?Yet an­oth­er chap­ter of T&T his­to­ry–and an era–end­ed yes­ter­day, with the death of Grace Bap­tiste-Schmidt, the last of the Bap­tiste clan of Port-of-Spain and sis­ter of renowned 1950s songstress, Mona Bap­tiste. Bap­tiste-Schmidt, 80, died at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal at 5.30 am yes­ter­day. She had been ill dur­ing the last few months of 2009. Sev­er­al months ago, soon af­ter cel­e­brat­ing her 80th birth­day, Bap­tiste-Schmidt had been among judges of the Miss T&T Pageant. One of T&T's ear­ly "stars" as a dancer and mod­el on the in­ter­na­tion­al cir­cuit, in an­oth­er of her in­car­na­tions as a life-coach, Bap­tiste-Schmidt had au­thored a book on eti­quette and work­place prin­ci­ples in 1991. The book, en­ti­tled Look Good, Feel Bet­ter, Work Your Best, has served sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of pro­fes­sion­als.

Writ­ing the fore­word to her book, promi­nent at­tor­ney Frank Solomon, SC, who hailed Bap­tiste-Schmidt as liv­ing her life with "en­er­getic and fear­less icon­o­clasm..." had fur­ther summed Bap­tiste-Schmidt up thus: "She is al­ways at her best be­cause she is al­ways ready to deal with life head-on and un­com­pro­mis­ing­ly on her own terms." An­oth­er com­men­ta­tor on her book, for­mer banker and au­thor Phillip G Rochford, said of her death yes­ter­day: "Grace lived her pas­sion. She left us all some­thing of great val­ue. Even if it helped one per­son, she has done her job." Me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Hol­ly Be­taudi­er, with whom Bap­tiste-Schmidt co-starred on the for­mer Scout­ing for Tal­ent show, said yes­ter­day: "Gra­cie was the epit­o­me of (Frank) Sina­tra's song, she did it her way. Al­ways."

Bap­tiste-Schmidt, who was born on Queen Street, Port-of-Spain, grew up dur­ing the cap­i­tal city's gold­en age, and had had a vast trea­sury of sto­ries of city life with her sis­ters, Mona, Madge, Re­na and Babs. She was part of Port-of-Spain's his­to­ry, at a time which in­clud­ed the birth of the steel­band and the rise of ca­lyp­so, dance and the Lit­tle Carib The­atre, all of which she­had rich his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge of. She mi­grat­ed to Eu­rope to join her sis­ter Mona who had be­come glob­al­ly pop­u­lar for her songs and film­work. Mona died in 1993 in Ger­many. Liv­ing in Lon­don and lat­er Ger­many, Bap­tiste-Schmidt, a tall beau­ty with waist-length hair, be­came very suc­cess­ful on the Eu­ro­pean cir­cuit in the field of dance, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mu­si­cal films, and al­so mod­el­ling.

In a colour­ful ca­reer which took her from post-war Eu­rope as far as the Mid­dle East, Bap­tiste-Schmidt worked along­side late Amer­i­can film stars, Gene Kel­l­ly and Ger­man ac­tress, Kai Fish­er, among oth­ers on ei­ther side of the At­lantic. Her first mar­riage was to Kurt Schram, scion of a well-known Ger­man fam­i­ly and a car rac­ing en­tre­pre­neur. The cou­ple lived in Chile, where she bore two sons, Tri­an and Quirin. She wed a sec­ond time, al­so to a Ger­man, sea cap­tain, Paul Schmidt. In T&T in the 1970s, Bap­tiste-Schmidt worked at Ca­roni (1975) Ltd and was al­so ac­tive in the stag­ing of fash­ion and oth­er shows. Bap­tiste-Schmidt is sur­vived by her sons, grand-daugh­ter Daniel­la and oth­er rel­a­tives. Fu­ner­al arrange­ments will be an­nounced soon.(Gail Alexan­der)