Wes­ley Gib­bings

Meet 97-year-old Vi­vian Lon­don Par­ris. Some­times he would ex­tend his left hand to greet you or to say good­bye. Icon­ic Ethiopi­an leader Haile Se­lassie taught him that move dur­ing the late em­per­or's vis­it to T&T in 1966. "The left arm is clos­er to your heart," Par­ris re­calls be­ing told by the "hum­ble," phys­i­cal­ly diminu­tive African leader.

Dur­ing that vis­it, Par­ris re­mem­bers head­ing back to the old Pi­ar­co air­port ter­mi­nal to re­trieve Se­lassie's fa­mous pet dog, Lu­lu, a chi­huahua. "No, she didn't want to bite me," Par­ris says of the dog known among palace aides in Ethiopia for sniff­ing out Se­lassie's en­e­mies.

The Se­lassie trip, the very year Par­ris came in­to close quar­ters with Queen Eliz­a­beth II dur­ing her vis­it to the coun­try, was among the high­lights of a long ca­reer as chauf­feur to gov­er­nors, gov­er­nors-gen­er­al and pres­i­dents span­ning the tenure of the last British colo­nial gov­er­nor Sir Ed­ward Betham Beetham be­tween 1955 and 1960 to the term of Noor Has­sanali who served as pres­i­dent be­tween 1987 and 1997.

So, where was he on Au­gust 31, 1962, when the T&T flag was flown for the first time? "I was right there," he replies proud­ly. As Ho­choy's dri­ver, he stood in po­lice cer­e­mo­ni­al uni­form not far from the plat­form where the Princess Roy­al, the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al and first Prime Min­is­ter Er­ic Williams wit­nessed the low­er­ing of the Union Jack and the rais­ing of the red, white and black.

"It was a great day," he says. "But when you look at to­day, it still didn't work."

For Beetham, the work of of­fi­cial dri­ver was all busi­ness with few per­son­al ex­changes and a pre­dictable work rou­tine, says Par­ris. But the late Sir El­lis Clarke, who suc­ceed­ed Sir Solomon Ho­choy as Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al in 1972, was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. "He liked to dance a lot," Par­ris told T&T Guardian. "Make sure you write that."

Dri­ving Sir El­lis around brought a dra­mat­ic change of rou­tine for Par­ris, fol­low­ing his years as dri­ver to Beetham and Ho­choy. Beetham was all busi­ness, the Ho­choy term meant many week­end dri­ves to Blan­chisseuse to the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al's pri­vate sea­side res­i­dence, but with Sir El­lis, the days were sim­ply longer be­cause, as he put it, the coun­try's first pres­i­dent loved to "so­cialise."

One Sun­day morn­ing, en route to church, Par­ris re­mem­bers Sir El­lis cov­er­ing his eyes as they en­coun­tered a naked, home­less man on the streets of Port-of-Spain. There was cor­re­spond­ing si­lence in the car.Not the same with Has­sanali, who did not use al­co­hol and "used to crack jokes" and whose wife, Za­lay­har, "used to or­gan­ise every­thing."

He re­calls the ner­vous­ness that fol­lowed what is wide­ly re­gard­ed as an at­tempt on the life of the pres­i­dent's wife in 1989. Par­ris was not the dri­ver of the car, but be­came a part of the ac­tion a year lat­er when the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen staged its Ju­ly 27, 1990 at­tempt­ed coup d'�tat.With Has­sanali out of the coun­try, Par­ris was charged with hus­tling act­ing pres­i­dent Em­manuel Carter and his wife, Bar­bara, out of their Diego Mar­tin home and head straight to the army base in Ch­aguara­mas. "Mr Carter was a true gen­tle­man," Par­ris re­calls.

On a few oc­ca­sions, he drove late Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams back to his of­fi­cial res­i­dence fol­low­ing vis­its to the pres­i­dent's house. He re­mem­bers putting on Jo­hann Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz on the gramo­phone at the re­quest of the coun­try's first prime min­is­ter.

One of his favourite peo­ple was the late Brigadier Gen­er­al Jof­fre Ser­rette, who served as aide-de-camp to the gov­er­nor-gen­er­al be­fore mov­ing on to fa­mous­ly lead ne­go­ti­a­tions with a group of muti­nous sol­diers and re­turn as head of the army in 1970 af­ter be­ing con­tro­ver­sial­ly re­lieved of his com­mand in 1968. It was Ser­rette who "taught me to shoot" and whose reg­i­men­tal but­tons Par­ris shined.

To­day, with decades in the com­pa­ny of roy­al­ty and high of­fice be­hind him, Par­ris has not lost the com­mon touch. At his son, Wayne's Mt D'or home, he laments the poor state of na­tion­al pol­i­tics and ad­vo­cates a sim­ple lifestyle free of to­bac­co, the oc­ca­sion­al drink and home-grown veg­eta­bles.Mind­ful of his pledge of many years that "what­ev­er hap­pens on the job, stays on the job," there are no sala­cious rev­e­la­tions from Par­ris, though he does oc­ca­sion­al­ly of­fer a naughty smile in the midst of a dis­tant mem­o­ry.

Born on June 20, 1918, while the world was at war, Vi­vian Lon­don Par­ris, has seen his share of na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al tur­moil but now shares hap­py times with his fam­i­ly when he is not at the home for the aged at Mt St Bene­dict. Last year, he trav­elled on his own to Lon­don to vis­it his daugh­ter, Li­ma, who runs a pri­vate school in the UK. She is one of six chil­dren to Vi­vian and his wife Sybil, a for­mer ho­tel work­er, who now lives in Pe­tit Bourg.

He of­fers a left hand as the in­ter­view ends. "That's the side where the heart is," he re­minds every­one.