For­mer pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, who died on Mon­day at age 86, will be giv­en a State fu­ner­al on a date which is still be­ing fi­nalised. His daugh­ter Max­ine Richards con­firmed yes­ter­day that the fam­i­ly had agreed to a re­quest from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for the state fu­ner­al.

Richards, who served as the coun­try’s fourth pres­i­dent from 2003 to 2013, was ad­mit­ted to West­Shore Med­ical Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal some­time af­ter mid­day on Mon­day and died just be­fore 8 pm that night. As a mark of re­spect flags were flown at half mast across the coun­try and at diplo­mat­ic mis­sions abroad yes­ter­day.

In the many trib­utes that have been pour­ing in, Richards is re­mem­bered as “a true pa­tri­ot,” “a man of ex­em­plary hu­mil­i­ty,” “the quin­tes­sen­tial Caribbean man,” ass well as a man who con­nect­ed with the peo­ple.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th

Row­ley de­scribed Richards as a true pa­tri­ot, who had served with class and dis­tinc­tion “even as he re­mained ground­ed in his love for all things Trinidad and To­ba­go,

es­pe­cial­ly Car­ni­val and so­ca mu­sic.”

“One would be hard-pressed to ever be part of or to over­hear a con­ver­sa­tion where the name Max Richards is men­tioned and not hear the ad­mi­ra­tion that peo­ple had for his love of cul­ture and his down to earth na­ture,” Row­ley said.

Richards’ col­league and friend at the St Au­gus­tine

Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI),

Dr Brins­ley Sama­roo, said the late pres­i­dent’s ma­jor achieve­ment was his hu­mil­i­ty.

“He was al­ways an ex­treme­ly hum­ble per­son and nev­er stood on of­fice. I would use a phrase ex­em­plary hu­mil­i­ty to de­scribe him.”

Sama­roo said al­though Richards held high of­fice what

dis­tin­guished him was his im­par­tial­i­ty and hon­esty.

“He al­ways un­der­stood the im­por­tant role that he had and there­fore nev­er in­dulged in any kind of be­hav­iour that de­meaned the of­fice,” he said.

Sama­roo said Richards was one of the very first gen­er­a­tion of lo­cals to take over from the main­ly Eu­ro­pean peo­ple who had been run­ning the UWI, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing.

“He did very well as Dean of the Fac­ul­ty and it was be­cause of his dis­tin­guished per­for­mance as Dean that he was se­lect­ed for the high­er

po­si­tion of Prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty,” he said.

He al­so point­ed out that Richards was the on­ly T&T

Pres­i­dent who was not a lawyer and did not have le­gal

train­ing.

“He did very well, I would say bet­ter than some of those who had le­gal train­ing and the rea­son for that is that he was al­ways pre­pared to ac­cept ad­vice when he need­ed ad­vice, so he nev­er made a le­gal blun­der dur­ing his term as Pres­i­dent in ap­point­ments and so on,” he said.

He de­scribed Richards’ pres­i­den­cy as a very in­ter­est­ing pe­ri­od.

“He brought his ex­pe­ri­ence from the uni­ver­si­ty in­to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent,” he said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mem­bered the late Pres­i­dent as an

“ho­n­ourable, pa­tri­ot­ic and no­ble” man who had served the coun­try with dis­tinc­tion She said dur­ing her term as Prime Min­is­ter she val­ued his sound ad­vice.

“I re­call his wit and wis­dom

dur­ing our con­sul­ta­tions,” she added

Al­though they may had

dif­fer­ing views at times,

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Richards was al­ways will­ing to lis­ten. She said she hopes his life will “serve to in­spire our young peo­ple to as­pire to great­ness.”

For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day said he knew Richards at

uni­ver­si­ty and he “was very charm­ing, kind, cour­te­ous and tried to

do his best, but the sys­tem does not per­mit a Pres­i­dent re­al­ly to do any­thing to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life of the peo­ple of the coun­try.”

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal de­scribed Richards as “the quin­tes­sen­tial Caribbean man” and said his death leaves a huge void.

Mooni­lal said the fact that Richards served as head of state for a decade is tes­ta­ment to the “enor­mous val­ue he brought to the Pres­i­den­cy and the es­teem in which he was held by the

na­tion. He sym­bol­ised sta­bil­i­ty and strength, grace and charm.”

Po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Ralph Maraj re­mem­bered Richards as a man “who at­tempt­ed to bring the Pres­i­den­cy to the peo­ple.”

“He iden­ti­fied with the lo­cal

Car­ni­val. He was ac­cept­ed as Max, which was a term of en­dear­ment.

He brought the pres­i­den­cy on the street be­ing in the bands and

play­ing mas,” he said.

In a state­ment, the T&T Chap­ter of Dis­abled Peo­ples In­ter­na­tion­al said Richards was a man who had “sen­si­tive and car­ing con­cerns

for the needs of per­sons with

dis­abil­i­ties and showed a keen

in­ter­est in their af­fairs.”

Richards en­ter­tained mem­bers

of the or­gan­i­sa­tion at an an­nu­al Christ­mas din­ner at Pres­i­dent’s House, the group said.