ARTHUR DE LIMA, businessman and author, died of heart failure on September 11th 1997 at the age of 82. He was buried on September 16th after a funeral service at the St Ann's RC church, St Ann's.
Arthur was the brother of well-known businessman Jack De Lima and the late Clara Rosa De Lima, herself a writer, who helped run Art Creators gallery in St Ann's.
Born in Port of Spain in 1915, Arthur De Lima was educated at St Mary's College in Port of Spain and Solihull School, Warwickshire. De Lima lived for two years in Caracas and travelled extensively in the United States and Europe.
He returned to Trinidad and Tobago in 1931, at the age of 16, and soon began working at the family firm of jewellers, Y De Lima and Co., founded by his father Yldefonso. Officially in retirement, he was still working there until shortly before his death.
He began writing short stories in the 1950s but gave it up because of the pressures of business.
"Writing has always been in my blood," De Lima wrote in The De Limas of Frederick Street. "I began writing in the 1950s and completed two short stories, one of which I still have in my possession. I wanted to keep on writing but being a managing director and also putting my thoughts on paper was an impossibility. I had a full-time job and writing in itself is a full-time occupation."
On his 'retirement' in 1974 De Lima began writing again.
He published Bits and Pieces in 1976 followed by The Community, a narrative about the animals in Noah's Ark, in 1979. His other books were After Heaven, What Next? and The House of Jacob published in 1981, and Oritumbe, A Mixed Grill, and The Great Quake.
Everard Medina, who worked at Y De Lima for many years, gave the eulogy at De Lima's funeral. He had met De Lima in 1954.
"He was a man of simple tastes, living in his modest apartment at Aldegonda and emerging only to visit Y de Lima and Co. Ltd. or to visit with family and close friends in Trinidad and abroad," Medina said.
"In his later years he was something of a recluse, so much so that friends of his who had not seen him for many years would meet me and ask whether Arthur was still alive. I would assure them that he was."
De Lima was quiet and unassuming, but a man his friends and acquaintances valued and will miss. He has left his legacy in his books.
(Source: Heritage Library newspaper clippings)