Ossie Clarke is dead
OSSIE Clarke, a popular sports enthusiast and cricket analyst, died at the University Hospital of the West Indies yesterday morning.
Clarke, who had been ailing for some time, was 66 years-old.
Hendricks Porter, a longtime friend of Clarke’s and a member of the Custom Tourers Association of Jamaica (CTAJ), told the Observer that Clarke was admitted to hospital on Friday after his condition had deteriorated.
Clarke was president and manager of the CTAJ for several years, leading the popular troupe to benefit and friendly cricket matches islandwide, as well as to Chicago and Detroit in 1971 and New York City in 1974.
At its peak, the CTAJ’s ranks included the late custom broker, A Anthony “Duppy Joe” Morris, and journalist, Raymond Sharpe, also deceased and West Indian cricketers, Alf Valentine and Desmond Lewis.
The CTAJ also staged its annual Tourers Week which included a friendly match against an all-Customs team at the Lime Tree Oval in St Catherine.
During the ‘week’, the group also honoured a Jamaican sports hero; recipients include Olympic gold medallist, Arthur Wint; quarter-mile great, Herb McKenley; and cricketers, Alf Valentine, JK Holt and Maurice Foster.
Ivanhoe Ricketts, who first met Clarke in the late 1960s when he (Ricketts) joined the CTAJ, remembered him yesterday as the driving force behind the association.
“He was definitely the man behind the ‘Tourers’. He did all the work to project us,” Ricketts told the Observer.
The late sports enthusiast was also an ardent music buff, especially of the jazz idiom and wrote occasional articles on the subject. Clarke is survived by seven children.