Last year, just weeks before his 99th birthday, Rudolph ‘Powder’ Cummings came face-to-face with mortality. He was admitted to hospital with gastrointestinal bleeding, required a blood transfusion, and for a time, his family feared the worst.

His daughter Claudette recalled seeing what she believed was the edge of life itself.

“It was very traumatic travelling to Kingston every day,” she said adding that each time she saw him in the hospital bed she wondered whether he would make it.