Michelle Loubon

A clus­ter of green plants but­tressed colour por­traits of three il­lus­tri­ous Caribbean sons-Dr Lennox Ho­ny­church, Dr Kim John­son and Prof Su­ru­j­pal Teelucks­ingh at a grand cer­e­mo­ny in their ho­n­our. Oc­ca­sion was at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's on April 9.In the sphere of Pub­lic and Civic Con­tri­bu­tions was Do­mini­ca's Dr Ho­ny­church, Arts and Let­ters went to T&T son Dr John­son and Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy to Prof Teelucks­ingh.Michael K Man­soor, chair­man of the Re­gion­al Em­i­nent Per­sons Se­lec­tion Pan­el and Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, chair­man of the ANSA McAL Foun­da­tion de­liv­ered re­marks.

Rev Fr Ronald Mendes prayed for God's bless­ings.Wen­dell Con­stan­tine chaired the pro­ceed­ings and Maria Su­perville-Neil­son, Sec­re­tary of the ANSA McAL Foun­da­tion-pro­gramme di­rec­tor de­liv­ered the vote of thanks.Sab­ga said: "Dr Kim John­son has made his life's work in our col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion, pre­serv­ing our mem­o­ries and an­ces­tral sto­ries. Prof Teelucks­ingh has made his life's work in look­ing at every­day things that af­fect our lives. Dr Ho­ny­church has de­vot­ed his life to en­sur­ing his is­land-coun­try Do­mini­ca and the Caribbean re­mem­ber their past and pre­serve their her­itage."

In the pro­gramme's fore­word Dame/Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al of St Lu­cia Pearlette Louisy said: "Dr Lennox Ho­ny­church, in spite of not hav­ing a Bach­e­lor's de­gree, would suc­cess­ful­ly read for a doc­tor­al de­gree at one of the lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions in the world. Dr Kim John­son would de­vote years of study to a then lit­tle ap­plaud­ed in­dige­nous mu­si­cal in­stru­ment-the steel­pan, now recog­nised as the fore­most mu­si­cal in­ven­tion of the 20th cen­tu­ry."Prof Su­ru­j­pal Teelucks­ingh would con­cen­trate on the hu­man el­e­ment in med­i­cine, on so­ci­o­log­i­cal rather than ped­a­gog­ic or pre­scrip­tive meth­ods to bring about healthy lifestyles in the com­mu­ni­ties in which he serves."

Dr Kim John­son

Pri­or to the pre­sen­ta­tion, the doyennes were fea­tured on a video pre­sen­ta­tion. Sev­er­al lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic and cul­tur­al per­son­al­i­ties in­clud­ing Prof Bri­an Copeland and vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian, Dr Hol­lis Liv­er­pool com­ment­ed on the con­tri­bu­tion of John­son.John­son shared vi­gnettes about his pas­sion to record the steel­pan sto­ries since "every steel­pan man had a sto­ry." The pro­gramme car­ried bi­ogra­phies.

An ex­cerpt said: "Dr John­son's work with the deaf com­mu­ni­ty has gen­er­at­ed a film­mak­ing pro­gramme for the hear­ing im­paired (Tell Me No Lies). He is work­ing on a full-length doc­u­men­tary film on the Steel Pan Move­ment. His ma­jor re­search achieve­ments in­clud­ed an ex­hi­bi­tion en­ti­tled The Au­dac­i­ty of the Cre­ole Imag­i­na­tion. He is al­so work­ing to­wards cre­at­ing, along with oth­er fel­lows of UTT, a vir­tu­al on­line mu­se­um of T&T."In his ac­cep­tance speech, John­son lament­ed the de­cline of stan­dards in "cour­tesy and mu­sic."John­son said: "I re­mem­ber songs I learnt as a child. But if you ask me the name of this year's Road March I can't re­mem­ber."

Dr Lennox Ho­ny­church

In the video pre­sen­ta­tion, pret­ty pic­tures of the Caribbean Peo­ple, text­books which took sec­ondary school stu­dents in­to an his­tor­i­cal odyssey were show­cased. An ul­ti­mate Caribbean man, Ho­ny­church was laud­ed for his in­put in­to the restora­tion of Fort Fred­er­ick in Grena­da and Fort Char­lotte in St Vin­cent. He de­signed Bet­ty's Hope Plan­ta­tion In­ter­pre­ta­tion Cen­tre in An­tigua and es­tab­lished the Do­mini­ca Mu­se­um in Rosseau which still boasts cob­ble-stoned streets.He is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the restora­tion of Fort Shirley, the 18th cen­tu­ry gar­ri­son in Cabri­tis Na­tion­al Park, Do­mini­ca, where he is de­vel­op­ing an ecol­o­gy and her­itage cen­tre in the his­toric build­ings.

Ho­ny­church's cor­pus ex­tends to doc­u­ment­ing mar­gin­al First Peo­ple's com­mu­ni­ties, preser­va­tion of na­tion­al her­itage sites and pi­o­neer­ing an in­te­grat­ed and eco­log­i­cal ap­proach to frag­ile, small is­land com­mu­ni­ties.In his ac­cep­tance speech, Ho­ny­church de­scribed him­self as "a bit of a Tri­ni with fam­i­ly from San Fer­nan­do."Ho­ny­church thanked his loved one­for ex­pos­ing him to a life be­yond the class­room.He re­mind­ed the gath­er­ing about the beau­ty and vi­tal­i­ty of the Caribbean isles "which can­not be found on a cold street in Toron­to, out in Man­hat­tan or the tube in Lon­don."

Prof Su­ru­j­pal Teelucks­ingh

Hail­ing from Cunu­pia like vet­er­an broad­cast­er, Hans Hanoomans­ingh, Prof Su­ru­j­pal was pho­tographed as UWI's or­a­tor for Cam­pus grad­u­a­tions. He is al­so num­bered among UWI's out­stand­ing grad­u­ates. Join­ing in the cel­e­bra­tions were his wife Sabi­ta and chil­dren Siana, Siara, Shra­van and Sachin.An ex­cerpt on the pro­gramme said: "He has the rare at­tribute in med­i­cine of be­ing gift­ed in its prac­tice, the­o­ry and teach­ing."He is a skilled clin­i­cian, a ded­i­cat­ed and pop­u­lar teacher and a pro­lif­ic and ac­com­plished sci­en­tif­ic re­searcher."

It added: "His con­tri­bu­tions to the field of med­ical sci­ence in­cludes re­search in­to non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases like di­a­betes and obe­si­ty and the in­tro­duc­tion of the so­ci­o­log­i­cal, rather than ped­a­gog­ic or pre­scrip­tive meth­ods to cause com­mu­ni­ties to adopt lifestyles that would make them health­i­er." In his pre­pared ac­cep­tance speech, Su­ru­j­pal paid trib­ute to his late moth­er Jas­so­dra.Sad­ly, he not­ed "sin­gle par­ents are of­ten seen in to­day's light as if they are bound for fail­ure. And dis­ci­pline, used syn­ony­mous­ly and un­nec­es­sar­i­ly with cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, has come to be viewed as a bad word. If in­deed sin­gle par­ent­ed­ness and dis­ci­pline are curs­es, then I may have been blessed with both.

"In the same way she guard­ed her pen­nies, she kept us-both my broth­er and I-pre­cious­ly pro­tect­ed from the dis­or­der that con­stant­ly en­cir­cled her short but pro­duc­tive life. In ac­cept­ing this award, I wish to ho­n­our my long, lost par­ents who tonight must be lead­ing the cho­rus of re­joic­ing in Heav­en."He thanked bene­fac­tor He­len Bhag­wans­ingh for her con­tri­bu­tion to­ward the chil­dren.He paid trib­ute to the teach­ers."Good teach­ers have mas­tered the skills of di­ag­no­sis and ther­a­peu­tics. Teach­ers pos­sess the mag­i­cal pow­ers to weave the com­plex fab­ric of which the so­ci­ety is even­tu­al­ly made."

Up­dates on 2010 lau­re­ates

Against the back­drop of St Lu­cia's ma­ri­na, Adri­an Augi­er, re­cip­i­ent for Arts and Let­ters, flashed his win­some smile.An ex­cerpt said: "He pledged fund­ing for his prize mon­ey and com­bined it with do­na­tions from pri­vate and pub­lic sources to raise EC$115,000 to en­hance train­ing and per­for­mance op­por­tu­ni­ties in the arts, with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on dance."

Far from the North Rupuni­ni in Guyana, Syd­ney Al­lic­ock greet­ed com­rade-in-the-field Ho­ny­church. He wore his tra­di­tion­al vest­ments.An ex­cerpt said: "The Eco Lodge tourism in Sura­ma has been en­hanced and up­grad­ed. Its fa­cil­i­ties have been im­proved. The ini­tia­tives in­clude the pur­chase of a new all ter­rain ve­hi­cle which is used to trans­port guests and the con­struc­tion of a new of­fice fa­cil­i­ty. The Biana Hill In­sti­tute has al­so ben­e­fit­ed. It has been able to in­crease the range of train­ing it of­fers to young peo­ple, pro­vid­ing in­tro­duc­to­ry and prepara­to­ry ed­u­ca­tion for the study of law, health care and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty."

Pathol­o­gist Prof Kath­leen Coard was named re­cip­i­ent of the ti­tle of Com­man­der of the Most Ex­cel­lent Or­der of the British Em­pire from her Majesty Queen Eliz­a­beth. She was nom­i­nat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da.It said: "She has con­tin­ued work­ing on oth­er as­pects of car­dio­vas­cu­lar pathol­o­gy. She has served on a num­ber of com­mit­tees at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies whose purview is re­search-ori­ent­ed. She is al­so a mem­ber of the se­lec­tion pan­els for the an­nu­al prin­ci­pal's Re­search Com­mit­tee of the Uni­ver­si­ty and the an­nu­al Re­search Day Con­fer­ence of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences."