http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/lifestyle/sfl-flsuntrinidadnbjun25,0,6845019.story Coral Springs couple gives salute to Trinidad and Tobago with coffee-table book
By Alva James-Johnson
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
June 25, 2007
For many people, Trinidad and Tobago suggests images of supple bodies gyrating to calypso music or parading Carnival's spectacular costumes.
But the twin-island nation is more than that, as Sandra Bernard-Bastien and Elliot Bastien detail in a new coffee-table book.
In World Class Trinidad and Tobago: An Area of Abundance, the Coral Springs couple offers a panoramic view of their homeland, a Caribbean pantheon of world-renowned scholars, athletes, authors, artists, politicians, beauty queens and business leaders. They hope readers will explore the book's colorful pages this month during Caribbean American Heritage Month.
"Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, I was always hearing about the great people that the country produced," said Bernard-Bastien, public affairs director for Broward's Children's Services Council. "Yet all that the media outside of Trinidad and Tobago were depicting was the calypso or the limbo or the steel band. It was as though nothing else existed in the country or that nothing else was created there."
Trinidad and Tobago, an area of about 1,980 square miles, is about the size of Delaware. Located just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela, the prosperous Caribbean nation has a bountiful supply of petroleum and natural gas.
The country boasts two Tony Award and two Grammy Award winners, a Miss World, two Miss Universes, four world boxing champions, a Nobel prize winner, two Olympic gold medalists and a foreign minister of China, according to the Bastiens.
It claims as sons and daughters such famous blacks as the late militant Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), a native of Trinidad; basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the grandson of Trinidadian immigrants; and author Maya Angelou, whose grandfather was also born in Trinidad. Angelou, the book notes, was raised by her grandmother in the United States. But she grew up listening to Caribbean music and was a calypso singer and dancer in the 1950s before launching her writing career.
Immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago are about 17,000 strong in South Florida, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But community leaders estimate the population at more than 20,000.
A politically quiet community, dispersed from Miami to West Palm Beach, Trinidadians are known mostly for their extravagant Carnivals, an annual tradition among Caribbean people throughout the islands and in North America.
But some immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago also are heavy-hitters in South Florida's business and development arenas. The list includes developers Lawrence Duprey, a Trinidadian billionaire, and George Rahael, a major player in the development of Coral Springs and other parts of Broward County. Duprey is featured in the Bastiens' book.
The Bastiens, both in their 50s, moved to South Florida 11 years ago. As children, they heard their fathers talk about Trinidadians who had excelled in their professions. They set out to preserve the legacy.
Their book, published last year by Sekani Publications, includes people born in Trinidad and Tobago or are the descendants of people from the two islands.
The biggest challenge, the couple said, was dwindling down the list to 100.
"People are still calling us and saying, 'you forgot so and so,'" Sandra Bernard-Bastien said. "But we made sure to limit it to people who had made a world-class impression."
The book features such Trinidadian medical pioneers as Dr. Bert Achong, an internationally recognized expert on the study of viruses by electron microscopy. He was part of the team that discovered the first human tumor virus in 1964, and later he found another new virus in human cancer cells, according to the British Medical Journal.
And the Bastiens don't limit the scope of accomplishments to just Trinidadians and Tobagonians. Exceptions include a St. Lucian and a Guadeloupan who won Nobel prizes in literature in 1960 and 1992 and a St. Lucian who won a Nobel prize in economics in 1979.
Trinidadian-born V.S. Naipaul, a novelist and travel writer, won the Nobel prize in literature in 2001.
"A prize as prestigious as the Nobel prize, we wanted to include the entire Caribbean and not just Trinidad and Tobago," said Elliot Bastien, a management consultant. "The statistical odds of having four Nobel prize winners from an area the size of the Caribbean are astronomical."
Buy the book at worldclasstnt.com.
Alva James-Johnson can be reached at aj johnson@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4546.
Copyright © 2007, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Matt Leinart
Countless hours at work pretending to be earnestly earning my wages while engaged in the football talk of the moment. Incesant clicking of the refresh button to see if anyone else has posted a new comment have brought me here. 
) Sancho still at the Gills, Birchall still at Port Vale, Densil is nowhere, Whitley still in Trini, Wise ent make in the MLS, Edwards still at Luton 
so far the only man who benefit is Ince.
Trinidad & Tobago vs. Sweden
