By Andre Bagoo Tuesday, September 1 2009

click on pic to zoom in

Jizelle's top award: Boxing promoter Buxo Potts, left, and Curtis Joseph, father of late boxing star Jizelle Salandy, display the Order of the Republi...

« prev photo next photo »

CURTIS JOSEPH, 60, the father of the late boxing great Jizelle Salandy, yesterday called on Trinidad and Tobago to honour its heroes while they are still alive as he accepted the Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago on his daughter’s behalf.

Speaking with reporters at President’s House, St Ann’s minutes before he accepted the award from President George Maxwell Richards, Joseph said the honour represented an achievement for the sport of boxing in general.

“I feel for once we have been able to gain the respect of those who were supposed to have appreciated us,” Joseph said. “This is a movement in the right direction even thought it might be considered in some circles too late. Jizelle is already dead. But we look forward to the future.”

“We are hoping that this award would be the beginning of things to come where people would be more appreciated while they are alive,” Joseph said. On Jizelle, he said, “she would have urged youths today to work, don’t leave God out of their lives and always strive to do the best.”

He said he hoped to donate the award to an institution that works with youths.

Also receiving an award yesterday was pan legend, Len “Boogsie” Sharpe. He received a Humming Bird gold medal. In 1987, he had received Chaconia silver.

“I am very thankful for this,” he said. He, however, noted that he was not satisfied with the status of pan in the country. “Pan is dead right now. Pan is a business and we need businessmen to run a pan organisation.”

With Pan Trinbago president Patrick Arnold at his side, he said to Arnold, “I really think from my heart that you and your crew should step down. Get (different) people to run this organisation. I think Mr Arnold had 12 years.”

Last year, the Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago went to panmen Bertram “Bertie” Lloyd Marshall, Anthony Williams and Professor Brian Copeland. At the time, the award was criticised by some for overlooking Sharpe. However yesterday he said he felt no slight as being awarded Humming Bird gold.

Also receiving an award yesterday was veteran journalist Keith Smith, who received the Humming Bird silver medal. He urged aspiring journalists to view the field as a vocation devoted to the pursuit of justice.

“You have to have a passion for justice, a hunger to see that everybody gets as fair a deal as possible, you have to empathise with the weak and you have to be on the side of people who don’t have a voice,” he said. Lennox Flores, of the Flores Family parang group received the Humming Bird silver medal on his family’s behalf.

“I wasn’t expecting it, it came like a thief in the night,” he said. “I am accepting this for my family from the 1920s right back to now and also God.”

Fashion designer Heather Jones, who received the Chaconia gold, said her award was on behalf of the entire fashion industry.