Brig Theodore will be best re­mem­bered for the strong mil­i­tary lead­er­ship he dis­played as over­all com­man­der of the armed forces dur­ing the at­tempt­ed coup of Ju­ly 1990. He was in­volved in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Bi­laal Ab­dul­lah, the Mus­limeen mem­ber in charge at the Red House where then Prime Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son and MPs had been tak­en hostage.

T&T lost one of its na­tion­al he­roes with the death of Brig Joseph Theodore on Sep­tem­ber 21.Brig Theodore, who served this coun­try with dis­tinc­tion, first as a mil­i­tary leader, then in the po­lit­i­cal are­na as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, was laid to rest yes­ter­day af­ter a fu­ner­al be­fit­ting a dis­tin­guished son of the soil.Joe Theodore was drawn to the mil­i­tary life from an ear­ly age and was ac­tive in the Cadet Force at St Mary's Col­lege, Port-of-Spain. He was among the first T&T na­tion­als to at­tend the Roy­al Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my at Sand­hurst, Eng­land, as an of­fi­cer cadet from the West In­dia Reg­i­ment.

He joined that reg­i­ment, which was based in Ja­maica, dur­ing the 1958�1961 West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion, which col­lapsed in 1961. When he was of­fered the choice of join­ing the Ja­maica Reg­i­ment or the T&T Reg­i­ment, Theodore opt­ed to serve in Ja­maica for two years as a lieu­tenant. He re­turned to his home­land in 1964 and joined the T&T Reg­i­ment as a cap­tain. He be­came a com­pa­ny com­man­der and then ma­jor in the af­ter­math of the events of 1970.