Off the field, Stollmeyer also played a steady hand, falling last Sunday just 17 years short of his century.

It was a quiet passing, low key, in a sense reflective of his cricketing career.

For many of the present generation, he was the brother of Jeffrey high profile businessman, former West Indies Board president and stylish West Indies opener of "Rae and Stollmeyer" fame.

But Victor Humphrey Stollmeyer was not just the sibling of is more illustrious brother.

You could say he was the man who ran out the great George Headley!

In his one and only Test match, Stollmeyer had the misfortune of ending the great man's knock in the sixties during the finals Test of the 1939 series in England.

Up until his death, he and the Jamaican John Hemsley Cameron were the only two survivors from that team. Stollmeyer was also the oldest living Trinidad Test cricketer until his death.

But with Victors passing, the game has lost not just another old ex-cricketer. Gone too, perhaps, is the last of a breed. A dual sportsman who was an intelligent and technically sound left-winger for the Casuals club in football, Stollmeyer's forte was really cricket.

Cool and collected, he was a source of stability at the top of the Trinidad batting order in the 1940s. In 20 marches and 36 innings in inter-territorial cricket between 1936 and 1946, he amassed 1490 runs at the healthy average of 46.56.

Nowadays, the West Indies selectors would give their eyeteeth for numbers like that.

Stollmeyer was from an age in local and regional cricket when real quality was not such a rare commodity.

And he had the quality.

"He is one of the two best players of the swinging ball I have seen," says Andy Ganteaume.

The Barbadian George Carew, he says, was the other.

But speaking some more of Stollmeyer, Ganteaume notes: "He played shots. He was not wanting for shots. He could drive on either side of the wicket and his technique enabled him to do this without much risk."

Ganteaume, himself a quality opener in inter-territorial cricket, was Stollmeyer's opening partner on several occasions. The two also shared the misfortune of playing in only one Test match, Ganteaume also being the only West Indian to have scored a century in his solitary Test.

But most of Victor's time at the crease was spent with younger brother Jeffrey.

The two opened together in 20 innings for Trinidad. And they were a formidable pair.

Victor, the senior partner, failed to reach double figures just five times, while recording four centuries and ten fifties in his regional career.

Jeffrey, who made his debut three years later in 1939, recorded six tons, including a triple century and three doubles. He also struck ten half-centuries in 27 matches, averaging 62.95 overall.

Together, the two shared four century partnerships, the biggest of which was a stand of 224 out of a total of 367 against Barbados in a 1942 game at the Queen's Park Oval.

The Bajan attack that day included Herman Griffith, one of the first notable West Indian quick bowlers, and the useful allrounder E. A. V. "Foffie" Williams.

The combination of Jeffrey's elegant strokeplay and Victor's soundness proved nearly unbeatable that day.

But while it was the younger Stollmeyer who became the West Indies star, things could easily have been different.

That, at any rate is Ganteaume's view. Hear him:

"Jeffrey caught the eye more," he says, "but I personally prefer Victor. I preferred Victor's method as an opener."

Ganteaume reckons that the elder Stollmeyer was already a world-class player when he played his sole Test. His run out of Headley notwithstanding, Stollmeyer, still bothered by an attack of tonsillitis, made 96.

The cricketing world may well have come t share Ganteaume's view had not World War II denied Stollmeyer (V) further opportunity.

Instead the world of company law benefited from his expertise once he stopped playing.

Now, ten years almost to the day since his brother's murder, his case is closed. But hopefully, his noteworthy cricketing legacy will survive.

Victor Humphrey Stollmeyer died last Sunday, well past his 83^rd birthday and, as one of his relatives put it, "He would have said he had a good innings."

Victor Stollmeyer, for those of a certain age, was Trinidad's cricket captain and opening batsman, West Indies player who had the distinction of getting 96 in his only Test match in England and the mortification of being involved in the run out of George Headley in that match.

He was a good student and as good a sportsman, playing in the Queen's Royal College 1933 teams that won the Bonanza Cup and the Trinidad Amateur Football Association competition, both emblems of national club supremacy. That is still referred to as QRC's "year of wonders."

He was a brilliant schoolboy batsman who soon transformed that into a very good national batsman as he made centuries for Trinidad versus British Guiana in 1937 and, in the trials to select the West Indies team for the tour of England in 1939, he scored 259 runs in four innings, once not out.

He was ill early in the tour and only played in the third Test, getting 96 in what would be his only Test innings.

Back in Trinidad, he continued to be the major batsman for the years until his early retirement from the game in 1946. He decided to devote his time and attention to his budding law career and to family life.

He soon established himself as a leading attorney in commercial law and in time, became a senior partner in the firm of JD Sellier & Co.

His son Humphrey, Mr. Justice Stollmeyer, thought his father was a cool, understanding man who encouraged, but did not push, his children to be anything other than the best they could be, in whatever they chose to be. "He was always interested in what we did and often partied with us dancing the night away when our friends came to the house."

His interests were many and in addition to cricket and the law, he was keenly interested in gardening and fishing. His vegetables and the hybrids he produced were famous among the gardening fraternity.

Having been at QRC just about the time that the late Dr. Eric Williams was, he formed a friendship with him and was one of the first members of the PNM, helping to put it on a sound legal footing.

Kamaluddin Mohammed, founding member of the PNM and a close friend of Stollmeyer, said, "he was a humble, charitable man who never passed an opportunity to help those he knew needed help. He was a top class legal brain who helped us to put the party on a sound basis. He was the best vegetable farmer in the area and won prizes at every show for his vegetables. I feel fortunate to have known him in business and to be his friend."

Stollmeyer's funeral service was attended by a wide cross section of the country who all went to pay final respect to a true son of the soil and an exemplary man of many parts.

Kamal's last words were, "They don't make people like that any more, people who learned the best values of decency from their parents and carried them out without showing off."

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