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Saturday, March 1, 2025

Quiet send-off for ‘Uncle Linky’

by

1758 days ago
20200508
Ralph Lincoln  “Uncle Linky” Yearwood

Ralph Lincoln “Uncle Linky” Yearwood

In a sim­ple 20-minute ser­vice ded­i­cat­ed to ho­n­our the life of swim­ming gi­ant Ralph Lin­coln Year­wood fond­ly called “Un­cle Linky” at the Long Cir­cu­lar Cre­ma­to­ri­um Site in St James, he was re­mem­bered as a hum­ble man, “full of jokes” and with a love for mu­sic.

Due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the fam­i­ly fol­lowed the gov­ern­ment’s re­stric­tions to curb the spread of the virus so, in the mid-day ser­vice on Wednes­day, his broth­er Rod­er­ick Year­wood cre­ative­ly high­light­ed the above and al­so re­mem­bered Un­cle Linky’s pas­sion for wa­ter-sport ac­tiv­i­ties.

In the two-minute eu­lo­gy, Year­wood said: “He was a true big broth­er and men­tor to me. I re­mem­ber he would take us to the beach on Sat­ur­days to pre­tend we were drown­ing for the life­guards to train to save us. He would of­ten at­tract big crowds to tell jokes and per­form mag­ic tricks. 

“He al­so loved mu­sic, but he said mu­sic didn’t like him. I re­mem­bered I got my gui­tar and went to sing to him and he thor­ough­ly en­joyed it. I promised to re­turn and do it again but I nev­er got a chance to as he had re­quest­ed.”

Year­wood shared that Un­cle Linky was an avid con­trib­u­tor and played a ma­jor part in the lives of many bud­ding swim­mers in the coun­try at the ser­vice which was of­fi­ci­at­ed by Dea­con Michal Smith.

He not­ed Un­cle Linky’s last stint in the sport of swim­ming af­ter form­ing his own swim school in Mar­aval, led him to man­age the Tsuna­mi Swim Club at St Michael’s Swim­ming Pool in San Fer­nan­do, then coach­ing recre­ation­al swim­mers and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T’s (UTT) sports stu­dents at the Co­coyea Com­mu­ni­ty Swim­ming Pool.

Year­wood said: “He could not stay away from swim­ming. He lec­tured at UTT and coached na­tion­al teams. He couldn’t give up swim­ming, even when he was con­fined to bed you would see him on his lap­top col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er coach­es.”

Un­cle Linky was the fifth of 14 chil­dren and he had four of his own. He had been ail­ing for a while but suc­cumbed to his ail­ment on April 29. He leaves to mourn, wife Car­ol and chil­dren, Ryan, Lisa and Ro­ry. His oth­er son Ri­car­do al­so passed some time ago.


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