Former government minister, Dr. Patrick Solomon died yesterday August 26th 1997. He had been ailing for some time. Solomon, 89 years, passed away at his Valsayn home.

He leaves to mourn his wife, Lesley; two sons, Dr Denis Solomon and attorney, Frank Solomon; grandchildren, Elizabeth, Juliet, Paul, Francis-Ann, Francine, Ingrid and Danielle and two great grand daughters, Tara and Vivian.

Patrick Vincent Charles Joseph Solomon was born in Newtown, Port of Spain. He attended Tranquility Boys' School before winning an exhibition to St Mary's College. He won the Island Scholarship in 1928 and studied medicine at Queen's University, Belfast and Edinburgh graduating in 1934. He practised medicine in Scotland, Ireland and Wales until 1939. Between 1939 and 1943 he worked in the Leeward Islands Medical Service. He returned to Trinidad to practise medicine and after a short stint at the Port of Spain Hospital in 1943 he entered politics one year later.

In 1946 he contested and won a seat in the Legislative Council. He was defeated in the 1950 elections and retired briefly from politics until the advent of the PNM.

Solomon was an early member of the PNM serving in the following capacities: Minister of Education (1956 - 60); Minister of Home Affairs (1960 - 64); Minister of External Affairs (1964 - 66 ); Deputy Prime Minister (1962 - 66 ); Deputy Political Leader of the PNM (1956 - 66).

His political career was not without controversy. In 1964, when he requested the waiving of a charge and the release of a boy, who was soon to become his stepson, from police custody, the incident made instant headlines and eventually resulted in a call for his resignation from government. Dr Eric Williams however later repudiated the request and, in a famous announcement, declared that he had the power under the constitution to make Solomon Minister of External Affairs and "who don't like it could get to hell out".

By 1966, Solomon entered the diplomatic service as permanent representative to the United Nations 1966 - 71 and then served as High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago in London 1971 - 76. In the 1980's he was a columnist with the Sunday Express.

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With the passing of Dr. Patrick Solomon the nation has been forced to bid farewell to one of the pioneers in the march to national sovereignty. Dr. Solomon was a resolute man who turned his back on what would have been a lucrative career in medicine to enter politics which he saw as a means of alleviating the lot of the poor and disenfranchised.

Graduating as a doctor in 1934, Dr. Solomon returned to Trinidad and Tobago in 1943 and entered politics in the following year, winning the Port of Spain South seat for the West Indian National Party in the elections held in 1946.

Ten years later, however, he was to find his true home in the People's National Movement under the late Dr. Eric Williams and was the party's deputy political leader when it came to power in the 1956 general election.

As a PNM stalwart in the PNM's great days, Dr. Solomon held a number of important ministerial positions but it was an indiscretion which he committed while serving as the Minister of Home Affairs that indelibly wrote him into this country's folklore.

Then he walked into a police station one night and using his rank secured the release of his stepson who had been held by the police.

The public reaction was so strong that Dr. Williams had to remove him from his substantive post only to appoint him, shortly thereafter, as the Minister of External Affairs with the biting explanation that those who disagreed could "get to hell out of here". Sparrow was to write two of his greatest calypsoes on this affair, the two when heard in tandem faithfully illustrating the official ambivalence that surrounded what turned out to be a major scandal.

But Dr. Solomon was, of course, more than a subject of calypsoes although the scandal did demonstrate the high-handedness that was always a part of his character.

But personal failings are nothing new in politicians nor, indeed, people of high office and we should remember the other PNM "doctor" as a man who stood side by side with his leader in the nation's fight for independence. Later, of course, he was to fall out with Dr. Williams but, then, who didn't?

History may only award "fair" marks to Dr. Solomon as a national politician but history is notoriously unforgiving and, we suspect, that its verdict on Dr. Williams and the "old" PNM, to use conveniently Mr. Manning's division, will also be that - if that.

The father of two eminent sons, Dennis and Frank, Dr. Solomon was awarded the nation's highest honour, the Trinity Cross in 1978, testimony to the esteem in which he has long been held.

Now, however, the old soldier has passed on but at the ripe old age of 89. Fortunately, he has left us his memoirs so that those of us who feel drawn to the still valid cause of nationhood can read in it how they thought and acted in those early untested times.

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