Michelle Loubon

Of­fer­ing a stir­ring ren­di­tion of Frank Sina­tra's My Way, Win­ston Pe­ters, Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, paid trib­ute to his de­part­ed friend/T&T cul­ture af­fi­ciona­do Rolph Warn­er. While Pe­ters crooned I Did It My Way, Warn­er's sib­lings Eu­stace "Spock­ette" and Loa­ma Warn­er hugged each oth­er. Oc­ca­sion was a send-off which was well at­tend­ed by a cross-sec­tion of mourn­ers from all walks of life in­clud­ing the cul­tur­al, artis­tic and en­ter­tain­ment fra­ter­ni­ties at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Tu­na­puna, yes­ter­day. Pe­ters said: "I am all shat­tered. This is my friend. I have lost a friend. I have lost a ded­i­cat­ed per­son.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go has lost a per­son who is not a per­former or any­thing; but he played an im­por­tant role in the lives of so many per­form­ers. Rolph was a self­less man. He did not care about ma­te­r­i­al things. He self­less­ly gave to every­body else." Apart from Pe­ters, trib­utes came from Warn­er's chil­dren, Tremaine So­ca Warn­er and his sons Rolph II and Roa­main. Each speak­er paint­ed a por­trait of a man who as­sumed the mul­ti­ple roles of fa­ther, friend, men­tor, ad­vis­er, ac­tivist, pho­to­jour­nal­ist to the hilt. Rolph II ex­pressed a pro­found sense of pride at his fa­ther's con­tri­bu­tion: "For the last few days, I have been hear­ing him called an icon. A word that has blown in. Rolph Warn­er was an icon. Bob Mar­ley was an icon. I give God thanks for bless­ing me with a fa­ther who was an icon."

Iron­i­cal­ly, a trib­ute was paid to Pe­ters by Warn­er's rel­a­tives. While dis­solv­ing in tears, Warn­er's broth­er thanked Pe­ters for recog­nis­ing the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­ual and hir­ing him as an ad­vis­er to the min­istry. Rolph II told Pe­ters: "Thanks for or­ches­trat­ing... help­ing my fa­ther to recog­nise his ul­ti­mate dream." Trib­utes came from Sonya Le Maitre, Can­dace Al­can­tara, Pas­tor Theophilus Roberts, Melis­sa Lewis, Imam Baksh and Ru­el Warn­er. Play­ing his har­mo­ni­um, Nat­tie Pierre played Give Thanks to the Lord. Singing San­dra ren­dered the clas­sic Pover­ty Is Hell. Singing Mem­o­ries, Su­perblue presided as the mourn­ers came to­geth­er in song, hug­ging, tak­ing pho­tographs cry­ing and shar­ing mem­o­ries of the doyen whom play­wright John Bolt would have la­belled "a man-for-all sea­sons."