A “mini” National Awards Ceremony was held yesterday to present the Chaconia Medal Silver to American, Ray Funk.

The delayed presentation comes as he was unable to attend the National Awards Ceremony last September.

Regarding the honour, the Office of the President says, “Mr. Funk has made many presentations on the Steel Pan, Calypso, Extempo Calypso, Masquerade and other aspects of the culture. He did all of this while a practicing Judge in the State of Alaska. He faithfully attends almost every type of public cultural show from calypso tents, chutney shows, traditional mas, pan whenever he visits every year, sometimes going straight to shows after landing from a long flight. He has an encyclopedic memory of our arts and cultural history and icons and is now digitising tens of thousands of works for preservation.”

It adds that he has dedicated his life to preserving, documenting and producing works on Trinidad and Tobago culture, by faithfully visiting Trinidad almost every year since 1995 and writing a number of articles and books on the history of Carnival, steelpan and calypso.