ST. KEVIN’S 50TH ANNINVERSARY BANQUET
MIAMI, FLORIDA

19th June, 2005

I am pleased and honoured to be here tonight at this banquet to honour the founding of St Kevin’s.  I bring you greetings on behalf of the Prime Minister the Rt. Hon Perry Christie and the Government and people of The Bahamas.  Many of our country men and women and their descendants are amongst the congregation and I am therefore doubly pleased to join you here to celebrate the longevity of the church and the diversity of its existence.

I have two trains of thought as I speak to you this evening.  One is personal; the other is more generic or rooted in history.  Part of why I was anxious to come was indeed the personal.  What makes it that much more important is that part of my remit as Minister is to reach out to the communities of the Caribbean and Bahamian Diaspora as a means of strengthening the bonds between this state, this country, this city and The Bahamas.

Let me first address the personal.  I have two cousins who are members of this congregation.  Perhaps I have more but these two Cecil Fountain and Dorothy Lightbourne are perhaps closest to me.  It was at Dottie’s urging that I had to make it, possible to come.  I am really happy that I have been able to come.

The story of our relationship dates back to the very first trip that I made as a youngster to this country in 1958.  At that time, my mother flew with my younger brother and myself to New York City where Dottie’s mother and father lived with their family.  My contemporary in the family was Dottie’s sister Hilda who went to St. George's Anglican pre school with me in Nassau for a time

But like every young male, the person who you most admired was the kind of older brother figure.  For me that was Dottie’s brother Paul who I had absolute hero worship for.  I left New York with his habits, talking like him or trying to talk like him, trying to walk like him.

I think we may even have 8 millimeter film from that happy time in the summer of 1958 with my mother in New York.  This was shortly after my sister Carla was born.

Dottie’s mother Aunt Eva was like my own mother.  I grew up calling her Aunt Eva.  Her mother and Dottie’s grandmother was Maude Johnson new Hanna.  Aunt Maude was like my grandmother.  My own grandmother Gwendolyn died in 1943.  I never knew her.  My mother was therefore very close to Dottie’s grandmother and we saw Aunt Maude virtually every day of our early lives.

Cecile is the granddaughter of Nora Hanna.  Nora Hanna is also my grandaunt.  It is interesting that Robert Hanna, my great-grandfather had five daughters.  One predeceased him, but the four surviving daughters each had one daughter each.  Of that group of daughters not one of them survive today with the last one Dame Albertha Isaacs dying in 1997.  Of the girls that survived their mothers, only Althea Huyler and Cecile’s mother Lady Alicia Fountain survive today.

My mother and Dottie’s mother have both passed away.

One of my fondest memories of life with Dottie is of course Christmas of 1971 when I spent Christmas with her and her husband and family in their home in the Bronx New York.  It was the first Christmas that I had ever spent abroad and I remember it like it was being at my own home.

So you can see that we are close, close cousins.  I am therefore quite happy to be here, and happy that they feel proud enough to cause you to invite me here.

But I am also here in a public capacity.  I am the Minister of Foreign Affairs for The Bahamas.  It is our responsibility to keep the contacts with the Bahamian community abroad, and with the wider Caribbean Diaspora.  That is why I was interested in seeing the list of persons who are members of this church from across the Caribbean Sea, Latin America and Africa.  Dottie’s grandmother Maude was a strict Anglican.  She lived a stones’ throw away from St. George's Church in what we call The Valley in Nassau.  St. George’s was also a mission church of St. Matthew’s in Nassau like St. Margaret’s was also a mission church of St, Matthew’s.  St. Margaret’s is a companion church of this church.

The Anglican Church was the way that many Caribbean people helped to preserve their connections and their culture when they moved decades ago to a strange land.  They came to America for economic upliftment, and they were able to nurture their sense of home and roots by meeting others of God's people in celebrating their similar British traditions in the United States of America.   St. Agnes Church in Overtown is one of the examples of that for Bahamians.

The Church is also the gathering point for Caribbean communities.  The Bahamas government supports the efforts of Caribbean people everywhere to work together in community, and support the efforts of Bahamians to work toward protecting their own cultural heritage but also working in concert with other Caribbean, Latin and African people gathered in these communities.  So it is also in this second sense that I am very happy to be here.

On 31st May, the mantle of leadership of the Caribbean Group of Foreign Ministers fell to me.  I am the Chairman of the 13 member group of Caribbean Foreign Ministers called the Council for Foreign and Community relations or COFCOR.  This is a special honour for The Bahamas, and we met recently in Ft. Lauderdale as a group with the Secretary of State for the United States Condoleezza Rice.   It was a good meeting and the region has pledged to work with the United States Government toward convening a regional conference on the future of the Caribbean.  Where will the Caribbean be 10 years from now.

All countries in the region have as a part of their national policies maintaining relations with the  Diaspora of  Caricom nationals in this and other countries.  It is imperative that we all keep in touch with our nationals.  It is imperative that we all work together to cause our nationals to maintain their contacts with home and work toward the strengthening of our home countries.

Next week I will travel to Washington to speak as the head of COFCOR to a breakfast with a U.S. Congressional Group on issues facing the  Caribbean.  I will take with me the story of St. Kevin’s and the work of the people of this congregation toward supporting the forward work of the region.  I wish to  give you every encouragement.

I think that your history of struggle as a congregation, mirrors the history of the struggles of Caribbean peoples in this region.  Caribbean peoples have made and continue to make a great contribution to the development of this state and of this city and of this country.  This is widely acknowledged at the highest levels of the United States Government.

And so once again, I wish to congratulate you on this important anniversary.  I thank you most sincerely for inviting me to come, and I look forward to coming again soon, thank you Dottie and Cecile for causing this invitation, and God Bless you all.