Richard Lord

Cur­tis Joseph, fa­ther of the late Jizelle Sa­landy, says he hopes the Or­der of T&T, which he re­ceived on be­half of the late box­ing cham­pi­on, would be used to in­spire oth­ers, to as­pire to na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­cel­lence. Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards pre­sent­ed the award to Joseph short­ly af­ter 6 pm dur­ing the na­tion­al in­de­pen­dence awards cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent's House. Among those in at­ten­dance were Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie. In an in­ter­view with re­porters, Joseph said the award, though a bit late, was ap­pre­ci­at­ed by the fam­i­ly. "We feel hap­py gen­er­al­ly. Jizelle is al­ready dead, so we look for­ward to the fu­ture and hope that she would con­tin­ue to live on, not on­ly in peo­ple's mem­o­ries, but the lives of the youths."

Joseph said he re­ceived the of­fi­cial in­vi­ta­tion for the cer­e­mo­ny on Wednes­day. He said if Jizelle were alive to­day she would en­cour­age chil­dren to "study their school work, pray to God and al­ways as­pire to do their best." In re­sponse to an­oth­er ques­tion, Joseph said he was hope­ful that in the fu­ture more ap­pre­ci­a­tion should be giv­en to na­tion­al he­roes while they were still alive. He called for more as­sis­tance to be giv­en to as­pir­ing box­ers in the coun­try. Pres­i­dent Richards pre­sent­ed 17 oth­er awardees with their medals, in­clud­ing mu­si­cal di­rec­tor, Len Boogsie Sharpe, who re­ceived the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) for his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of the steel­pan in T&T. Af­ter ex­press­ing his grat­i­tude to Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and oth­ers for the award, Sharpe was crit­i­cal of steel­pan body Pan Trin­ba­go. He said he was not sat­is­fied about where the steel­pan had reached.

"Pan dead right now," he added. To which Arnold ex­pressed sup­port, say­ing, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" He told Arnold he should not feel of­fend­ed by his claim. "No, no, no, no; I agree with you," Arnold added. Sharpe then said there was need to make "a big change in pan." He said, "Steel­pan is a busi­ness. We need busi­ness­men to run our or­gan­i­sa­tion." Again Arnold said, "You talk­ing the right thing." And house­wife Daphne Bap­tiste, who al­so re­ceived a Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) for gal­lantry, said she would de­fend her­self against any armed crim­i­nal again, if nec­es­sary.

She was giv­en the medal for over­pow­er­ing an armed ban­dit in her home in Williamsville last month. She said all par­ents should "stand up for what is right "and do all they could to de­fend their chil­dren against crim­i­nals. She said the crim­i­nals in the coun­try must be ed­u­cat­ed in an at­tempt to change their lives. Pres­i­dent Richards de­scribed the re­cip­i­ents as "wor­thy cit­i­zens" who were re­ward­ed for their "hard work and loy­al ser­vice to the coun­try." Dr Geral­dine Con­nor, eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist, and Hugh Cyrus, who were award­ed the Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) and the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Sil­ver), were not pre­sent­ed with the medals, be­cause they were ab­sent.