Heard on the news today that Lloyd Best died after a long battle with cancer He was 73
http://guardian.co.tt/news7.html A GREAT LOSS
* T&T loses iconic intellectual.
* Best kept working through his illness.
* A Caribbean nationalist with a broad view of the world
BY CAROL MATROO
MERE days after the deaths of two icons—journalist extraordinaire George Radcliffe John and calypsonian The Mighty Terror—another great mind has been called to the Great Beyond.
Educator, politician and economist Lloyd Algernon Best lost the battle after a long bout with prostate cancer.
He was 73. He celebrated his birthday on February 27.
His wife, journalist Sunity Maharaj, said Best died at 2.20 pm in his bed, within the loving embrace of his family.
Best’s death was the third of prominent Trinidadians since last week, when veteran journalist George John and calypsonian Fitzgerald “The Mighty Terror” Henry passed on.
Even though he was in failing health, two weeks before his death Best was hard at work with his colleague Dr Eric St Cyr completing his newest work titled Economic Policy and Management Choices: A Contemporary Economic History of Trinidad and Tobago 1950-2005.
Principal of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Dr Bhoendradath Tewarie said Best knew he was on his final journey.
Best was a lecturer at UWI for many years.
He knew his time was near and he knew he was going. He said goodbye to me in a way I would always remember.
I went to see him last week and had a wonderful, but brief conversation and exchange. I am really happy that I went,” Tewarie said in a telephone interview yesterday.
He described Best as a “warm human being, extremely generous in spirit, discerning and intuitive.
He was a thorough Trinidadian, but a genuine Caribbean nationalist.
He was also very cosmopolitan and had a broad view of the world, could always compare and connect things and evaluate things in a way that was unique and vital.
It’s not the kind of mind you get every day, perhaps one in a million,” Tewarie said.
Best leaves to mourn his wife Sunity, and his six children, Robert, Jean-Jacques, Stuart, Kamla, Carmel and Ayiti-Carmel.
Guardian editor-in-chief Dominic Kalipersad, who knew Best for many years, said:
Lloyd Best was an intellectual icon, a great Caribbean thinker, who influenced economics, politics and culture in a profound way.”
Funeral arrangements are to be announced.
Profile
LLOYD BEST was among an elite clique of the best political and economic brains in the country.
His theories and analyses were impressive, although he sometimes boggled many with his intellect.
Best was educated at Tacarigua Anglican School and later at Queen’s Royal College.
He graduated from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, England.
In 1957 Best joined the Faculty of UWI in Mona, Jamaica, and remained in academic employment until 1976, when he resigned to work full-time at the Tapia Central Office, of which he was the founder.
Best had an extensive and productive career which enriched and empowered the lives of many.
Among the endless list of posts that he held, Best was a lecturer in economics and a visiting professor, Institute of International Relations, at UWI.
He was also Guest Fellow, Institute of Policy Studies and Guest Scholar, Latin American Programme, Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Smithsonian Institute, both of which were in the United States.
He was a founder of the Tapia House Movement, founding member of the New World Movement, a founding editor of the New World Quarterly and publisher of Tapia.
Best was also the leader of the Opposition in the Senate in 1974-'75 and 1981-'83.
Before his death, Best held the positions of publisher and managing director of the T&T Review and was the retired director of the T&T Institute of the West Indies.
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