­ing to per­suade his fel­low cit­i­zens," he added.

"He was an In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor from 1987 to 2000 and as leader of In­de­pen­dent busi­ness he was in­stru­men­tal in mar­shalling a group that stood for in­tegri­ty, for in­de­pen­dent thought, and fear­less speak­ing."It was an ed­u­ca­tion to serve along­side this ho­n­ourable and ex­em­plary hu­man be­ing."