Alvin Corneal

In the midst of a painstak­ing de­feat suf­fered by the West In­dies, I fig­ured that the thought of our crick­et team be­ing elim­i­nat­ed from the ICC Cham­pi­onships, need­ed time to re­cov­er from the dis­ap­point­ment.But the tele­phone calls made to me by Sed­ley Joseph and Char­la Dore in quick suc­ces­sion, brought the shock­ing news of the pass­ing of my long-time friend and out­stand­ing sports­man Ger­ry "Jetro" Gellineau and pro­vid­ed me with a se­vere mo­ment of sad­ness, es­pe­cial­ly as he had promised to call me when he re­turned to Trinidad the next time around.He re­turned home and be­fore he could make his usu­al round of tele­phone calls, amidst of his broth­ers and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, plus his neigh­bours from near his home in Bel­mont, Jetro sud­den­ly fell ill and with­in a short time, he qui­et­ly de­part­ed this life in the pres­ence of his loved ones.

It is al­ways too dif­fi­cult to de­scribe some­one whose com­mit­ment to life through his gen­uine friend­ship, his love for sport as a par­tic­i­pant and an en­thu­si­ast par ex­cel­lence, did not al­low us all to of­fer part­ing words of farewell.The for­mer na­tion­al hock­ey play­ers of the late six­ties were best able to ap­pre­ci­ate the ex­cel­lent con­tri­bu­tion he made on the hock­ey fields, es­pe­cial­ly when the team won the sil­ver medal at the Pan-Amer­i­can games in Win­nipeg in 1967.His ver­sa­til­i­ty took him through the cor­ri­dors of the Malvern Sports Club as a com­pe­tent foot­baller whose abil­i­ty to score goals with his head could on­ly have been com­pared with his broth­er Jef­frey, who had the dis­tinc­tion of scor­ing the first World Cup goal for Trinidad and To­ba­go against Suri­name.He brought the Rovers Foot­ball Club to the Pro­gres­sive Youth Move­ment Foot­ball League and to­geth­er with his broth­ers and close friends, they rev­elled in the in­tense com­pe­ti­tion and oc­ca­sion­al suc­cess which his team ex­pe­ri­enced.Yes, I re­spect­ed him as a com­pet­i­tive sports­man, es­pe­cial­ly as the love for sport brought us to each oth­er as very close fam­i­ly friends.

His kind­ness to all those who were in con­tact with him, must have found the joy and ca­ma­raderie that he shared, his fun-lov­ing be­hav­iour at times when the oc­ca­sion war­rant­ed it.Silent­ly, I threw my mind back through mem­o­ry lane when both Ger­ry and I lived in the Unit­ed States where our fam­i­lies shared some valu­able time bring­ing hap­pi­ness to many of our con­tem­po­raries, in­clud­ing his team-mate at Malvern Kelvin Be­ras­sa, and the nu­mer­ous new friends we had made in At­lanta, Geor­gia.My chil­dren had be­come very fond of him and saw in him the val­ues which may well have im­pact­ed pos­i­tive­ly up­on their ap­proach to life.The task of com­ing to terms with your sud­den pass­ing, Jetro, could on­ly be calmed by the prayers which my fam­i­ly and I will con­tribute to your pas­sage to the great be­yond.I am cer­tain that I speak for the en­tire sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty and al­so your close friends when I of­fer our sin­cer­est con­do­lences to every mem­ber of your fam­i­ly. Your life has en­riched many and we are thank­ful for your friend­ship through­out the years.May you rest in peace, my broth­er.