EDUCATION, culture, politics - you name it, Rawle 'Axeback' Titus was in it.

Mr Titus, a former Senate vice-president and government senator who died this month at the age of 80, was the quintessential renaissance man, leaving in his wake an incredible, indelible legacy in relation to both his home of Tobago and the country.

And yet during his lifetime, he was rarely formally acknowledged.

'He did not get any national awards,' said Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Chief Secretary Farley Augustine on Tuesday at a funeral service held for Axeback. 'He did not get any Tobago awards. He did not get any major anything anywhere and that should have happened while he was alive given all that he did.'

Mr Augustine has made a commitment that the THA will see Mr Titus's unpublished works published so that his legacy will continue and so that the country will benefit from his wealth of knowledge.

We welcome this assurance.

But it returns to the fore the eternal question of how best to preserve the legacies of our local heroes and titans.

Only recently, with the death of Black Stalin, has that question taken on renewed urgency. Some have called for Stalin's lyrics to be taught in schools.

It is ironic that the fate of the legacy of so many of our bards and icons often fall into the hands of politicians.

Calypsonians like Mr Titus have a strong tradition of critiquing politics.

So much so that some are even perceived as political actors, and some occasionally, like Atilla the Hun, Gypsy and Jason 'JW' Williams, palance from the calypso tent to the vicinity of Parliament. Axeback was among this rarified group.

But Mr Titus was also a teacher, performer, arranger, author and cultural savant who, at the time of death, was completing a body of work detailing the history of Tobago and conducting much needed research.

Given the sheer breadth of his interests, the challenge is how best to do justice to each of his endeavours without losing sight of the dynamism of the man behind all of it.

This is a problem no archive in the world has yet solved.

For the moment, the best we can hope for is a culture of preservation supported by robust institutions - both public and private - that can do the work required to systematically preserve the seemingly ineffable.

There are plans afoot for the better preservation of the legacies of this country's premiers, with the Eric Williams Memorial Collection recently moving into new, restored premises opposite Woodford Square in the capital city.

But Mr Titus's relatively unsung life is a reminder that there is so much more to this country than meets the eye and so much more that we need to preserve.