By Ucill Cambridge

AN air ambulance had been hired to leave Trinidad at 3 p.m. yesterday to fly UNC Senator Arnim Smith to the Washington Center Hospital for surgery. But the efforts of those dedicated to him, his wife Patricia and longtime associates and friends Felix Hernandez, Tim Goopiesingh and Austin Jack Warner, were not to be realised. At 6.25 a.m. yesterday, on the eve of his 58th birthday, Smith died.

According to his wife, an aneurysm ruptured in his aorta. She said no one was aware that he had any complications until Smith was examined by doctors at the St Clair Medical Centre, where he was taken after he complained of having chest pains the day before.

She managed to maintain her grace and composure, even while the pained cries of her 14-year-old daughter, Thais, the couple’s only child, could be heard echoing through their Valsayn home. Smith recounted the events that led to her husband’s death, saying:

“He was not sick or anything, you know. He got up yesterday morning (Saturday) and went about preparing to go to his meetings. And he was telling me how busy a week it would be, saying he had meetings up to Wednesday, and he told me ‘politics is not an easy thing’. He told me he had a pain in his chest.

“But I was outside and talking to him and I found he was not answering so I went upstairs,” she said.

According to her, he was lying down and he told her “he had a pain in his leg and could not move it and asked me to rub his leg for him”.

Smith said he just started getting worse, and eventually her husband could not support his weight to walk. The entire lower part of his body was paralysed.

“Eventually we had to call the ambulance. They came quickly, and we called all the neighbours for assistance and we took him to the nursing home.”

Smith said the doctors spoke to them, after which they spent all night making arrangements to send him abroad for surgery.

A family associate told the Express that, following discussions with Hernandez and Goopiesingh about Smith’s condition, Warner told them, “Spare no expense.”

Smith said their daughter was very close to her father.

“He was her teddy bear.”

Smith has three other children, Sterling, Keitha and Sherma.

She said funeral arrangements have not yet been finalised.

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/top.asp?mylink=2003-11-17%2Ftop%2FArnim%20Smith%20dies.htm&mydate=2003-11-17&mypage=top