New York memorial celebrates Mighty Sparrow’s extraordinary life

Fam­i­ly, friends and ad­mir­ers of Ca­lyp­so King of the World Slinger Fran­cis­co, bet­ter known as the Mighty Spar­row, cel­e­brat­ed the man be­hind the leg­end at a memo­r­i­al ser­vice in New York yes­ter­day.

His daugh­ter Gi­na Fran­cis­co re­flect­ed on her fa­ther’s fi­nal years, re­call­ing how the man who once trav­elled the globe even­tu­al­ly re­lied on oth­ers to car­ry him, yet nev­er com­plained.

The ser­vice at Lin­den Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Church drew fel­low mu­si­cians, politi­cians, diplo­mats, cler­ics and sup­port­ers from across the Caribbean di­as­po­ra.