BRADLEY ROBERTS DIES.. THE PARTY IS REELING

It was just about lunch time. The Chairman Senator Fred Mitchell was at lunch with party supporters when the phone went off. It was former Minister Keith Bell.  He and Sir Franklyn Wilson were on their way to the home of Bradley Roberts on 25 October and the news was not good.  He had collapsed, and they were not unable to revive him.  That was the end of the life of Bradley Roberts, Chairman Emeritus, who had served as the PLP Chair from 2002 to 2002 and again from 2009 and 2017.  Big Bad Brad was now silent.  He belongs to the ages.  As is the Bahamian tradition, those of near and far relations went straight way to the home  that he had paid off slowly and surely and owned outright on the lake where he could only have dreamed of as a small boy; the place where he collected his  obituaries that he persuaded his friends to bring to him after every funeral;  the place where he studiously slotted the names of the fallen and their relatives into a family tree ( a never ending project).  It was all there but he was not there in the room. Instead it was the undertakers waiting patiently for the work of death to be done inside the room where he died; the police and the doctors and the family. Then the morticians carried out their last grim task. The party officials led by Leader Philip Davis had to get approved a public statement. The press was waiting at the gate, hungry for details.  The gurney rolled out and a wail went up and the body disappeared into the black hearse and it disappeared down the drive way.  Bradley Roberts 25 December 1943 to 25 October 2018. 74 years old. Having fought a good fight, having done his part: farewell.