Memories of T&T’s first President

By Lara Pickford-Gordon

snrwriter.camsel@catholictt.org

Sir Ellis Clarke loved his country. His legal acumen was given in service to the nation from the colonial period through to independence.

Born December 28, 1917, into a Catholic family, Clarke was the son of civil servants in the registrar and marshal department, Cecil Clarke and Elma Clarke, a teacher and music tutor.

He was born on the Feast of Holy Innocents and given the middle names  Emmanuel (‘God is with us’) and Innocent. Clarke attended the Christian Brothers RC School, later named Belmont Intermediate RC, where he excelled academically.

At 11 he was accepted to St Mary’s College, and in 1936 earned an Island Scholarship, which opened the door to further studies and a successful career in the legal profession.

Throughout his life, Clarke remained close to the Catholic Church, present at Masses, Church events and supporting a myriad of institutions of the Church and wider society.

One longtime parishioner of St Ann’s RC Church, where he worshipped for many years, shared fond memories of seeing the President celebrating the Eucharist in communion with other parishioners.

She did not wish to be publicly named but said she married at St Ann’s RC 50 years ago and saw President Clarke attending Mass at the church when he became President in 1976.

Clarke was a consistent presence at 8 a.m. Mass. He sat at the first pew on the row of pews on the left directly facing the altar. She and her husband sat with their son and daughter in the pew behind him. They tried to be present for Mass early to get a good vantage point so the children could see what was going on at the altar.

Her daughter, a talkative toddler, was about three years and did not always remain silent during the liturgy. “When we entered the pew behind him, my little daughter at the time was quite vocal, but in this stage whisper kind of thing, ‘Look, the President is here before us!’ and I would see his shoulders shaking. Then he would look around and say, ‘Good Morning.’ He was such a wonderful person, no airs about him, very humble.”

She thinks Clarke was amused by the things her daughter said. There was a period when she became fixated with getting a piece of the Host at Mass despite her mother explaining that she had to do First Communion. Having the Host like everyone else became a persistent appeal: “Why she couldn’t get communion, why everybody else was getting it…”

When her brother did First Communion and could also receive the Body of Christ, she became more vocal.

“I remember her once saying to me ‘I know why you wouldn’t bring it for me, I know why, it have pepper in it!’; Then one day she is asking ‘does it taste like a mint?’” The parishioner believes she got this idea from seeing her aunt with the big round Extra Strong peppermints.

She recounted her daughter always asked “silly questions” which would have been overheard by President Clarke such as: “‘mummy why the priest reading so long today?’ And I could see the President’s shoulder shaking, because of course he was amused by her little questions. I think it was Palm Sunday.”

There is one memory that stands out. “I was always praying that she would not say things that would be very embarrassing. So, there she is, and she is sitting quietly, one thing about her, she knew how to sit quietly, and then with her little stage whisper again, ‘Mummy, but why the President’s neck so rumple up?’ I nearly died. Because he cut his hair short in the back of his head and his neck was curvy…I was so embarrassed I could have sink through the floor. And he, now, all of a sudden, I saw his shoulder shaking with mirth, not making a sound. He was such a wonderful person and so very much caring of children and understood when they would make silly comments.”

She described Clarke as “very, very reverent all during the Mass. He would be focused on the altar. He would be focused on the priest, focused on the lectern. He loved children so during Sign of Peace he would turn around and shake hands with children and so on and whoever else was nearby”.

She added, “people tend to kind of give him his privacy, so even though there may be one or two in the pew on the left, they would be to the far side”. He was not approached and asked questions. Parishioners “would respectfully allow him to leave first and so on.” The parishioner remembered Clarke loved to sing during Mass.

The former President was a frequent visitor to the St Ann’s chapel for Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. Clarke died December 30, 2010, at the age of 93 years.

A Short Bio of Sir Ellis

Sir Ellis was a brilliant student at St Mary’s where he won an Island Scholarship and the Jemingham Gold Medal in 1936. From CIC he went to London University and was subsequently called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn. Back home in Trinidad, he engaged in private practice for just over 13 years during which time he built up a sterling reputation as a criminal and civil lawyer and a leading Junior counsel.

Later, he assumed a number of prominent positions in the country. From Solicitor General in 1956, he became Deputy Colonial Secretary in 1957 and Attorney General in 1958.

His meteoric rise continued with him being appointed Chief Justice designate in 1961, but he never took up this post. In the year before Trinidad attained Independence, he was the Constitutional Adviser to the Cabinet and in 1962 he was appointed as this country’s Ambassador to the United States and Permanent Representative at the United Nations. He served as Ambassador until January 1973 when he relinquished that post to become Governor General.

Sir Ellis served as Governor General until 1976 when Trinidad and Tobago became a Republic and he was made this country’s first President. Sir Ellis has the unique honour of having been knighted on three separate occasions by the Queen of England.

He received this country’s highest honour, the Trinity Cross, in 1969. He has played a prominent role in shaping the legal framework of Trinidad and Tobago and is regarded as an expert on this country’s Constitution.

He demitted office as President in 1987. He was selected by the Past Students Union for induction into the St Mary’s College Hall of Fame.

-Adapted from St Mary’s College Alumni Foundation 

Ellis Clarke said….

A lifeboat metaphor

“We are not in an ocean liner. We are in a lifeboat, and the only one way we can get to shore is to cooperate, to pull together. And that is what Trinidad and Tobago is about.

Maybe if we were the Soviet Union or the United States we could afford the luxuries of bitterness and permanent antipathies of divisions of the sort. In our setting I think we must submerge all these things and try to understand that we do not and must not continue to be crabs in a barrel.  We must not try to achieve something by running the other person down and by inventing faults on their part and things of the kind. We must rise above that.”

Trinidad Guardian, May 15, 1987

Public perception of President

“If an emergency arose, then he becomes very visible. If nothing happened over a period of time, one wondered if they ever existed at all.”

Sunday Express, March 15, 1987

September 24 as Republic Day

“Because of the importance we attach to Parliament, because it is a meeting place of the duly elected representatives of the people, because we cherish the fact that our transition from Monarchy to Republic, like our transition from Colonialism to Independence was through peaceful, constitutional changes September the 24th was designated “Republic Day” and declared to be a public holiday.

By coupling in this manner our achievement of republican status with the constitutional responsibility of the representatives of the sovereign Will of our people we have sought to establish a firm and enduring foundation for the preservation of the rights and freedoms we so happily enjoy”.

Express, September 24, 1982