Although I had known Frank Clerk for forty years, it was only when his granddaughters, Natalie and Tiffany Clerk, read the eulogy last Tuesday morning during his Funeral Mass at the Assumption Roman Catholic Church, that I realised he had received a Knighthood from Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. "That meant that his new title was Sir Francis Joseph Spencer Clerk and he has a medal to prove it!" said Natalie.
It was in 1960 that I first met this most down-to-earth gentleman who as the Manager of Gordon Grant's Shipping Department, offered me a job as secretary to the Claims Manager. Sometime later I became Frank Clerk's personal secretary until I left the company at the end of 1965.
And although we would speak about all other things when we did meet, the knighthood just was never mentioned by this most unassuming man, for whom I happily walked with the top layer of a wedding cake, as hand luggage, from Auckland, New Zealand, to Trinidad, when his elder son Steven married a New Zealander in 1971 and I happened to be going to the International Women's Hockey Federation's World Conference in that country. The Clerks second son is Dr Richard Clerk.
Frank Clerk was simply put, a really nice person with a great sense of humour. He didn't hear too well and in more recent years had great difficulty doing one of the things he liked best, chatting, as he developed throat cancer and his larynx had to be removed. But even his look of exasperation at the device which helped him to communicate, would make me chuckle when we met outside a Maraval bank, and it just would not perform as he wished.
Born on June 22, 1912, Frank was the brother of nine other siblings, including his identical twin brother Eric. He received most of his secondary education at St Mary's College, and at age 15 or 16 decided to leave school and began working at J.N. Harriman, from where he went to Alcoa and finally settled at Gordon Grant's Shipping Department for approximately fifty years, during which time he became the Director of Shipping. As President of the Shipping Association of Trinidad and Tobago he was later honoured by the Association. It was as a result of Gordon Grant being the agents for a Dutch Company called the Royal Netherlands Steamship Company, that Frank Clerk was knighted.
At age 65, he retired from Gordon Grant and with his Barbadian born wife, Joan (née Inniss), migrated to Barbados until her ill health brought them back to Trinidad.
Like many people of that era including my late mother, Frank Clerk had a superstitious streak, and would always say "Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit" on the first day of each month. Ironically, he died on the first day of March, so said his granddaughters "as we bid his physical presence goodbye we do him a simple favour and say for him one last time "Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit". May we be as lucky as you Granddad."