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Monday, July 14, 2025

Former public servant turns 105

by

BOBIE-LEE DIXON
1851 days ago
20200619
Irving Joseph, seated centre, celebrates  his 105th birthday  with his wife Joanne Joseph together with children and grandchildren at his Arima home on Wednesday.

Irving Joseph, seated centre, celebrates his 105th birthday with his wife Joanne Joseph together with children and grandchildren at his Arima home on Wednesday.

ANISTO ALVES

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

At 105-years-old, Irv­ing Joseph’s ad­vice on liv­ing a long, pro­duc­tive, and ful­fill­ing life in­cludes hav­ing hu­mil­i­ty, car­ing for one’s fam­i­ly, and mak­ing one’s chil­dren a pri­or­i­ty.

With a roy­al blue tuxe­do, white shirt and grey tie de­signed two-lay­ered cake, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Joseph’s long-time com­mon at­tire and favourite colour, a small fam­i­ly gath­er­ing at his Ari­ma home, was held in ho­n­our of his 105th birth­day, which he cel­e­brat­ed on June 17.

Now vi­su­al­ly im­paired for the past two years, Joseph would have liked to see his cake, which was de­scribed to him by his wife Joanne 60, and five of his six chil­dren who made it to the mile­stone cel­e­bra­tion. Nev­er­the­less, the old chap who donned a long-sleeved brown shirt was just in his glee to be still around.

De­scrib­ing the per­son­al­i­ty of her fa­ther, Josanne Joseph, his youngest, said he was al­ways a very easy go­ing in­di­vid­ual, very sim­ple and qui­et.

She al­so re­calls his style of dis­ci­pline: “He would not just tell you not to do some­thing. Cor­rec­tion usu­al­ly came with a long rig­ma­role sto­ry and then he would leave you to think about it so that you can do the right thing.”

His method worked as Josanne said more of­ten than not be­cause he was so sweet about it, they had no choice but to do the right thing.

The old adage—“Friends would car­ry you but they would nev­er bring you back,” was al­so a les­son well in­stilled.

Josanne shared with Guardian Me­dia some of her fond­est mem­o­ries of her fa­ther in his for­mer years like his Sun­day evening rit­u­al of shoe shin­ing or the 1930s ca­lyp­so tunes he would whis­tle while weed­ing the yard—ca­lyp­soes Josanne said none of his chil­dren knew. There were al­so many sto­ries Joseph would tell of cut­ting bush to make roads.

Joseph, a for­mer oil­er at the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, shares a unique re­la­tion­ship with his wife though the 45-year age dif­fer­ence. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Josanne, she said she be­lieved her par­ents’ re­la­tion­ship was per­fect.

“They have a very good un­der­stand­ing, my moth­er would al­ways be the one to ‘front’ as the boss, but they are very old school. Dad would give her that lee­way, but my dad al­ways had the last say,” she said.

Josanne not­ed an­oth­er great thing about their re­la­tion­ship was their abil­i­ty to re­solve their dif­fer­ences with­out ar­gu­ments.

“I have nev­er seen my par­ents ar­gued. We would know some­thing was up be­cause mom would say she’s not do­ing this or that, but then, she would still make sure he had his meals and so on,” she said.

Of Joseph’s ex­pe­ri­ence liv­ing through the glob­al pan­dem­ic and the many dis­rup­tions in so­cial life it has caused, the ground pro­vi­sion lover de­clared he had nev­er heard of such a thing in his born life.

Mak­ing it to 105 is a gift from God for Joseph’s fam­i­ly, Josanne said: “For me, that is my dad, I do not ever want him to go any­where, but my mom is the one who fuss­es about that time which she says will even­tu­al­ly come.”


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