Put me in Hall of Fame

“People tell me I should be in the Hall of Fame and that’s what I would truly like,” said the still mobile woman who will be 87 on August 8. “In my day women were supposed to be housewives, cooking food, see about the children, wash clothes and see about the house etc.....men was everything.” Gooding made contact for this interview, still able to use one of her St Ann’s taxis so that we could meet at the stand near to Trinity Cathedral, Port-of-Spain and continue to Newsday’s interview space on Chacon Street.

Since we had never met, I was about to give her my car number for identification, but the very feisty woman preferred to let me know the colour outfit she would be wearing instead, and would call me on the morning in question. “Too many television crime dramas....” I thought with a chuckle.

And, there she was in her “light-green blouse and jeans” –not with one or two trophies as was asked for picture purpose– but all her trophies fitted into one hold-all bag which she was able to easily carry. In nearly 20 years of representing school, club and country, those were the sum total of her awards. To quote one of her peers, Marjorie John, who was fortunate enough to make it into the Hall of Fame: “Those were the days when you won a cup, spoon, saucer, plate, bowl or maybe fork.” Born in Belmont in 1930, Gooding started to run as a five-year-old at St Margaret’s School at a time she says: “When the schools in Belmont used to challenge each other and before school went on vacation, Belmont Intermediate, St Margaret’s EC, Belmont Boys and Girls RC, the Methodist schools and all the government schools in Belmont would meet in a day of sports organised by the schoolmasters and mistresses. They would take us to the [Queen’s Park] Savannah and run the races....it was heavy competition.” Then Gooding went to Providence Girls Secondary, in the days when it was run by the nuns, where she continued running.

Her teacher was Phyllis Mitchell. “The nuns those days were very sacred and proper and could not walk the streets unless properly attired. Every district in Trinidad, north, south, etc, took part in Inter-zone Sports, then the winners used to go to the [Queen’s Park] Oval and run against each other to find out the overall champions... This is how I started meeting people from the whole of Trinidad. I would run within my age limit to see who is the winner of the various age groups in Trinidad and Tobago...

I lost one race in my life to Eileen King here in TT .” Gooding’s first trip overseas was to Guyana while at Providence when Mother Pius, her parents and club Mitteo Harriet where Victor Roberts was her trainer, stood the costs so that she could represent the country.

Gooding’s board and lodge were courtesy Mitchell who boarded a plane and came to Guyana so that the young athlete could stay with her teacher’s parents who were Guyanese. In Barbados, she reminisced, “I stayed with the Blackburns.” As I listened to the octogenarian tell of her inability to represent the country any further than Guyana, Barbados, Grenada and the Caribbean because her mother could not afford to send her to run in England, as that was when the onus fell on club and parents to stand the costs, my mind went back to the 70s and 80s. During that period, as executive members of the TT Women’s Hockey Association, we held cake/bake sales at the side of the St James Barracks field, organised hockey queen shows and fetes to send national teams to Caribbean and world tournaments and host tournaments here.

And, I was even more amazed to read in Newsday, June 2, the plea from President Anthony Carmona for support for athletes...

“with the authorities of this country to support national athletes on their journey to success and not wait until they become heroes” –made at the installation ceremony of the executive of the TT Olympic Committee at his office. I realised that the President is unaware of the hardships of as late as the 1980s to train, prepare, outfit and support 15 members, plus staff of a representative hockey team on a minuscule Government subvention, as there was just no money in the national coffers back then.

My plea here is that the powers- that-be making nominations for the Hall of Fame, do some research into this woman sprinter of the 1940s/50s who also taught sports in the primary school system at St Dominic’s Home and St Martin’s School, Belmont, and seek to fulfil her dearest wish – induction into the First Citizens Hall of Fame.