Former three-time national table tennis champion and `ball player extraordinaire’ Maurice Montague Moore, who died on January 8, had his cremated body laid to rest on Sunday in Canada following a moving ceremony attended by family members, close friends, and sportsmen and women of yesteryear.
He was 79.
According to Vibert Lampkin, who delivered the eulogy, “Moore was one of the great all-round Guyanese sportsmen of his generation.
“He excelled in football, cricket, hockey and table tennis. I once heard it said that ‘Maurice Moore had the best ‘ball sense’ of anyone of his era’” said Lampkin.
Arnold Gibbons, retired Professor of Communications, Hunter College, New York University once wrote of Moore on the cricket field:”A quick-footed player with a keen eye, but generally uses his footwork his footwork to the bowler’s advantage, for he has succeeded in being leg before more times than not.”
Notwithstanding those comments Moore went on to captain the prestigious British Guiana Cricket Club’s first division team, said Lampkin.
Though he played for and represented the national team at football, cricket and hockey it was the discipline of table tennis that Moore will be best remembered.
According to five times men’s national singles champion Mike Baptiste, he lost his first men’s singles final to – Moore.
“The first time I ever reached the men’s singles final I lost to him,” he told Stabroek Sport last evening in an invited comment.
“He was a very good ball player,” Baptiste recalls.
“He won the national men’s singles title in 1965 and again in 1966 when he beat me,” he added.
According to Baptiste Moore had won his first men’s singles title in the late 1950s.
Baptitse said his most enduring memory of Moore was when he coached the national table tennis team in 1971 before he migrated.
Moore, born March 8, 1932 in Georgetown, was the younger of two children of Stanley and Hyacinth Moore.
Stanley was also a national football player.
“He was rated as one of the all time greats,” Baptiste said.
Lampkin agreed.
In his eulogy he described the elder Moore as a “legendary” football player who represented the “historic Victoria Football Club.”
Both of Moore’s parents predeceased him. His mother, a long time member of the Senior Guyanese Friendship Association in Toronto, died in Canada in 1981. His father died in Guyana in 1984. Maurice, who died three months shy of ghis 80th birthday, is survived by his three children, Roger, Trevor and Karen, his four grandchildren, his sister Colleen, his two nieces and his two great nephews.
An old boy of St. Ambrose Primary and Queen’s College Secondary schools, he became a qualified Accountant and a Chartered Secretary before migrating to Canada.
He is also credited in some way with the success of Roy Fredericks, said Lampkin.
“Earl John, then Assistant Personnel Manager, Blairmont Estate, Berbice, persuaded Maurice to use his influence as captain to accept the young, unknown Roy Fredericks from the neighbouring village of Ithaca to become a member of his team. This gave Fredericks the opportunity to play first class cricket in Georgetown and thus be exposed to mentors of the calibre of Clyde Walcott and Robert Christiani. We all know that Roy Fredericks went on to be a legend in West Indies cricket,” he said.
Monty Clarke, another acclaimed all-rounder – skillful in cricket and football – recalls his rivalry with Maurice in one final championship match.
He was leading Maurice comfortably; but, as he said, Maurice was a fighter, and to his amazement, Maurice fought back to win the match and the championship. After migrating to Canada Maurice represented Canada at international table tennis competitions.
Moore was also an ardent chess player and an accomplished pianist.
He was also a member of the group Penumbrians – a group of young men who came together in the early 1950’s to analyse and comment on issues of the day in British Guiana, as it then was.
The late Desmond Hoyte; President of Guyana, Aubrey Bishop, the Chancellor of the Judiciary, and former minister of the government in the People’s National Congress administration Rashleigh Jackson were members of the group.
Among those present at Sunday’s funeral ceremony were Ian Mc Watt, Alwyn Cumberbatch, Ivan Mayers, Ivan Phillips, Ricky Parris, Richard Gravesande, Bungy Wong, Joe Castanheiro and Andy Anderson, a former national table tennis champion himself.
