Sascha Wil­son

A pil­lar of strength and in­spi­ra­tion to many, a stal­wart in his com­mu­ni­ty, a hero to his fam­i­ly, a cham­pi­on for work­ers’ rights, an ed­u­ca­tor and a God-fear­ing man.

Den­nis Car­mona was all of this and much more.

De­liv­er­ing the eu­lo­gy at his fa­ther’s fu­ner­al ser­vice at the St Bene­dict’s RC Church in La Ro­main yes­ter­day, for­mer pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona de­scribed his fa­ther’s life and in­flu­ence as ex­cep­tion­al.

Car­mona re­called that his fa­ther toiled in oil­fields for over 39 years and al­ways stood up for his and oth­er work­ers’ rights.

“He had to fight for his space in the oil­field, where ex-pats ruled, some with great kind­ness and oth­ers with ruth­less ef­fi­cien­cy, con­de­scen­sion and a lack of com­pas­sion,” Car­mona said.

He re­called how his fa­ther, then an OW­TU mem­ber, staged a one-man protest af­ter he was by­passed for pro­mo­tion and this led to in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, as oth­er work­ers protest­ed against pro­mo­tion stag­na­tion and in­jus­tice.

Not­ing that his fa­ther was deeply root­ed in the Ro­man Catholic faith, he said, “My per­son­al suc­cess­es, to­geth­er with my broth­ers and sis­ters...they were ground­ed in my fa­ther’s res­olute jour­ney of knowl­edge and wis­dom and the sus­tain­ing pow­er of a God that loves us all, sup­port­ed by mom.”

Car­mona re­called that his fa­ther would in­vite his grand­chil­dren and chil­dren from the com­mu­ni­ty to his small li­brary, which be­came a “lit­tle book club” in the com­mu­ni­ty. Adding that his fa­ther’s life was pur­pose­ful vi­sion­ary and self­less, he said his fa­ther be­gan los­ing his eye­sight in the 1980s and even­tu­al­ly be­came blind.

“My dad and mom were in­sep­a­ra­ble, al­ways on some do­mes­tic home project and hard work. Age and his blind­ness cre­at­ed no bar­ri­ers to com­plet­ing same. If a pipe burst in the house, my to­tal­ly blind dad would get his tools and fix it, shelves need­ed re­pair­ing, no prob­lem. If he and mom de­cid­ed to cast con­crete to smoothen out an area down­stairs, you would meet two of the mix­ing ce­ment,” he said.

Car­mona’s fa­ther, who would have turned 96 next month, was the fa­ther of six, grand­fa­ther of 11 and great-grand­fa­ther of two. Fol­low­ing the ser­vice of­fi­ci­at­ed by Fa­ther Em­manuel Pierre, he was laid to rest at the Apex Ceme­tery in Fyz­abad. Among those pay­ing their re­spects were Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad and Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe.