Carisa Lee
“I’ll make sure the nation knows who fix it back,” was a promise Stephanie Sylvester made to her husband Gerald Sylvester before he died.
Gerald worked as a jeweller at Y De Lima & Company for 50 years, but this Laventille-born man did not only use his craft to make gold rings and chains. He was the man responsible for repairing one of Parliament’s symbols of authority, the mace, after it was destroyed during the 1990 coup.
“Those days they couldn’t have find a jeweller to do it and the government was preparing to send that mace over to Germany and it would have cost the Government a lot of money, but consulting with Mr Jack De Lima and he said he knew a jeweller who would have been able to fix it,” Stephanie told Guardian Media.
Stephanie said her husband proved himself with that project and from then was trusted to make and repair several national awards.
“At one time he came as the main person at De Lima to handle those pieces of work, the mace and the awards, the President’s Awards…he even worked on the front of the Chief Justice car,” she said.
She said her husband never got the recognition he deserved.
“Even his own little nieces and nephews during the funeral said they never knew that he repaired the maces,” Stephanie said.
It’s why she decided to tell his story.
“I did it, I kept my word, because I promised that I would let Trinidad and Tobago know that you did it,” Stephanie said.
Stephanie, a former jeweller herself, met her husband in the 1960s while studying jewellery-making at the John Donaldson Technical Institute. They fell in love and got married in 1972. Then they started a family and built a home in Morvant.
“Anywhere you see him, you see me, we go market, anywhere we go together for 50 years…I would not change it for nothing,” she said.
Gerald passed away suddenly on March 12 this year. He worked up until the day before his death.
“I feel if he was alive still he would have been there because I kept quarrelling...I said oh gosh come out, time to come out but he loved his trade,” she said.
So in every way she can, Stephanie plans to ensure her husband’s legacy lives on because she remembers his dedication and how proud he felt every time he saw it carried by the Marshal of the Parliament on television.
“He would always say ‘you see that piece, is I work on that, is I do that,’” she said.
The ornamented maces are carried by the Marshal of the Parliament when he escorts the Presiding Officer in and out of the Chamber at the beginning and end of each sitting of the respective Houses.
