Sascha Wil­son

The Mighty Spar­row, Slinger Fran­cis­co, is to re­ceive the high­est na­tion­al award, the Or­der of T&T, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day.Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the an­nounce­ment at the an­nu­al Siparia Women's As­so­ci­a­tion's Kid­dies Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions at Bhups­ingh Park, Pe­nal. The State will al­so cov­er the med­ical ex­pens­es Spar­row in­curred dur­ing his re­cent ill­ness in the Unit­ed States, she said. Last Sep­tem­ber Spar­row suf­fered a stroke and spent three months in a New York hos­pi­tal.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so pre­sent­ed vet­er­an mas­man Pe­ter Min­shall with the deed for the gov­ern­ment house in Fed­er­a­tion Park where he has resided for many years.Both men were on hand as the PM un­veiled Gov­ern­ment's plan to re­ward them for their con­tri­bu­tion to cul­ture in T&T.She hailed them as two of the great­est icons in T&T and paid trib­ute to them for their con­tri­bu­tion in their re­spec­tive spheres.

Say­ing she could not leave the coun­try to­day with­out pay­ing trib­ute to both men, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said their work had been recog­nised na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly."As Prime Min­is­ter of our land, I am very pleased to an­nounce to­day in your very dis­tin­guished pres­ence that I have ad­vised his Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent, Mr Jus­tice An­tho­ny Car­mona, to con­fer on you, Dr Slinger Fran­cis­co, the Mighty Spar­row, the pres­ti­gious Or­der of T&T, the high­est recog­ni­tion and ho­n­our which can be award­ed to any cit­i­zen,"she told Spar­row.

An­nounc­ing the Gov­ern­ment had agreed to pay his med­ical ex­pens­es, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said by the grace of God he had suc­cess­ful­ly re­cov­ered from his ail­ment."In the im­mor­tal words of your ca­lyp­soes and the unique style of your show­man­ship, you have en­ter­tained our sens­es and chal­lenged our sen­si­bil­i­ties.

"Your words have in­spired, re­flect­ed, caused se­ri­ous in­tro­spec­tion and at times have just pro­vid­ed sheer mu­si­cal and lyri­cal de­light," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, adding: "Sir, you are lit­er­al­ly one of a kind, em­u­lat­ed but nev­er im­i­tat­ed."In true Spar­row style, the Birdie said it was with great pride and plea­sure that he ac­cept­ed the ho­n­our."I want to thank the peo­ple for their love and kind­ness and I on­ly hope I will be around to give you more and more," he said.

Asked af­ter­wards the cost of Spar­row's med­ical ex­pens­es, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she did not have a fi­nal fig­ure but once the bills were pre­sent­ed the State would pay them.Hail­ing Min­shall as one of the great­est mas­men of all time, she said the deed pre­sent­ed to him was in keep­ing with grants giv­en to oth­er note­wor­thy cit­i­zens.In ac­cept­ing the grant, Min­shall thanked the peo­ple of T&T for "putting a roof over my head."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is ex­pect­ed to leave for Chi­na to­day on state busi­ness, said she was hop­ing to be back in time for Car­ni­val.In a-capel­la style, Fran­cis­co then had the au­di­ence groov­ing to pop­u­lar hits. such as Con­go Man, Ed­u­ca­tion and Dan is the Man.Speak­ing about the ho­n­our af­ter­wards, Spar­row said: "I feel very good about the Prime Min­is­ter's ges­tures. I think I could on­ly show my ap­pre­ci­a­tion by com­pos­ing and singing a nice song about na­tion­al awards.

Some­thing like this en­ables the pub­lic to see that if gov­ern­ment gives more jobs to peo­ple it helps cit­i­zens to help them­selves." He said he had al­so re­ceived sev­er­al calls from pro­mot­ers seek­ing to book him for per­for­mances.Can­boulay Pro­duc­tions or­gan­ised a five-part lec­ture se­ries to raise funds to help off­set Spar­row's med­ical costs be­fore yes­ter­day's an­nounce­ment by the PM.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd has part­nered with the or­gan­i­sa­tion in the dri­ve, which was hop­ing to raise $100,000, and pro­duced a col­lec­tor's mag­a­zine, ti­tled a Trib­ute to the Mighty Spar­row, to ho­n­our the ca­lyp­son­ian for his con­tri­bu­tion to ca­lyp­so.The fi­nal lec­ture in the se­ries is sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 26 at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um, UWI, St Au­gus­tine, from 7 pm.