Michelle Loubon and Malis­sa Lara-Pat­ter­son

The Pan­tin fam­i­ly from Wood­brook an­swered the call to "serve the peo­ple, serve the peo­ple, serve all of the peo­ple" of T&T. Ser­vice has nev­er been an alien con­cept to the promi­nent Pan­tins who made pos­i­tive in­roads on the so­cio-eco­nom­ic land­scape. The late An­tho­ny Pan­tin was arch­bish­op of the dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. For­mer Fa­ti­ma Col­lege prin­ci­pal, Clive Pan­tin be­came Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. Fr Ger­ard Pan­tin found­ed Ser­vice Vol­un­teered For All (Ser­vol). Three doyennes among the Pan­tin clan epit­o­mise the no­tion of ser­vice, vol­un­teerism and hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism. Ten sib­lings were born to late house­wife Agnes and Julien Pan­tin, a man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at the de­funct Sal­va­tori Scott Ltd. The union pro­duced Ger­ard, Tony (late), Rose, Ge­of­frey (late), Clive, Mon­i­ca, Ronald (late), He­len, Pa­tri­cia and Michael. The Pan­tins' ma­tri­arch Agnes was a "very re­li­gious woman" who took them to mass reg­u­lar­ly at St Patrick's RC Church, Mar­aval. The fam­i­ly re­mained steeped in Ro­man Catholi­cism. Rosa an­swered the call to join the nun­nery with the Sis­ters of Cluny at St Joseph's Con­vent.

Com­ment­ing on their call­ing, Clive Pan­tin said: "It was a gift from God. We en­joyed every minute of it. That was im­por­tant. If you go in­to a job and you have reser­va­tions about it, don't do it. You are not go­ing to suc­ceed." In­deed, the Pan­tin clan have been a bless­ing. In 1995, Pas­tor Ce­cil Quam­i­na paid ku­dos to them via let­ter to the ed­i­tor when they were named Fam­i­ly of the Year. He said: "We can nev­er re­pay the Pan­tins for the con­tri­bu­tion they have made to our so­ci­ety." An­oth­er gen­tle­man Hol­lis Thomas re­alised the im­por­tance of Pan­tins' vast con­tri­bu­tion and com­piled bi­ogra­phies on them. Sun­day Guardian al­so salutes the Pan­tins' ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion.

Cap­tion: Wood­brook ole boy Clive Pan­tin, back row right, pos­es with his wife Pat­sy, sec­ond from right, and chil­dren Bernard, right. Join­ing them front row left are Thomas, Salma, An­na and David. Pho­tos cour­tesy Thomas Pan­tin

Clive Pan­tin... Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion- zenith of his ca­reer

With pom­pek Bel­la at his feet, for­mer Fa­ti­ma Col­lege prin­ci­pal, Clive Pan­tin takes a stroll in his gar­den at Wood­brook. Cast­ing a cur­so­ry glance, a passer­by might think he's al­ways lived a life of rest and re­lax­ation; but Pan­tin, 77, has al­ways been a hard work­er. He left a lega­cy at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, Mu­cu­rapo and strength­ened the Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) dur­ing his tenure as Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. He was part of the ANR Robin­son regime (1986 to 1991). On Mon­day, Pan­tin said his con­tri­bu­tion as Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion was the zenith of his ca­reer. Quizzed on his ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment, Pan­tin said: "I would say my ma­jor role was as Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. I en­joyed it very much. When you are prin­ci­pal of a school you just see mi­nor changes. But when you see all the schools com­bined that's a very tough task. Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion role is not an easy one."

Pan­tin would pop in unan­nounced to get a first hand ac­count of the in­ner work­ings of T&T's schools.

"I liked go­ing out to the dif­fer­ent schools unan­nounced and just vis­it­ing them." With a mis­chie­vous twin­kle, he said: "There was a lit­tle pan­ic when they saw I had ar­rived. But af­ter a while they got a hold of my modus operan­di." Pan­tin ex­plained his mis­sion was not just to catch prin­ci­pals and teach­ers nap­ping, but to get a deep­er knowl­edge of the stu­dents' needs. He firm­ly be­lieved in the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion as a cat­a­lyst for change and so­cioe­co­nom­ic im­prove­ment. No school was for­bid­den. "I con­tin­ued to vis­it schools par­tic­u­lar­ly schools far away; in the deep West, deep East and deep South."

Pan­tin was not a green­horn. Af­ter all, he had spent 27 years as a Lan­guage (French and Span­ish) and Re­li­gious Ed­u­ca­tion teacher. He was prin­ci­pal for ten years. Pat­ting him­self on the back, he said: "Fa­ti­ma be­came a first class school."

The im­pact of Feel

Af­ter the crush­ing de­feat of the NAR ad­min­is­tra­tion, Pan­tin found­ed Feel (Foun­da­tion for the En­hance­ment and En­rich­ment of Life) in 1991. He and his team in­clud­ing the late Le­o­line Box­hill dis­trib­uted ham­pers to about 120 Non Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) from the mas­sive ware­house owned by JB Fer­nan­des at Laven­tille. "To my great sur­prise, he showed me this huge com­pound with every pos­si­bil­i­ty of good­ness about it. We de­cid­ed to get the NGOs to­geth­er. They were find­ing it dif­fi­cult to con­tin­ue the work. There were some who were re­al­ly con­sci­en­tious in their work."

Each year, about 2,400 peo­ple re­ceived food and ham­pers. "Peo­ple from the Unit­ed States sent down a lot of stuff for us."

About Clive Pan­tin

He was a fine ath­lete at St Mary's Col­lege. He earned a BA de­gree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of (Dublin) Ire­land and got a Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion at UWI Ja­maica. Ini­tial­ly, he was study­ing for the priest­hood. "You talk about prayers. I re­alised it was not for me. I had An­na in Ja­maica." He al­so mar­ried Pat­sy and fa­thered Bernard, David and Thomas. He has nine grand­chil­dren. Quizzed on the se­cret to his longevi­ty, he said: "Live a good life and drink ap­ple..." On be­half of his sib­lings, Tom, an ex-Fa­ti­ma boy, said: "We are all proud of him. We ad­mire him. He is a shin­ing ex­am­ple of a fa­ther." He added: "One of the as­pects of our house was our love for sport... love for Eng­lish foot­ball and our love for Man­ches­ter Unit­ed. It was like a tra­di­tion. We would be drink­ing beer. All the boys." Pan­tin's con­tem­po­rary/re­tired St Au­gus­tine Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive prin­ci­pal Os­mond "Slim" Down­er said: "He played for St Mary's. Then, he played for Ca­su­als. Ge­of­frey Pan­tin al­so played for St Mary's and Ronald played, too. He was in my time and I played for Ca­su­als. At that time, Ca­su­als and Sham­rock were known as the "white peo­ple" team." "But Pan­tin's great­est con­tri­bu­tion is ed­u­ca­tion," said the FI­FA ref­er­ees in­struc­tor.

Pan­tin on Pan­tins

Grow­ing up in a huge fam­i­ly, Pan­tin de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as "won­der­ful." His moth­er Agnes was a strict dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an. "She was worse than any prin­ci­pal," he said. It was a sad day when they put their fa­ther in the earth at Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery. "Michael... the last one was about a year when he died. His fu­ner­al was a huge traf­fic stop­per. He had lots of friends." Com­ment­ing on his sib­lings, he said: "Tony was the first to come in as a priest. He was al­ways an ac­ces­si­ble arch­bish­op. "Oh, yes, we adored him. The on­ly thing we didn't do was go to con­fes­sion. The best priest I could tell my sins, too. He would che­ups if he felt it was a big sin. Tony was quite a guy." "Ger­ard... he was the in­tel­len­gentsia of the fam­i­ly. He won an is­land schol­ar­ship." "Short­ly af­ter dad­dy died, Rosa told our moth­er she had this call­ing to be a nun. Agnes said: 'Well, may God be with you, child.'" But his favourite sib­ling is Ge­of­frey, whom he de­scribed as his "re­al rid­ing part­ner." "I al­ways re­mem­ber the day we were go­ing to school (Bel­mont In­ter­me­di­ate). He said: 'I will tow you through the Sa­van­nah...next thing I know, the two of us found our­selves on the ground in a pud­dle. He said: "Boy, I slipped. Well, boy, I cuss Ge­of­frey." For Christ­mas, the se­nior Pan­tin said: "I will be look­ing for­ward to turkey with stuff­ing."