RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A street in San Fer­nan­do will soon be re­named af­ter steel­pan arranger and ex­tra­or­di­naire pan­nist Ken “Pro­fes­sor” Philmore, three months af­ter he died in an ac­ci­dent in south Trinidad.

This was re­vealed by San Fer­nan­do may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo dur­ing the cor­po­ra­tion’s month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing held at City Hall yes­ter­day.

Re­grel­lo said oth­er street names will be changed to ho­n­our the leg­ends of the city.

Re­grel­lo said Bertrand Street will be re­named the Rod­ney Wilkes Street in ho­n­our of the T&T’s first medal­ist who won the gold medal at the 1946 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games in Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia.

Wilkes, who was known as the Mighty Midget, trained in weightlift­ing us­ing flour bags to build his strength.

Since 2011, res­i­dent Patrick Lau­rence called for a street to be named in ho­n­our of Wilkes. Lau­rence said Wilkes was 23 years old when he won the sil­ver Olympic medal with­out the ben­e­fit of in­ter­na­tion­al train­ing.

Mean­while, Re­grel­lo al­so an­nounced that Quen­ca Street will be re­named the Dr Ru­pert In­dar Snr Street.

In­dar, who opened the first med­ical cen­tre in the city in 1970, is 92 years old. He al­so opened the first On­col­o­gy Cen­tre in the coun­try.

Re­grel­lo fur­ther said that T&T’s first Olympic cham­pi­on and the first Olympic 100m cham­pi­on from a Caribbean coun­try Hase­ly Craw­ford will al­so be ho­n­oured as In­de­pen­dence Av­enue will be re­named af­ter him.

Philmore, 58, died in Sep­tem­ber, six days af­ter his Toy­ota Hilux skid­ded along the north­bound car­riage­way of the Solomon Ho­choy high­way and flipped sev­er­al times. He suf­fered se­vere in­ter­nal in­juries in the crash which oc­curred on the Re­pub­lic Day hol­i­day. Fol­low­ing his death, Re­grel­lo, a per­son­al friend, said a fit­ting trib­ute will be giv­en to Philmore.

Dur­ing a meet­ing in De­cem­ber, the San Fer­nan­do City Coun­cil con­firmed the re­nam­ing of the stretch from Par­adise Street to Li­brary Cor­ner as Lennox “Bob­by” Mo­hammed Street; In­de­pen­dence Av­enue in a west­er­ly di­rec­tion to Hat­ters pa­n­yard as Steve Achai­ba Street; Low­er High Street in an east­er­ly di­rec­tion to Quen­ca Street ad­ja­cent to Re­pub­lic Bank as Robert Mon­tano Street; Cros­by Lane to JD Guides Lane; and Cof­fee Street, in a souther­ly di­rec­tion to Me­dine Street, as Bel­groves Lane. See Page A9