Lamming calls for lasting memorial of Jones

GEORGE LAMMING, the noted Barbadian-born Caribbean writer and social commentator, thinks that Trinidad and Tobago “must find some appropriate way” of giving its famous actor, Errol Jones, a permanent place in Trinidadians’ collective memory.Jones, a well known cultural personality of the Caribbean region, died early Monday morning at his niece’s home in Cascade, Trinidad. He was 87.In saluting him yesterday as a great cultural asset to the region, Lamming, now 83, who knew Jones for over four decades, recalled:“Errol Jones was probably the finest actor in the history of Trinidad and Tobago, and most certainly the greatest of his generation.“His performances,” noted Lamming, “gave Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott’s work a lucidity which few other actors could have achieved; and he carried this distinction with a personal grace and modesty which deepened the loyalty of all his admirers . . . .”Lamming plans to be among the mourners at Jones’ funeral scheduled for Saturday in Port-of-Spain.For the generation of the 1970s and early 1980s, Jones was known as the storyteller, the voice who narrated Crick Crack and the adventures of the fabled Anansi spider on radio; while the theatre world remembers him as an actor best known for his roles as Makak in Walcott’s play Dream On Monkey Mountain and King Jab Jab in King Arthur And His Merry Men. (RS)