Sh­er­nice Thomas

Hu­bert Pe­ter Di­az, bet­ter known as "Flag man", is cur­rent­ly seek­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to trav­el this year's Olympic Games which is set to kick off in Lon­don on Ju­ly 27. Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian in an in­ter­view last Wednes­day, Di­az said it would mean a lot to him to trav­el to the Eng­lish city to wit­ness the grand event. Di­az was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty from the gov­ern­ment to ac­com­pa­ny the So­ca War­riors in Ger­many at the 2006 FI­FA World Cup, and said it would be a dream come true if he could bear the na­tion­al flag dur­ing T&T's ath­lete pa­rade at the Games. The 73-year-old re­tired po­lice­man said that he ap­proached the gov­ern­ment this year who told him they could not af­ford to spon­sor his trip due to a lack of funds."I car­ried the na­tion­al flag in Ger­many and I was hop­ing to do it in Eng­land for the Games. It will be the first time in life that I will go to Eng­land."

The Ari­ma res­i­dent took up the man­tle as na­tion­al flag bear­er fol­low­ing the pass­ing of pre­vi­ous "flag man" and good friend, Ger­ald Lewis, who died in a car crash in 2000. Di­az re­vealed how he be­came Lewis' suc­ces­sor: "Ten days be­fore Ger­ald Lewis died, he passed by me and told me he doesn't know how long he'll car­ry the flag again. So he asked if I'll give him as­sis­tance be­cause he said that I was the on­ly per­son he could trust. So when he was leav­ing I said 'Ger­ald how soon?' He (Lewis) said 'you'll know'. Five days lat­er the po­lice come and tell me 'your fa­ther get knock down on the road', like he knew he was go­ing to die." Di­az, a for­mer na­tion­al walk­ing ath­lete, says his en­tire trip will cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50,000 (TTD) to stay for the du­ra­tion of the Games from Ju­ly 27 to Au­gust 12. He still needs mon­ey to take care of his air­fare and ac­com­mo­da­tion. Any­one who is will­ing to do­nate mon­ey to Di­az can do so at any RBC Bank to ac­count num­ber 100079072862441.