St. Matthew’s Anglican Church
20th June, 2009
 

As a writer, I have penned many tributes in my time; quoted many lines of uplifting and eloquent poetry for one well-known departed Bahamian or another… but, somehow, when the cold hand of untimely death touches one so personally close, one so relatively young as Eldin A. Ferguson Jr. it is different…

Of course, it isn’t really different, except that the profound sadness and sense of loss is now at our own doorstep.

Eldin was a man of big ideas with an unbending spirit…  He was marked as outstanding in many ways.

After early academic awards for his creative brilliance in architecture and interior design, he moved through careers in building and construction, seafood export, sports management and promotion; and restaurant development; to name only a few.

Beyond business, or perhaps even before business sometimes; Eldin had a deep and abiding life-long commitment to the progressive governance of his country.
He was a stalwart source of ideas and ever-ready energy for the Progressive Liberal Party.

No matter where he was in the world, or which project consumed him, my telephone would ring at odd hours with Eldin on the other end, offering detailed political analyses and keen suggestions and insights.

Eldin lived his life as an adventure, with an open heart and a generous spirit…

He was a visionary, an entrepreneur at heart.  His motto may well have been ‘with hard work, enthusiasm and vision, I can bring dreams to reality’.
In this way, as in so many other ways, he was an inspiration.

In the 1980s and 90s, he spent years in Grand Bahama, raising his family.

And what some may have seen as a kind of internal exile from the mainstream of Nassau, was for him, I believe, a conscious sacrifice to his dedication to family.

The Fergusons of Freeport were founding congregants of the Anglican Church of the Ascension and part of a close-knit group of similar families, doing similar things, at the same stages of life, many of whom are in this church today…

Eldin and I, or simply ‘Junior’ as we called him then, first became acquainted as very little boys in the Fox Hill Village, during the early 1960s after his father had died and he was with that great friend of my father, his Uncle, Tom Ferguson.

Sometimes, on quiet, idle weekday afternoons, after school; the old men would go off to talk and delight us with the notion that we had been left in charge as the head bartenders of Uncle Tom’s ‘Moonglow Club’.

We did very little bartending, but what we did do, was form a bond of friendship that would last a lifetime.  A bond of friendship in fact, that has transcended even death itself.

We experienced together many of the special times of each other’s lives.  I spoke at his storybook wedding to the lovely beauty queen, Sharon; he was the planner and architect-in-chief of an ambitious two-storey dollhouse for my daughter Alana AND a tree house that he and I built for our sons to share.

The list of shared experiences is long…  Over the years, though, I rejoiced at his triumphs and commiserated in his setbacks.

I came to understand that friends such as Eldin are the family we choose.

Yet we who are here, we who remain among the living, we who are gathered this morning in our sacred tradition of saying goodbye to a friend, a colleague, a comrade-in-arms, an inspiration; a father, can rely on the knowledge that as long as Eldin is in our hearts and in our minds, he is not gone.

I, and many, many others shall sorely miss him and will remember him always.
 

My wife Kathy, myself and our family offer our sincere condolences to Sharon and the family.

As a comfort to Eldin’s children - Alicia, Eldri, Eldin III and Erin; I would remind you that your father’s spirit is immortal but that you and your children, here and to come, are his physical immortality.  Life is about tomorrow and Eldin would wish you many happy tomorrows.  I am confident when I say that we, all here in this church; your community, your extended family, also wish you the best tomorrows.

May the soul of this outstanding son of our community, this bright, energetic, irrepressible entrepreneur, this loving husband, this dedicated father, rest in peace.