Goodbye to a patriot; farewell to a man who passed through this life providing his fellow citizens with exemplary citizenship which can be followed through the ages to come: Sir Ellis Emmanuel Innocent Clarke, of him it could be truly said that he walked with kings and queens but never forgot his humble roots growing up in the urban village of Belmont. Very early in his life, young Ellis Clarke made connection with the religion of his family and remained a follower of Roman Catholicism throughout his life, never forgoing the requirement of the faith to fellowship with like believers. Sir Ellis also showed himself to be completely human and Trinidadian/Tobagonian to the core, never forgoing an oppor- tunity to share in the joys of life, the social and sporting events and very human interactions with his friends and with the ordinary people he met in his life's journey. His close personal friends always tell about Sir Ellis being someone who would tell a joke, take a joke and share in a good lime. One of them said recently, "What you saw with Sir Ellis is what you got"-a quintessential Trini demonstrating to all of us that we can be the highest of achievers without eliminating that essential part of us inculcated as part of what it is to be a national and a West Indian.
During his life, Sir Ellis told the story of his school days at St Mary's College, the camaraderie he shared with his friends and their diligence in the academic work put before them and his own efforts and good fortune in winning the island scholarship in maths. It is clear that through the scholarship he was destined to return to serve the emerging nation, having decided to study law with an emphasis on constitutional law. It has become almost clichéd to state that Sir Ellis was the major shaper of the Independence Constitution, thereby setting down the institutional, legal configuration of the state of Trinidad and Tobago; the fact though is that he did. Almost 50 years after independence, we in this generation may take the institution of the State as an automatic and expected creation after colonial rule. But on reflection it has been quite an achievement, not merely for T&T, but for the rest of the former British colonial Caribbean, only Jamaica having gained independence before T&T. What Sir Ellis did was to fashion the outlines of an independent nation pursuing an assent to nationhood amongst the nations of the world.
Rather than have our Constitution drafted from Britain by the colonial masters, Sir Ellis' job was to demonstrate to the world that constitution drafting was not the preserve of foreigners but that we had the responsibility and capability to do it our- selves. With being named among the nations of the world, Sir Ellis also had the responsibility to fashion from nothing the diplomatic profile of the country in world fora such as the United Nations. There, his responsibility was to make this newly emerging nation known to the world as an independent state and not as a colonial appendage of Britain. In 1981 when the polity had to transition from the political leadership of first Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams, walking a road we had never known before, Sir Ellis' guiding hand and mind were there to see us through that tricky period which, if handled badly, could have gone all wrong. If Dr Williams is the political Father of the Nation, Sir Ellis Clarke is the father of the legal, institutional state of T&T. We are assured that today he will be with his Father in Heaven. Goodbye most trusted servant of the State.