The life of Lynette “Granny” Luces was cel­e­brat­ed on Thurs­day at the fu­ner­al ser­vice of T&T’s beloved run­ning icon at the Mt D’Or Sev­enth Ad­ven­tist Church.

Granny Luces as she was lov­ing­ly known passed away on Feb­ru­ary 18 at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. She was 93.

For­mer T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Marathon cham­pi­on Cur­tis Cox spoke glow­ing­ly about Granny Luces, de­scrib­ing her as “a fe­male Go­liath” and “an icon.”

He was quite emo­tion­al, break­ing down sev­er­al times dur­ing his ad­dress as he shared his fond mem­o­ries of Luces, who made her marathon de­but in 1984 in her mid-fifties.

Cox said: “I was main­ly fo­cused on one per­son: Granny, the icon, and I was the debu­tant. It was an out and back course so af­ter pass­ing Crown Point, I was look­ing for, you know who, to see how much dis­tance I had on her. I placed 23rd but the crowd was just wait­ing for one per­son: Granny, al­ways the show-stop­per and the cen­tre of at­ten­tion.”

Luces, who re­ceived the Hum­ming­bird Medal Gold in 2013, was eu­lo­gised by her grand­daugh­ter Ab­binah Do­na­tien and great-grand­daugh­ter Ashakie Ha­gley, shar­ing her love for run­ning from an ear­ly age and paid trib­ute to Luces’ life.

Close by on dis­play were sev­er­al pho­tos, plaques and news­pa­per clip­pings cap­tur­ing some of Granny Luces mem­o­rable mo­ments dur­ing her run­ning ca­reer.

Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe and Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly were al­so present to pay their re­spects to the run­ning leg­end.

In a Face­book post, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter de­scribed Granny Luces: “She was an avid road run­ner, I was ho­n­oured to be in­vit­ed to at­tend the fu­ner­al ser­vice of the in­de­fati­ga­ble Lynette “Granny” Luces. She was a su­per­hero in the run­ning fra­ter­ni­ty and an in­spi­ra­tion to all women who dream of beat­ing the odds, test­ing bound­aries, and high­light­ing the strength, courage, en­durance and dis­ci­pline of a True War­rior and Un­con­quer­able Woman.”