Ex-model Lystra Cudjoe dies in US

Former model and model trainer Lystra Cudjoe died at a Virginia hospital last evening, after battling her third bout of cancer. She turned 60 last April.

Her brother David told Newsday Lystra’s daughter Shevonne and ex-husband Billy Miller were at her bedside when she died.

David also said his sister left Trinidad for the US as normal for treatment some three weeks ago. While she appeared to be doing well, he said he found she would at times say some strange things, but thought nothing of it.

But a week ago, David said he was told his sister had stopped speaking. Then yesterday, hospital doctors called Cudjoe’s family in the US and said she was unlikely to live through the night. She did not.

In a Newsday interview last year, Cudjoe said cancer would not run her life, and indeed for the last 16 years, she had been battling the disease, with faith and courageously. A member of the TT Cancer Society and EARS (Embracing All Real Survivors) cancer support society, she also had affiliations with cancer support groups in Miami.

She told Newsday's WMN magazine last year: “Cancer to me is the devil, and I don’t like devils in my house, so I battled it.”

In 2007 Cudjoe got the first symptoms and found out she had stage two breast cancer. She went into remission twice, until 2014, when it resurfaced. She hoped and prayed much more after that, since she had lost two family members to cancer.

So strong was her faith in God that she said she knew for sure cancer would not kill her.

Cudjoe was 19 when London designers spotted her modelling talent and subsequently sponsored her entry into pageants that started her modelling career.

After being crowned Junior Miss TT in 1977, she competed in an international pageant in Aruba, where she won an award to model in Europe. The following year she moved to Europe and continued to model, but was also schooled on how to teach modelling in London.

Cudjoe was a business manager for fashion icon Giorgio Armani in Florida at one time, and also trained many local models, some of whom, she said in the interview, went on to be doctors and engineers, but they continued to model on the side.

She was the owner of Shevonne’s Grace, a guesthouse in Woodbrook, up to the time of her death. Her partner of many years, Sean Alexander, said her daughter will decide the fate of the guesthouse.

Cudjoe leaves to mourn her daughter Shevonne and siblings Janet, David, Cheryl, Keith, Wayne Wendy and Garth.