Retired major general and former chief of defence staff Ralph Brown has died. News of his death came to the public via social media on Friday morning.
Relatives who confirmed his death said he died at the Port of Spain General Hospital. They told Newsday that he had a few complications with his health. He went to the hospital with an infection and issues with his knees.
Brown was known as a literal war hero having joined the regiment just before independence. He witnessed the raising of the flag as an off-duty soldier in 1962, and was part of the investigations to the 1970 mutiny.
Brown was most known for his role as commanding officer in the TT Regiment during the attempted Coup on August 27, 1990.
In an earlier interview, Brown told reporters he was one of the off-duty officers of the Regiment who were watching a football match at the Hasely Crawford Stadium at the time when he noticed smoke billowing from the nation’s capitol.
When announcements that the police headquarters in Port of Spain had been blown up, Brown used the stadium’s PA system to round up officers. He told Newsday they commandeered a Carib truck and made their way to Camp Ogden. He was also instrumental in negotiations with insurgents of the Jamaat Al Muslimeen which led to their surrender on August 1.
Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds, in a conversation with Newsday on Friday, lauded Brown as a founding member of the TT Regiment.
He said aside from his stellar career in the local armed forces he went on to form the Strategic Intelligence Agency and assisted in the development of the TT Defence Force Football team, and the infrastructural development of the TT Civil Aviation Board.
He also lauded him as a devout Anglican who served as a warden to the TT Bishop.
“His passing on the 43rd anniversary of the passing of the nation’s founding father, highlights the element and quality of statesmanship that the country’s institutions were founded on; and also marks the passing of a military era,” Hinds said.
His son Gary Skeene said Brown would tell him about independence and the role he played in the coup. But as humbling as that was, to him he was simply a good dad.
“He was a fun-loving, card-playing man,” Skeene said. “He was always focused on his grandkids. He always used to say if I don’t come down from Canada with his grandkids when I visited that I might as well just go back.
“He always said he looked at the youth and tried to give them opportunity, and to guide them so there are a lot of kids that know him that he would offer guidance to. Some of them would just sit with him and chat.”
Skeene said Brown had a competitive attitude and a commitment to people and service. But he always worried about crime.
“For my dad his greatest concern was around the murder rate. He would always say: ‘You know how many we had today? I don’t know what this country is coming to. These kids have no regards to each other.’
“For him, he would want the country to go back to the TT of yesterday, and for its people to commit
