Days af­ter cel­e­brat­ing her 85th birth­day, the artist who de­signed the Trin­i­ty Cross passed away last week.

Wil­helmi­na Mc­Dow­ell Ben­jamin died last Thurs­day. She had been ail­ing with se­vere rheuma­toid arthri­tis.

Ben­jamin was born in Montser­rat on De­cem­ber 17, 1933, but came to Trinidad and To­ba­go at the age of three.

She made her mark on the coun­try when, in 1969, the medal she de­signed years ear­li­er, the Trin­i­ty Cross, would serve as the coun­try’s high­est ho­n­our for close to 30 years. The Trin­i­ty Cross was even­tu­al­ly re­placed by the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2008, af­ter High Court Judge Pe­ter Ja­madar ruled two years be­fore it was dis­crim­i­na­to­ry against Mus­lims and Hin­dus due to the Chris­t­ian sym­bol it rep­re­sent­ed.

Ben­jamin de­fend­ed her de­sign then, how­ev­er, stat­ing that she had not cre­at­ed the medal with re­li­gious im­agery in mind. De­spite her let­ters to the ed­i­tor of var­i­ous news­pa­pers ex­plain­ing such, the Trin­i­ty Cross was re­moved as the na­tion’s high­est award.

Ben­jamin worked for many years at the Cen­tral Li­brary and at the li­brary in The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies un­til her med­ical con­di­tion pre­vent­ed her from con­tin­u­ing work. She re­mained an ac­tive mem­ber of the St Mary’s An­gli­can church up un­til her pass­ing.