Self­less in na­ture, hon­est, pas­sion­ate, lov­ing and ded­i­cat­ed to the bet­ter­ment of peo­ple and his coun­try, are how Wen­dell Jo­hanne Labastide, the for­mer T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) vice pres­i­dent and as­sis­tant sec­re­tary-gen­er­al was de­scribed at his fu­ner­al ser­vice at Allen Fu­ner­al Home in San­gre Grande, Friday af­ter­noon.

The lega­cy he left in the var­i­ous sport­ing cir­cles was ex­pressed by many, in­clu­sive of for­mer pres­i­dent of TTOC Bri­an Lewis, Navin Gayaper­sad, vice pres­i­dent of the T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion, the Shut­tle­force pair of Der­win and Nan­cy Re­nales who, with Labastide’s help, was able to im­pact the lives of many in the Va­len­cia/San­gre Grande and sur­round­ing ar­eas in the sport of bad­minton.  

His sis­ter Bev­er­ly Labastide eu­lo­gised him as an in­tel­li­gent per­son with a re­mark­able abil­i­ty to re­tain in­for­ma­tion, say­ing be­cause of this, he read the law books of T&T and be­came an ex­cel­lent bush lawyer who blurt­ed out ad­vice as if he were a true lawyer.  

Out­side of that, how­ev­er, Bev­er­ly de­scribed her broth­er as re­spectable, man­ner­ly, de­cent and re­mained hum­ble in spite of whom he rubbed shoul­ders with.

Re­nales (Der­win), who shared a per­son­al friend­ship with Labastide for many years, said he gave more than 40 years of his life to sports, start­ing as a teenag­er play­ing bad­minton. Ac­cord­ing to Re­nales, a for­mer na­tion­al stand­out him­self, Wen­dell not on­ly played an in­stru­men­tal part in the for­ma­tion of the Shut­tle­force Bad­minton Club but al­so played a role of fa­ther-fig­ure and friend, coach and wardrobe man to many, who need­ed gear for prac­tice and tour­na­ments.

Re­nales’ wife Nan­cy joined the cho­rus with a glow­ing de­scrip­tion of him as a walk­ing dic­tio­nary, and she caused many to smile as she re­lat­ed Labastide’s fa­mous sto­ry of catch­ing a fish with a piece of cheese.

Mean­while, Lewis, who worked close­ly with Labastide, said his death has been a huge loss to the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty.

“Be­fore he was se­lect­ed on the TTOC in 1997 as a vice pres­i­dent, he was as­signed the port­fo­lio of de­vel­op­ment. He was al­so as­signed to ad­dress and deal with af­fil­i­ate re­la­tions and schol­ar­ships, a role he em­braced tire­less­ly and un­wa­ver­ing­ly and re­gard­less of what you asked him to do, he al­ways ap­proached it with a can-do at­ti­tude.

“He had a sense of hu­mour through the many dif­fi­cult mo­ments, which was one of his char­ac­ter­is­tics and at­trib­ut­es. Wen­dell was al­so a friend, some­one you can trust, some­one you can con­fide in and some­one you could de­pend on to give ob­jec­tive analy­sis and as­sess­ment of any sit­u­a­tion,” Lewis said.