I walked around the Sa­van­nah this morn­ing. I thought of Ar­leigh all the way, of all the things we used to do on an “Ar­leigh Walk,” “knees, toe, knee stretch­es,” the “front sup­port pushups,” the moun­tain climbers, the dodg­ing in and out of the Sa­van­nah through the rail­ings un­til we lay gasp­ing on the Pitch Walk.

That it­self brought up mem­o­ries of walk­ing up Chan­cel­lor at 5 am, sprint­ing lamp post to lamp post, and if one of us couldn’t, go­ing back and re­peat­ing it at a pace all could keep up. Of pulling car and truck tyres up Tere­si­ta or in Tuck­er Val­ley and peo­ple pass­ing in their cars on the way to Mac­queripe and see­ing me at the end of the line and stop­ping and say­ing, “Dah is you, Doc?”

And that brought up mem­o­ries of the hours turn­ing in­to years spent in the evening around Jack­son Square and of group hikes to Paria and to Rio Seco and so on.

Good mem­o­ries of an ex­cep­tion­al­ly good man.

Ar­leigh Deane was my phys­i­cal train­er for many years. He passed last week af­ter a nine-year bat­tle with ag­gres­sive prostate can­cer.

Ar­leigh was a sim­ple man, or maybe bet­ter, a man of sim­ple means.

It’s il­lus­tra­tive of him that as I write this, I still do not know how to spell his first name.

But it doesn’t mat­ter. The name nev­er mat­tered. Was it Ar­leigh with an A or Harley with an H? I still don’t know. So, I called him “A” and he called me “D” for Doc or David. It didn’t mat­ter at all. What was im­por­tant was to in­ter­act with the per­son. What was im­por­tant was the man him­self, the hu­man be­ing known as Ma­jor Pain or The Ma­jor. As soon as you said that and as soon as I say it now, those who knew him had a clear pic­ture in their mind who we are talk­ing about.

Sim­plic­i­ty is not com­mon in T&T. We tend to like flam­boy­ant fig­ures, os­ten­ta­tious peo­ple, talk­a­tive per­sons!

There was none of that in Ar­leigh. There was no bling in Ar­leigh.

He was what he was. What you saw: sim­ple in ap­pear­ance and straight in his talk.

Sim­plic­i­ty is not easy. Leonar­do da Vin­ci, him­self such a com­pli­cat­ed, so­phis­ti­cat­ed hu­man, said: “Sim­plic­i­ty is the ul­ti­mate so­phis­ti­ca­tion!”

So­phis­ti­ca­tion is not talk­ing with an Eng­lish ac­cent. It is not us­ing big words. So­phis­ti­ca­tion is tak­ing a com­plex mat­ter and bring­ing it down to its essence. With every­thing, Ar­leigh did that.

He showed us how so­phis­ti­cat­ed he was in his train­ing, com­pli­cat­ed as it was, through his imag­i­na­tion, his or­gan­i­sa­tion­al abil­i­ties and his spon­tane­ity.

I re­mem­ber the walks in Tuck­er Val­ley on Sun­day morn­ings. We would start off easy and sweet and sud­den­ly come up­on two huge logs ly­ing at the side of the road. Ar­leigh would sim­ply say: “Pick them up!” and walk off, leav­ing us to or­gan­ise our­selves in­to two self-help groups, men and women, to pick up each heavy lamp post, co­or­di­nate steps to car­ry them a hun­dred yards and then put them down with­out hurt­ing any­one.

A huge or­gan­i­sa­tion­al af­fair. He was not on­ly or­gan­is­ing bring­ing the logs in­to Tuck­er Val­ley, but he was teach­ing us or­gan­i­sa­tion and co­op­er­a­tion.

Or reach­ing a bridge on a main road or coun­try track, the or­der came: “Jump down!” and every­body jumped down, maybe he had hid­den choco­late there for us, milled around won­der­ing why we were there un­til we heard the “Come back up!” and we had to or­gan­ise our­selves in­to hu­man lad­ders to get back up.

Imag­i­na­tion, or­gan­i­sa­tion and spon­tane­ity. All part of his teach­ing tech­niques. Sim­ple and ef­fec­tive.

The more I think of him, the more I be­lieve Ar­leigh was a ge­nius. At times, it was dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand what he was do­ing to us, not on­ly our bod­ies but our minds and our so­cial be­hav­iour. Over the years, as our bod­ies strength­ened and our minds ad­vanced, we gelled in­to a friend­ly but in­de­pen­dent group of men and women who helped each oth­er when need­ed. In this, all of us felt as one with Ar­leigh.

The mem­o­ries the group shares will nev­er go away. We’ll be talk­ing about him for years to our friends, fam­i­ly and grand­chil­dren.

When we meet, the talk will al­ways turn to Ar­leigh. He was a man who went his own way, did his own thing and left peo­ple bet­ter than they were. As long as one of us is alive, Ar­leigh will be re­mem­bered every time we meet or go in­to a gym, or take a walk or a hike.

It’s com­fort­ing to me and I hope to his fam­i­ly, that his mem­o­ry will hard­ly ever be­gin to fade.