Michelle Loubon

Etched in the men­tal archives are the morn­ing as­sem­blies con­duct­ed by re­tired Ari­ma Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School prin­ci­pal, Jean Warn­er. She en­sured the Na­tion­al An­them and a slew of pa­tri­ot­ic songs were sung per­fect­ly. On Mon­day, a spe­cial as­sem­bly com­mem­o­rat­ing 50 years took place at the school com­pound-re­named Ari­ma Cen­tral Sec­ondary School (AC­SS). Its theme was Finest Na­tion Builders. The aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tion first opened its doors on May 9, 1961, at Marie Street, Ari­ma. On a glo­ri­ous Mon­day morn­ing, the as­sem­bly, which would re­main reg­is­tered in their minds was not con­duct­ed by Warn­er. In­stead, out­stand­ing AC­SS grad­u­ates took the stu­dents through the paces. Among the high­lights were mo­ti­va­tion­al words, the un­veil­ing of a time cap­sule and plant­i­ng of the Cha­co­nia-the na­tion's na­tion­al flower. Clad in their cream and brown uni­forms, stu­dents lined the court­yard or es­pied the as­sem­bly from the top floors. They were al­so ad­dressed by school prin­ci­pal, Dr Claudette Ali and act­ing vice prin­ci­pal, Nela Balkissoon.

Dr Ali paid ku­dos to the staff who had made Ari­ma Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary "the pre­mier in­sti­tu­tion aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in the North East­ern ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­trict." Ali said: "I hope un­der the new lead­er­ship the AC­SS will con­tin­ue to grow and im­pact pos­i­tive­ly up­on the glob­al so­ci­ety. It has reached a mile­stone-a half cen­tu­ry of ex­is­tence." Ali al­so gave an ex­ten­sive his­to­ry of the school. Balkissoon added: "AC­SS is cel­e­brat­ing 50 years of the finest na­tion-build­ing grad­u­ates. We have many grad­u­ates in for­eign coun­tries who have done ex­treme­ly well and are very proud to be grad­u­ates of this school. She added: "We have been hear­ing about our dis­tin­guished grad­u­ates but when we look around, the work­ing force of the na­tion com­pris­es many grad­u­ates as teach­ers like St Hill, Lal­man, Steele, Per­ry-Fran­cis and Lewis." Balkissoon chal­lenged the grad­u­ates to keep the his­toric event alive-by striv­ing to be the finest na­tion builders. She said: "We must keep the tra­di­tion alive. To do this you must have a change in at­ti­tude and be­hav­iour to re­alise your true po­ten­tial. Every­one has the ca­pac­i­ty to ex­cel. Let us con­tin­ue to make AC­SS the num­ber one school in east Trinidad."

50th an­niver­sary as­sem­bly

Con­duct­ing the 50th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions were past stu­dents Mary St Hill and Nor­bert Steele. Look­ing on at the pro­ceed­ings were teach­ers in­clud­ing Ram­lochan, John­son and Pe­ter Cae­sar. Past stu­dents like Trevor Bur­nett, Ann Marie Williams, a teacher at Tal­paro RC School, were al­so present.

Prayers were said by Ra­ka Lal­man, Shane Su­dama and Makala Ram­barack. Joseph Lewis pre­sent­ed awards to the dancers. Form Four stu­dents per­formed a mu­si­cal item World's Great­est. As the time cap­sule was pre­pared, past stu­dent Aman­da Williams sang. School archives, in­clud­ing a sup­ple­ment, were stuck in it. Past stu­dent, Ash­ton Forde, a for­mer may­or of Ari­ma, had pre­pared a news­pa­per sup­ple­ment. A lusty round of ap­plause fol­lowed. Af­ter the for­mal­i­ties, every­one moved to the front for the sym­bol­ic tree plant­i­ng cer­e­mo­ny. Dwarfed by the na­tion­al and school flags, past stu­dents Charles Wren and An­gela Pierre put the sapling in the earth.

In keep­ing with the theme finest na­tion builders, Chief of De­fence Force Roland Maun­dy, said: "I am proud to have at­tend­ed a good school. They have pro­duced fan­tas­tic stu­dents. We are proud of the stu­dents. We have some of the finest na­tion builders. There is no pres­tige school like the AC­SS."

He said if he was per­ceived as "rough and tough" blame it on Warn­er. Maraj, an ac­coun­tant by pro­fes­sion, added: "When I saw some of the faces I haven't seen over 38 years, I hugged and cried. You are in the num­ber 1 pres­tige school in this coun­try." Of­fer­ing a ker­nel of wis­dom, Maraj said: "A teacher al­ways likes a good stu­dent." For 20 years, Cae­sar taught Ac­counts at the in­sti­tu­tion. He said: "As you get old­er, you are get­ting bet­ter. Wher­ev­er I am in the world, I keep hear­ing good things about AC­SS. When I com­pare oth­er schools to Ari­ma, I see how we stand out. We stood our ground and rep­re­sent­ed the cream of Ari­ma. And, we are still do­ing it. We are the na­tion's finest builders."