De­on Leon­dore is set to be ho­n­oured posthu­mous­ly by the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion as the first mem­ber of the soon to be built 'He­roes Park' which is ex­pect­ed to be nes­tled be­tween the Ari­ma Ten­nis Court and the Net­ball Court, once ap­proval is giv­en.

Ari­ma May­or Cagney Casemire re­vealed this on Thurs­day dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports as his com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to mourn an out­stand­ing son and sport­ing hero of the soil who died in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent in Texas, USA on Mon­day.

A trib­ute is al­ready well un­der­way for the Ten­nis Lane, Mt Pleas­ant res­i­dent, by way of a large poster of the track and field star for all to see and re­mem­ber.

Lendore, 29, emerged from hum­ble be­gin­nings in the Cal­vary area, as a mem­ber of the Abi­lene Wild­cats track and field club and lat­er rep­re­sent­ed his al­ma mater Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) on his way to na­tion­al se­lec­tion and lat­er world ac­claim.

His un­time­ly pass­ing has crushed the Ari­ma com­mu­ni­ty where he was a role mod­el and men­tor. Iron­i­cal­ly Lendore in a pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion with the Ari­ma may­or and his coun­cil had made plans to give back to his com­mu­ni­ty. Now, how­ev­er, the ta­ble has turned.

Casemire has been spear­head­ing this project, with con­sid­er­a­tions for the park to be nes­tled in the midst of an­oth­er com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion­al hero- Lord Kitch­en­er, such was the im­pact that Lendore had on the com­mu­ni­ty.

Casemire as­sured the park will be for all who ex­cels in their re­spec­tive field.

"Ini­tial­ly, we were dis­mayed, we got the in­fo late in the morn­ing and as you would ex­pect there was a lot of phone calls as re­gards to his pass­ing. We were very dis­mayed, it was trag­ic, it is a dev­as­tat­ing loss to the com­mu­ni­ty of Cal­vary and to Ari­ma.

The for­mer grad­u­ate of Queen's Roy­al Col­lege was born on Ten­nis Lane in Cal­vary, Ari­ma where we have a trib­ute to him at his place in the form of a big poster be­cause we are so proud of him and his ac­com­plish­ments and proud that he is Ari­ma born and he is on the glob­al stage," Casemire said.

He added: " With re­gards to his fan­tas­tic run in the 4x400 me­tres, you could have heard the com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ing him all the way. In every race and in all his en­deav­ours he was sup­port­ed ful­ly by the com­mu­ni­ty. In fact, pri­or to his pass­ing, the coun­cil and the coun­cil­lor for the area had con­tact­ed him be­cause we were go­ing to ho­n­our him for his achieve­ments.

We had in­ten­tions of iden­ti­fy­ing our he­roes park and of course, De­on is a hero to us and we will im­mor­talise him in our hero's park. Yes we have plans but we are still in the stages of putting to­geth­er how we will ho­n­our him, but cer­tain­ly, we need to hold him up as the role mod­el he is for the youths in Ari­ma.

His achieve­ments are world-class but I can tell you of his hum­ble be­gin­nings in Ten­nis Lane and his boy­hood friends who are all dev­as­tat­ed. It is quite a blow for the com­mu­ni­ty."

Lendore, who grad­u­at­ed from Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty and then worked as a vol­un­teer coach, will not be here to ex­pe­ri­ence the much-need­ed up­grade to the fa­cil­i­ty he trained at as a boy with Abi­lene Wild­cats- the Ari­ma Velo­drome. Casemire said that the fa­cil­i­ty, once the mec­ca for sports in Ari­ma, will be up­grad­ed as part of Lendore's ho­n­our­ing.

" It is no doubt that the velo­drome will be­come a key part of how we pay trib­ute to De­on Lendore and all of our ath­letes who are con­tribut­ing on the world stage.

De­on is just one of sev­er­al ath­letes in Ari­ma but he is an ex­cep­tion­al ath­lete and that ex­cep­tion puts him above the rest," Casemire con­clud­ed.