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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Former national chess champ Della laid to rest

by

Caston Cupid
1830 days ago
20200718
Della-Marie Walcott, former national chess champion

Della-Marie Walcott, former national chess champion

For­mer na­tion­al chess cham­pi­on Del­la Marie Wal­cott was laid to rest yes­ter­day as fam­i­ly, friends and well-wish­ers at­tend­ed her go­ing home cer­e­mo­ny at the Church of the Na­tiv­i­ty in Diego Mar­tin.

The 19-year-old ‘Del­la’ as she was com­mon­ly known, died af­ter slip­ping in­to a five-year co­ma af­ter emer­gency brain surgery when she was just 14 years old.

The T&T chess prodi­gy rep­re­sent­ed with dis­tinc­tion and achieved so much in the sport in her time here on earth as lament­ed by her par­ents and peers at the ser­vice.

Ac­cord­ing to her par­ents De­bra and Do­minic Wal­cott, who stood as pil­lars of strength through­out and it was main­tained at the pul­pit de­liv­er­ing a heart­felt eu­lo­gy re­flect­ing on the life that once was, “Sim­ply put Del­la was a dar­ling to every­one she crossed paths with. She was a love­ly God-fear­ing spir­it.”

A strong mes­sage from her fa­ther that her pur­pose was to bring peo­ple to God and that she did as the fam­i­ly was con­stant­ly show­ered with prayers from var­i­ous per­sons in var­i­ous forms along the jour­ney of faith.

He said their “faith as small as a mus­tard seed grew and she is now at peace Del­la didn’t need a mir­a­cle, she was the mir­a­cle”.

Beau­ti­ful words de­scrib­ing the 2013 CARIF­TA ju­nior chess cham­pi­on, who was a for­mer stu­dent of St Joseph Col­lege, Port-of-Spain.

Wal­cott, in her short but suc­cess­ful ca­reer, rep­re­sent­ed T&T at both the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, win­ning gold and sil­ver medals at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games and Carifte youth Cham­pi­onships from 2010-2019.

She was nom­i­nat­ed for the First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion Youth Awards in 2011 and 2013 and was part of the na­tion­al women’s team that com­pet­ed at the re­spec­tive World Chess Olympiad in Turkey in 2012 and Nor­way in 2014.


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