Glasgow renews call for Grand Stand to be renamed after Sparrow

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

Vet­er­an pro­mot­er Randy Glas­gow has re­newed his call for the Grand Stand at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to be re­named in ho­n­our of Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co, months af­ter first propos­ing the trib­ute.

His ap­peal comes as Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne re­vealed that the city cor­po­ra­tion’s cau­cus is ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss ways of ho­n­our­ing the ca­lyp­so leg­end, whom he de­scribed as part of the cap­i­tal’s lifeblood.

In a pub­lic state­ment, Glas­gow urged re­newed con­sid­er­a­tion of the pro­pos­al.

“Al­though sev­er­al months have passed since I first made this call, please al­low me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-share it, with the hope that it will be giv­en due con­sid­er­a­tion,” he said.

“I there­fore re­new my pub­lic call for the Grand Stand at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to be of­fi­cial­ly re-named the Mighty Spar­row Grand Stand.”

The call has gained added sig­nif­i­cance fol­low­ing the death of Spar­row at age 91 on Sun­day.

Speak­ing on the city’s plans to ho­n­our the cul­tur­al icon, Al­leyne said the mat­ter would be dis­cussed by the cau­cus.

“He’s a son of the soil. He was a res­i­dent and part of the lifeblood of the city for sev­er­al decades,” the may­or said.

Al­leyne al­so point­ed to the ex­ist­ing stat­ue of Spar­row at the St Ann’s Round­about near the city’s bound­ary as ev­i­dence of his en­dur­ing con­nec­tion to Port-of-Spain. The stat­ue is among sev­er­al pub­lic trib­utes ded­i­cat­ed to the en­ter­tain­er.

De­scrib­ing Spar­row as one of the cap­i­tal’s he­roes, Al­leyne said the city would play its part in ho­n­our­ing his lega­cy at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.

Spar­row rose to promi­nence in 1956 when Jean and Di­nah earned him both the Ca­lyp­so King and Road March ti­tles. He went on to cap­ture each crown eight times and built an in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer with mu­sic that chron­i­cled Caribbean pol­i­tics, hu­mour and every­day life.