Sascha?Wil­son

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley paid glow­ing trib­ute to for­mer diplo­mat and sen­a­tor Win­ston Steve Moore at his fu­ner­al ser­vice in San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day.

Row­ley was among hun­dreds of mourn­ers from all walks of life, in­clud­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and his wife, Hazel, who at­tend­ed the cer­e­mo­ny held at the Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help Ro­man Catholic Church.

Row­ley thanked Moore, 76, for his con­tri­bu­tion to the PNM par­ty and the na­tion, say­ing that he made pub­lic ser­vice his life.

Re­call­ing a crit­i­cal role Moore played in his life when the PNM lost its first gen­er­al elec­tions in 1986, Row­ley said he was one of five young peo­ple ap­point­ed as op­po­si­tion mem­bers. Moore was the sixth op­po­si­tion mem­ber.

Row­ley said while they were be­ing ad­vised that tremen­dous de­feat would be the end­ing of the PNM par­ty, even if they were in­clined to be­lieve that, it was Moore with his deep knowl­edge and abid­ing con­fi­dence in the or­gan­i­sa­tion who gave them con­fi­dence to re­alise that that de­feat was sim­ply a step along the way.

"But, his po­si­tion of hav­ing the tremen­dous be­lief in pub­lic ser­vice caused us not be bro­ken by de­feat," he said, adding that he pro­vid­ed them with the en­cour­age­ment which caused them to push for­ward.

"Steve Moore rep­re­sent­ed the best of cit­i­zen­ship of Trinidad and To­ba­go," said Row­ley who added that his con­tri­bu­tion was im­mea­sur­able.

His daugh­ter Nicole and son Gary eu­lo­gised him as a man for all sea­sons, who lived life to the fullest and shared an in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship with his faith.

In his prayer, Mon­sign­or Chris­t­ian Pereira lament­ed that too many peo­ple were dy­ing by vi­o­lence.

"Too many of us give in, suc­cumb, fall to the bul­let, to the ve­hic­u­lar reck­less­ness on our roads.

Many peo­ple suf­fer dai­ly a death which no one is en­ti­tled to in do­mes­tic abuse, many na­tions are en­gulfed in war, fam­i­lies are bur­dened and are flee­ing as refugees."

Man­ning did not speak at the fu­ner­al, but on his Face­book page he paid trib­ute to Moore who served as the am­bas­sador to Brazil un­der his stint.

Re­flect­ing on Moore's life, Man­ning cred­it­ed Moore's as­sis­tance in pro­pelling the San Fer­nan­do East Con­stituen­cy and even­tu­al­ly the PNM to na­tion­al promi­nence once again af­ter its crush­ing de­feat in 1986.

De­scrib­ing him as a lan­guage spe­cial­ist, Man­ning said Moore de­liv­ered ex­cel­lent speech­es.

Fol­low­ing the ser­vice, a pri­vate cre­ma­tion was held at Guide's Fu­ner­al Home in Cof­fee Street.