He wore many hats. There was the schol­ar. The con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer. The states­man. And even the so­cialite. But as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s last Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al turned first pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, Sir El­lis Clarke did not mere­ly nav­i­gate the po­lit­i­cal realm; he helped lay the very bedrock of the na­tion.

From the mod­ern city of Man­aus in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, the Rupu­nuni Sa­van­nah in the Guyanese out­back now beck­oned. But we must first get to Boa Vista, Ro­raima’s pur­pose­ful­ly planned cap­i­tal, with its de­light­ful­ly wide, bright av­enues on the Bran­co Riv­er.

Born in Port-of-Spain on De­cem­ber 23, 1958, Ms Jus­tice Paula-Mae Weekes re­ceived her ear­ly school­ing at Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and Bish­op Anstey High School. She went on to study law at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Cave Hill Cam­pus, Bar­ba­dos, grad­u­at­ing with a Bach­e­lor of Laws (Ho­n­ours) in 1980. She ob­tained her le­gal ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate from the Hugh Wood­ing Law School in 1982 and was called to the Bar of Trinidad and To­ba­go lat­er that year.

Born on De­cem­ber 16, 1926, in Calder Hall, To­ba­go, Arthur Napoleon Ray­mond Robin­son was raised in the vil­lage of Cas­tara, where his fa­ther, James A. Robin­son, served as head­mas­ter at the lo­cal Methodist school. A schol­ar from his ear­ly youth, he be­came the first Bowles Schol­ar to Bish­op’s High School, To­ba­go, in 1939, and won the school’s first House Schol­ar­ship in 1942. He earned his High­er School Cer­tifi­cate in both 1944 and 1945, se­cur­ing Dis­tinc­tions in Latin.

Born on De­cem­ber 1, 1931, in San Fer­nan­do, Pro­fes­sor George Maxwell Richards, TC, CMT, PhD, was one of five chil­dren born to George, a bar­ris­ter, and Hen­ri­et­ta Mar­tin, a teacher. He re­ceived his ear­ly ed­u­ca­tion at the San Fer­nan­do EC School be­fore earn­ing a Gov­ern­ment Ex­hi­bi­tion schol­ar­ship to Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege in Port of Spain.

Born on March 7, 1953, in the coastal vil­lage of Los Char­ros, Pa­lo Seco (with strong roots in Fyz­abad), An­tho­ny Thomas Aquinas Car­mona is the el­dest of six chil­dren born to Den­nis Stephen and Bar­bara Car­mona. Raised in a Ro­man Catholic house­hold, he at­tend­ed San­ta Flo­ra Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School while his fam­i­ly resided in Dal­ley’s Vil­lage, San­ta Flo­ra, be­fore pass­ing the Com­mon En­trance ex­am­i­na­tion for Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do.

Pri­or to Trinidad and To­ba­go gain­ing its in­de­pen­dence from Britain, it was a crown colony and the Queen of Eng­land was the na­tion’s Head of State, rep­re­sent­ed by the Gov­er­nor.

When Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came a re­pub­lic on Au­gust 1, 1976, the coun­try did more than re­place a Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al with a Pres­i­dent. It for­mal­ly end­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al link to the British Crown as the coun­try’s Head of State and es­tab­lished a re­pub­li­can sys­tem of gov­ern­ment un­der a new Con­sti­tu­tion.

The dam was nev­er com­plet­ed, but the vil­lage Lawrence Pereira knew as a boy had al­ready been bro­ken apart.

Al­most a cen­tu­ry ago, trains chugged through the rur­al vil­lage of Debe in south Trinidad, nes­tled in the Oropouche Riv­er basin, where peo­ple lived in mud and wood­en hous­es and worked in rice fields and cane plan­ta­tions, of­ten from dawn to dusk.

World Lung Day is ob­served an­nu­al­ly on Sep­tem­ber 25, and this year’s theme, “Healthy Lungs, Healthy Life,” re­minds us that any dis­ease or im­pair­ment of these or­gans could have life-al­ter­ing con­se­quences.

There are some lessons in life that we learn in class­rooms. Oth­ers we learn from books, from our par­ents, from our suc­cess­es and fail­ures. And then there are lessons that life teach­es us per­son­al­ly—some­times through ex­pe­ri­ences we would nev­er have cho­sen.