“I worked very hard you know. I worked re­al hard,” said new cen­te­nar­i­an Paul Valen­tine dur­ing a vis­it paid to him by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

Valen­tine, bet­ter known as “Did­dy” and fond­ly called “Pa­pa” by rel­a­tives, reached a sig­nif­i­cant life­time mile­stone, hav­ing turned 100 years old on Wednes­day, June 3.

The new cen­te­nar­i­an was born in Aripo and lived there ever since. “I used to vis­it St Lu­cia and Amer­i­ca and well you can’t go any­where now,” he said jok­ing­ly.

He has sev­en chil­dren, 30 grand­chil­dren and a num­ber of great-grand­chil­dren, some of which were there for the small “mask style” cel­e­bra­tion be­cause of COVID-19.

When asked about the se­cret to his long life, Valen­tine said, “Faith in God and hard work. They said hard work does kill peo­ple but that isn’t true at all. Hard work does give you a good ex­er­cise. When I done work, I would still go to work in my gar­den and work cut­lass­ing and plant­i­ng co­coa.”

Valen­tine re­count­ed oth­er fond mem­o­ries of work­ing with the US Forces dur­ing World War II and even con­tribut­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of the HDC’s Mal­oney Gar­dens Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment.

Valen­tine was pre­sent­ed with a plaque, a cer­tifi­cate of ho­n­our and achieve­ment and a ham­per, cour­tesy the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, pre­sent­ed by grand­son Ger­ald Mar­tinez, a se­nior data­base spe­cial­ist at the min­istry.

The pre­sen­ta­tion is one of the min­istry’s many ac­tiv­i­ties for old­er per­sons, on recog­ni­tion of their sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T.

Al­so there to cel­e­brate with him was his sis­ter-in-law, Ju­lia Valen­tine, who would be 102 in Ju­ly.