KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Eliz­a­beth “La­dy” Mon­tano spends the Christ­mas sea­son rest­ing in prepa­ra­tion for the busy Car­ni­val ahead.

Her goals for 2025: “Con­tin­ue to be pos­i­tive, con­tin­ue to sup­port my fam­i­ly and pre­pare for suc­ces­sion. I am al­so mak­ing sure that I live a healthy and sim­ple life. Con­tin­ue to ed­u­cate my­self. En­joy my Car­ni­val.”

Be­ing a present par­ent is at the top of her list. Her ded­i­ca­tion to her fam­i­ly has shaped the lives of her sons Mar­cus and Machel.

Mar­cus is a com­mer­cial pi­lot with Caribbean Air­lines and a for­mer gui­tarist in the fam­i­ly’s Xtatik Band. Machel is the phe­nom­e­nal King of So­ca who topped off his 42-year-per­form­ing ca­reer with a black-tie af­fair at the Kennedy Cen­tre, Wash­ing­ton, DC on No­vem­ber 25, to mark his 50th birth­day. For half of those 50 years, La­dy worked close­ly with Machel, first in pub­lic re­la­tions for eight years then as his man­ag­er for 17. Machel’s fa­ther Win­ston “Mon­ty” Mon­tano man­aged him for eight years while his cur­rent man­ag­er, Che Kothari, has been part of the team for the past ten years.

“I have said it over and over I have nev­er been a mo­mager,” said La­dy.

“I am a moth­er and was a man­ag­er. We kept the roles sep­a­rate so while the pub­lic blend­ed the roles I nev­er did nor did Machel. On the job, I was the man­ag­er and Machel was my boss. At home or off du­ty I was Machel’s moth­er and we shared and still share a very close moth­er-and-son re­la­tion­ship.

“The pub­lic quite of­ten would com­ment on how he spoke to me while on the job, mix­ing up my role. How­ev­er, we have been able to main­tain the sep­a­ra­tion over the years. Both Machel and I un­der­stand or un­der­stood the dif­fer­ence.”

La­dy grew up in Care­nage and at­tend­ed the St James Sec­ondary School. Af­ter grad­u­at­ing she start­ed work­ing at the Port-of-Spain City Hall, fol­lowed by a stint at the Na­tion­al Hous­ing Au­thor­i­ty. With a pas­sion for teach­ing, La­dy at­tend­ed the Teach­ers Train­ing Col­lege in Mau­si­ca from 1969 where she met her fu­ture hus­band Mon­ty. La­dy and Mon­ty grad­u­at­ed from the Col­lege in 1971, lat­er got mar­ried and had two boys.

La­dy and Mon­ty moved to Ja­maica to fur­ther their ed­u­ca­tion, Mon­ty stud­ied Ge­og­ra­phy while La­dy chose ed­u­ca­tion. The Mon­tano fam­i­ly re­turned to Care­nage but lat­er moved to south Trinidad where their jobs were based. The fam­i­ly set­tled at Prana Lands in Siparia, where Mar­cus and Machel be­gan to de­vel­op their mu­si­cal tal­ents with guid­ance.

“They grew up learn­ing and liv­ing the val­ues of hard work, hon­esty, in­tegri­ty, shar­ing, lov­ing oth­ers, lov­ing your own and many more,” she said.

“As par­ents we are proud to see these val­ues man­i­fest in them as men con­tribut­ing to who they and who they be­came.”

La­dy, who has a bach­e­lor’s de­gree in ed­u­ca­tion from UWI, taught agri­cul­ture and sci­ence in Ja­maica and T&T. She was al­so a guid­ance coun­sel­lor.

Teach­ing her sons the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion was a high pri­or­i­ty for her.

“They were taught cer­tain val­ues and as a moth­er or par­ent I set the ex­am­ple for them to fol­low,” Mon­tano said.

“I care for oth­ers and ed­u­ca­tion is of para­mount im­por­tance.  They lived what they saw. I want to be­lieve both Mon­ty and I are good par­ents.”

Their wis­dom and guid­ance are now be­ing passed down to the next gen­er­a­tion – Ray­lon, Nicholas, Mele­di, Malaya, Mar­ley and Micha.

“Have con­fi­dence in your­self, love your­self and take ex­am­ple from your fa­ther,” she tells them.

“I al­so teach them to be strong and again the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion. The world to­day is very com­pet­i­tive and the skilled per­son will al­ways have the edge. I al­so try to teach them to work for them­selves. Be in­de­pen­dent. Be LOVE.”

Over the years La­dy has men­tored and man­aged oth­er peo­ple open­ing her arms in one way or the oth­er.

“I just love to help oth­ers and I feel so good when I can con­tribute to some­one’s suc­cess or when I can help some­one achieve some­thing no mat­ter how small,” she added.

“I have been like this since I was a very young child. I have no oth­er ex­pla­na­tion.”

Her moth­er­ly in­stinct con­tin­ues to ex­tend with the ad­vice to oth­er moth­ers: “Ob­serve your chil­dren from an ear­ly age”.

“They will ex­press their in­ter­est. Sup­port them no mat­ter what. Once it’s hon­est it’s pos­i­tive and worth­while. Do not force them to try to achieve what you feel you failed to achieve for your­self. Al­ways make sure they are do­ing what they love.  Al­so note

that once you be­come a moth­er your life changes,” she added.

KING OF SO­CA

In 2022, La­dy launched her first book, King of So­ca, a bi­og­ra­phy of Machel Mon­tano. The book is based on Mon­tano’s 2018 MPhil dis­ser­ta­tion ti­tled “The Mak­ing of Monk Monte: Cre­ativ­i­ty and Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go Pop­u­lar Cul­ture.”

At first, La­dy was tempt­ed to build on it for a PhD but de­cid­ed against the aca­d­e­m­ic route when she un­der­stood that her in­ten­tion was to make it ac­ces­si­ble to every­one.

“Since launch­ing the bi­og­ra­phy the feed­back has been amaz­ing,” La­dy said.

“Many peo­ple were un­aware of the decades of Machel’s in­volve­ment in the busi­ness.

“Peo­ple have been com­mend­ing us on the work done. I have been able to launch the book in To­ba­go al­so, Kingston Ja­maica, New Jer­sey, New York and Mi­a­mi. I was in­vit­ed to speak at Berke­ley Uni­ver­si­ty, in Cal­i­for­nia. And I con­tin­ue to get re­quests.”

To mark Machel’s 50 th birth­day a spe­cial edi­tion of the book has been launched.

“I made a gold­en case look­ing like a vinyl record to rep­re­sent his gold­en birth­day and the case is au­to­graphed by Machel,” she re­vealed.

“It al­so comes with spe­cial­i­ty choco­late with Machel’s im­age on it. It’s the same book but we call this the deluxe lim­it­ed edi­tion.  It has to be pur­chased through the of­fice.”

La­dy con­tin­ues to work on her var­i­ous projects from mar­ket­ing her book to man­ag­ing the Mon­tano’s Choco­late Com­pa­ny Ltd.