The Women Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans of Trinidad and To­ba­go (WPTT) are among the most re­cent to pay trib­ute to their late col­league, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for D'Abadie/O'Meara, Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, who died on Mon­day in a house fire, along with two of her chil­dren.

Even as they ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the late MP’s fam­i­ly, the WPTT shared the pow­er­ful lega­cy she has left be­hind as a pub­lic fig­ure, de­scrib­ing her as “a true pa­tri­ot and com­mu­ni­ty builder.”

“As the Coun­cil­lor for Ari­ma Cen­tral, she was a dy­nam­ic force, dili­gent­ly serv­ing her burgess­es as Deputy May­or and even­tu­al­ly May­or of Ari­ma,” the WPTT state­ment said, not­ing that Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian was elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Au­gust 2020 fol­low­ing “an il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer in lo­cal gov­ern­ment at the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.”

“MP Mor­ris-Ju­lian’s ded­i­ca­tion was al­so a char­ac­ter­is­tic of her tenure in the Par­lia­ment,” the WPTT’s state­ment ob­served. “Her com­pas­sion and fierce ad­vo­ca­cy on be­half of her con­stituents nev­er wa­vered and she main­tained open lines of di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic in or­der to prompt­ly re­spond to con­cerns.”

It con­tin­ued: “Al­ways an ad­vo­cate, she used her rep­re­sen­ta­tive voice to stead­fast­ly ad­vance the in­clu­sion of the First Peo­ples in pol­i­cy­mak­ing.”

The Women Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans al­so high­light­ed the late MP’s lega­cy in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

“Her ex­pe­ri­ence as a Sec­ondary School teacher al­so in­formed her role as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion where her com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing the lives of chil­dren was un­de­ni­able,” their re­lease stat­ed.

“She was al­so com­mit­ted to men­tor­ing the next gen­er­a­tion and en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly vol­un­teered her time and tal­ent with our youth when­ev­er called up­on to do so. She re­cent­ly de­liv­ered the open­ing re­marks at the Na­tion­al Youth Par­lia­ment,” they re­called, “and al­so rep­re­sent­ed WPTT at the in­au­gur­al Re­gion­al Edi­tion of the Course for Women Elec­toral Can­di­dates.”

“A gift­ed sto­ry­teller, she de­light­ed in shar­ing her ex­pe­ri­ences and pro­vid­ing in­sights and strate­gies in­spired by her own po­lit­i­cal suc­cess­es and the chal­lenges she over­came to achieve them,” the re­lease re­vealed.

The Women Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in­ti­mat­ed that Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian’s fam­i­ly, and by ex­ten­sion Trinidad and To­ba­go, were tru­ly blessed to have had her.

“Cer­tain­ly, this lov­ing com­mit­ment was most in­ti­mate­ly ex­pe­ri­enced by her fam­i­ly and chil­dren, whom she cher­ished and cel­e­brat­ed above all else. Tru­ly, MP Mor­ris-Ju­lian’s un­wa­ver­ing de­vo­tion to her fam­i­ly fu­elled her res­olute ded­i­ca­tion to pub­lic ser­vice and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” their re­lease said.

It added: “We lift up MP Mor­ris-Ju­lian’s fam­i­ly and her loved ones in prayer and sol­i­dar­i­ty as they be­gin to nav­i­gate this heart­break­ing loss.  May the souls of MP Mor­ris-Ju­lian and her chil­dren, de­part­ed from this world too soon, find peace and rest.”