An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Olympic javelin cham­pi­on Keshorn Wal­cott fought back tears yes­ter­day as he re­mem­bered Sean Roach, the busi­ness­man and ath­lete man­ag­er who helped trans­form his life, de­scrib­ing him as the broth­er who shaped the per­son he has be­come.

Wal­cott was among mourn­ers at an emo­tion­al in­ter­faith fu­ner­al ser­vice for Roach at Hi­malaya Club in San Juan.

Roach, 50, died on Oc­to­ber 5. He was the for­mer chair­man of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Langston Roach In­dus­tries Ltd.

Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and promi­nent fig­ures from the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty joined fam­i­ly and friends to cel­e­brate his life.

Re­call­ing their 15-year re­la­tion­ship, Wal­cott ex­plained how Roach first vis­it­ed his fam­i­ly home in To­co to help his old­er broth­er pur­sue uni­ver­si­ty op­por­tu­ni­ties in the Unit­ed States. De­ter­mined not to be left be­hind, Wal­cott joined the con­ver­sa­tion, even­tu­al­ly agree­ing to take a chance on a new life in Port-of-Spain.

De­spite hav­ing lit­tle mon­ey and no clear di­rec­tion, Roach helped the broth­ers pur­sue their am­bi­tions.

“Long sto­ry short, the un­ex­pect­ed hap­pened, and I won the Olympics some mere months af­ter tak­ing the biggest risk of my life and trust­ing a to­tal stranger,” Wal­cott re­called.

The 2012 Lon­don Olympic gold medal­list cred­it­ed Roach with shap­ing both his ath­let­ic ca­reer and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment.

“The per­son stand­ing here to­day is a re­sult of so many things you poured in­to me over the years,” he said emo­tion­al­ly.

Wal­cott pledged to en­sure Roach’s two daugh­ters would al­ways know how deeply their fa­ther loved them.

Roach’s broth­er, Ja­son, re­mem­bered him through three guid­ing prin­ci­ples: fo­cus, fam­i­ly and faith.

He ex­plained how lessons from ath­let­ics, par­tic­u­lar­ly the high jump, in­formed Roach’s man­age­ment phi­los­o­phy and de­ter­mi­na­tion to con­tin­u­al­ly raise the bar.

Ja­son al­so praised his broth­er’s abil­i­ty to build teams at Langston Roach In­dus­tries and his com­mit­ment to treat­ing rel­a­tives, friends and col­leagues with equal love and re­spect.

For­mer Ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter and St Ann’s East MP Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly re­called Roach’s qui­et gen­eros­i­ty to­wards young peo­ple in her con­stituen­cy.

She re­vealed that her son’s first sum­mer job was at Langston Roach In­dus­tries, where Roach al­so wel­comed his friends and per­son­al­ly en­cour­aged them to un­der­stand the val­ue of hard work.

“He want­ed to im­pact their lives. He want­ed them to un­der­stand the val­ue and the pow­er of hard work, and where you could get to if you’re will­ing to work hard,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so re­mem­bered his con­sis­tent sup­port for back-to-school and Christ­mas ini­tia­tives, of­ten help­ing with­out seek­ing pub­lic recog­ni­tion.

Na­tion­al sprint­er Jereem Richards was among those pay­ing an emo­tion­al trib­ute to Roach.

Roach leaves be­hind his wife and two daugh­ters.