‘Hoolie’ Seymour: the epitome of the real Bahamas

(For The Punch – Issue 12 January 2012)

In each community, in New Providence and no doubt in the Family Islands, there has always existed a mainstream circle of male friends who come together at no designed, agreed or specified time to share memories of what used to be and what has transpired as a result, and to hold forth on the present passing scene.

They have traditionally been of diverse political and religious persuasions, mostly older men who have passed through several generations and have experienced all the changing scenes of life in The Bahamas, stretching far before the coming of majority rule in 1967.

When one passes there is a void, a vacuum, a terrible dent in the fabric of the fraternity, but the group moves on in a kind of wordless understanding that they have indeed over the years become a peculiar group.

This is about Kenneth Aaron Seymour, part of a Grant’s Town group of sporting,game-playing enthusiasts, who passed away last December. But let us first delve into the nature of such groups in Grant’s Town through the generations.

Most weekday afternoons down Blue Hill Road under an ageless seagrape tree, there has for years existed an interesting convention of older Bahamian men engaged in a hotly contested game of dominos.

The tree, located immediately south of Rodgers Corner, has a network of leaves so thick that residents underneath could easily withstand medium rainfall, especially when it came at a critical juncture of the game when quitting was beyond the thinking of any of the challengers, or the ever-present audience hovering.

Among the group of players there is a steady contingent of locals – older gentlemen who reside in the general Grant’s Town or Bain Town area, and who obviously find delight in spending leisure time in the company of old friends, playing or observing, and often engaging in casual conversation about the passing scene or the trend of current activities.

 From time to time the group is joined by game-playing zealots from outside the immediate community but who for years have added refreshing colour and challenge to the gathering. enthusiasts

These have included such as the Rev. Addison Turnquest, the unconventional Anglican priest some referred to as the Ayatollah, who, interestingly and obviously with the sanction of the late Anglican bishop Michael Eldon, contested a seat for the Free National Movement in the 1982 general elections.

Another fierce regular contender is attorney Sir Cyril Fountain, who once served as the Member of Parliament for North Long Island, then went on to become a justice of the Supreme Court. He ended up as Supreme Court Justice.

Over the years the gathering has been a sort of continuation of traditional male camaraderie in historic Grant’s Town. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, when the late MP Spurgeon Bethel operated Neely’s Bar at Rodgers Corner and Blue Hill Road, men used to gather to play Awari* and discuss the leading topics of the day.

Even more celebrated than that was the traditional gathering of men, led by the late, prolific undertaker Gerald Dean, playing Awari, dominos and checkers outside the Cotton Tree Bar farther up Blue Hill Road opposite the Southern Recreation Grounds.

Of historic interest is the fact that it was there at the front of the Cotton Tree Bar back in June 1942, as the Burma Road riot was bubbling, that the Provost Marshall officially read the Riot Act, declaring a dusk to dawn curfew.

Of course the centrepiece of that Grant’s Town male comradeship was the great silk cotton tree which was located on the eastern side of Blue Hill Road between Lewis and Cameron Streets, a half block south of St. Agnes Church, with its sprawling roots extending to the middle of the road, so that at that point traffic often became one-way.

There especially on Sunday mornings the men gathered to have their shoes shined by the legendary Ralph and his small team of workers. There the men, some of them leading professionals inside and beyond the community, debated the large and fatal issues.

The men, just about all of them now passed into eternity, included such as Members of the House of Assembly Bert Cambridge and Dr. C.R. Walker, Gerald Dean, Robert Turnquest, Spurgeon Bethel, Booze Rodgers, Big Hutch, Earl “Bing” Cambridge, Randol Fawkes, Jim Russell, and on occasion the quite knowing and loquacious Dr. Cleveland Eneas. 

Sometimes they debated well past noon, when the bell at St. Agnes would begin pealing, announcing the termination of the 10.30 a.m. Service, and it was not unusual for the church’s rector, Canon Milton Cooper, in his flowing black robe, to venture over to catch a piece of the action.

That had been the nature of Grant’s Town up through the years, where the men, their day’s work finished, would often gather for a game, for hearty argument and chatter, and, most of them, for a little of what St. Paul noted was good for the stomach’s sake.

It yet continues today under the seagrape tree, even though, from time to time, a member of that venerable band slips away forever.

That happened on 16 December last year, when Kenneth Aaron Seymour, who seemed always to light up all of Grant’s town, slipped into eternity following a bout with cancer. On 22 December, a handful of days before Christmas, his funeral services were held at his home Church of St. Mary the Virgin. .

He had been born in Cat Island in 1931, and at his homegoing service the sermon was delivered by the Rev. Canon Warren Rolle, a fellow Cat Islander, who had served as rector of St. Mary’s until 2007.

 A proud product of the old Government High School in Nassau Court, Kenneth Seymour, long called “Hoolie” by his friends, was one of those articulate Bahamians who, from boyhood, read voraciously, and in later years enjoyed watching films of worth and value.

It was no doubt he spoke with a stentorian tongue, his tenor and diction rising and falling according to the statement or the message it was his intent to convey. In that regard he often reminded one of classical educators like Rosalie “Rosa” Smith, Mildred Dillette, and headmaster Theodore Glover.

 It was no wonder that in the late 1940s and early 1950s he became keenly interested in plays written by then John Taylor, who had grown up in St. Mary’s Church. He began assisting in the stage work of the performances, which took place usually in St. Benedict’s Hall on the grounds of The Priory on West Street.

 Those were John Taylor’s productions of such as “Man with Maid”, “Gaolbird”, “Columbus”. and “O, Absolom”, and the main players were usually Calvin Cooper, Matthew Sawyer, Gertrude Gibson, and Sylvia Coakley.

Eventually John Taylor went off to New York to study, especially theatre, at Columbia University. However he switched to Theology instead, and was eventually ordained as a deacon and then a priest in the Episcopal Church.

In 1956 Fr. Taylor returned to The Bahamas, and eventually became a curate at St. Agnes Church in Grant’s Town, under Canon Milton Cooper. In 1958 he wrote a play,“The House on Calamity Street” for performance on the stage at St. Agnes Schoolroom. His carefully chosen cast included Kenneth Seymour, Edwin Archer, Frederica Turnquest, Gertrude Gibson, Cynthia Love, and The White Boy.

Years later after Fr. Taylor had returned to the U.S. And served in several churches there, he again returned to The Bahamas, and was attached to St. Mary’s. Whilst he was there St. Agnes observed its 150^th anniversary of Dedication, and the rector, Archdeacon William Thompson, requested Fr. Taylor to write an appropriate play to mark the occasion.

Thus came the historic work, “Agnes of Rome”, which Fr. Taylor personally directed. Among his chosen cast was his old standby, Kenneth Seymour. That was 1991 when Hoolie was 60 and still strutting his powerful stuff across the stage, which on that occasion was the Lower Gardens of Government House.

Often in Grant’s Town when he was not playing dominos, Hoolie would chat happily abut the old days and the thrill of theatre. It was a thrill, he used to remind, second only to his service, wherever required, in the sanctuary of St. Mary’s Church, right up until last summer, even when his health was failing.

Today in Grant’s Town, Hoolie is already missed as that exuberant, silver-haired fixture with the stentorian voice who enjoyed the company of his fellow Bahamians, who was once toasted as as outstanding thespian on he local stage, and who, for all his 80 years enjoyed every cycle of his colourful life.

 Kenneth Aaron “Hoolie” Seymour was truly the stuff of which the real Bahamas is made . . . for what it’s worth.

* AWARI: An abstract African game also known as the “African Bean Game”.

“Awari is an ancient game originating from Africa which consists of 12 holes in the ground (called houses) split up into 2 rows of 6. Designed for two players, each player selects a row as their territory. Each house starts with 4 seeds in it.” READ MORE

>> Read more about and PLAY ONLINE HERE

Memorable deaths and funerals we have known

(For The Punch – Issue 18 July 2011)
THE WHITE FILE by P.  Anthony White

 The people who pretend that dying is rather like strolling into
the next room always leave me unconvinced.
Death, like birth, must be a tremendous event.
~ J. B. Priestley ~

          Up through the years many writers, and especially poets, equally in former times and in the present, have had a morbid, incessant obsession with death, cemeteries, and the afterlife.

           Yes, even here in The Bahamas we live day after day, week after week with death and funerals, and, like the Irish who have always been passionate about death, wakes and funerals, death is hardly ever simply a passionate episode.

           Perhaps the most demonstrative example of that morbid, incessant obsession with death, funerals and cemeteries was the quite lengthy 19^th century poem by the English writer Thomas Gray titled ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.

           In that work, the poet actually took his time walking through a cemetery in Stokes Poges in England, pausing to comment on what might have been in th elife of  the person buried there. At one point he paused to write:

 “Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.”

            We recall back in 1959 how when we were only a youngster at school in New York the late American jazz singer Billie Holliday passed away after a long and tragic battle with drug addiction.

          They organised a memorial service  for the occasion, held on Riker’s Island, which sits in the East or Harlem River, midway between, between Manhattan and Queen’s. Thousands turned out and under the food lights paid endless tributes to an ebony songstress who had turn out simply and ruinously to have become an angel flying too close to the ground.

          Then around midnight came the announcement over the loudspeakers that they were about to turn off all the lights, and invited all in the audience to light a match or flick on a cigarette lighter. In the bleak blackness thousands of little lights flickered, and from the speakers came Perry Como’s voice intoning that haunting song:

It is better to light just one little candle,
Than to stumble in the dark!
Better far that you light just one little candle,
All you need’s a tiny spark!

If we’d all say a prayer that the world would be free,
The wonderful dawn of a new day we’ll see!
And, if everyone lit just one little candle,
What a bright world this would be!

          It was a sad, sombre, and  serene scenario in a city which seldom knew utter peace and quietude, but those who were there will never forget New York on that touching occasion when the death of a black megastar singer practically brought to tears the city that never slept.

          There was another occasion in Brooklyn in New York back in the 1960s when a beautiful Bahamian girl from East Street perished tragically.

          Ethel King was truly, as they say in modern parlance, drop dead gorgeous. She was part of the great King family of East Street, which had deep roots in Cat Island. Her sisters were Octavia, former registrar of insurance companies, and Gladys who, like Ethel, had migrated to New York.

           A brother, Roy, had studied law in New York and eventually became a judge in Rochester in upstate New York.

          Ethel had had an unsuccessful marriage to Percy Pinder Jr., son of the entrepreneurial elder Percy Pinder who in fact had been the first to build and operate a movie theatre Over-the-Hill. After she and Percy separated she used to be frequently on the arm of the late Ernest Strachan, then employed in the French Department of the United Nations, before he returned in Nassau to become Chief of Protocol for the Bahamas Government.

           Ethel took a job in Manhattan and was living in an apartment in Brooklyn. The full story will probably be never known, but there was apparently a young Puerto Rican fellow who fell desperately in love with Ethel who, it seemed, was not interested.

          Once morning as she left her apartment for work, walking through the basement of the building, the young fellow accosted Ethel and perhaps for the last time pleaded for her heart. According to the New York Amsterdam News, when she again spurned him he opened fire on her with a handgun, and then turned the weapon on himself.

          The two were discovered lying next to each other on the ground of the basement.

           The funeral for Ethel, who had grown up in St. Agnes in New Providence, was held not long afterwards at the Episcopal church of St. Mark’s  in Brooklyn. The little church was packed with Bahamians living in New York, and scores of others who travelled to the city for the sad occasion. Among that Nassau contingent was Lynden Oscar Pindling.

          Back in New Providence some years later – in early 1969 – there occurred the death of  a bright and promising young thespian who had striven since his teenage years to master 6the stage in The Bahamas and in so doing to bring along other youngsters with a yearning for the footlights.

          Basil Eric Antonio Saunders was a truly ambitious lad who quietly felt his reach should always exceed his grasp. After studies in London he returned to The Bahamas and began teaching English and drama in the public school system, whilst, along with The White Boy who had been his childhood histrionic partner, continued acting, producing and directing. At one point he had a stint as an insurance agent, but his heart was never really in it.

          Yet at an early age B.E.A., as many referred to him, developed diabetes, and at only 31 years old he passed away. The town was stunned that one so young, so talented, so brilliant, so filled with a lust for life should have been plucked so prematurely from that life.

          It seemed half that town showed up at St. Agnes Church for one of the most mournful yet flambouyant funerals seen in Grant’s Town, after which he was buried in the extreme northern section of the church’s cemetery on Nassau Street next to Gibbs Lane. To mark the occasion The White Boy penned and published a poem on the life of Basil Saunders. The final stanza read thus:

“Now up against the northern wall

where friendly footsteps seldom fall,

when others last to withered end,

you’ll still be smiling, childlike, Friend.”

The community was in a dither back in early May of 1990 with the passing of Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield who had for some years been afflicted with cancer. As Leader of the Opposition he had been  treated at home and abroad at the expense of the Bahamas Government, and had returned home to carry on his political assignment as best he could.

          He died in a Florida hospital surrounded by family and political colleagues. In the Free National Movement there was widespread speculation about the future leadership configurations of the party, especially since general elections were just over two years away.

          Orville Turnquest was at the time deputy leader of the party. That was about six years after Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie had been fired from the PLP cabinet of  Sir Lynden Pindling. Ingraham, then an independent Member of Parliament, had thrown his parliamentary support behind the FNM.

          Whitfield had pretty much handpicked  Ingraham as his successor, and subsequently the party’s Central Council concurred.

          The ornate funeral was held at Christ Church Cathedral, and amongst those paying  tribute to his old childhood friend and political nemesis was Sir Lynden. The interment was in the Eastern Cemetery, where his father, Kenneth Whitfield, was buried a few years earlier.

          Of course ten years later, in 2000. Sir Lynden himself succumbed to prostate cancer, and after some deliberation the decision was made to have the funeral services conducted at the Church of God on East Street.

          Following the funeral,  at which Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham spoke, there was a massive procession – joined in by political friend and foe alike – down East Street, west on Wulff Road, north on Blue Hill Road, then west on Meeting Street to St. Agnes Cemetery on Nassau Street.

          There the body was received by then Anglican bishop Drexel Gomez and St. Agnes rector the late Fr. Patrick Johnson, assisted by The White Boy. Afterwards Sir Lynden was entombed in a special and imposing mausoleum in the cemetery.

          Bahamians have over the years continued to have a fascination for funerals in all their forms and fashions, and it never really matters the identity of the deceased if there is something special about the arrangements.

          A few years ago with the brutal murder of fashion designer Harl Taylor, mortician Ted Sweeting introduced to The Bahamas an interesting new embalming trend imported from the United States, whereby in the viewing room of the funeral home the full-clothed body was sitting in a chair in front of a desk with pen in hand as if engaged in work.

           For two days it seemed the whole Bahamas had beaten a path to Sweeting’s Colonial Mortuary on Blue Hill Road just to have a view of the fantastical scene.

          And so death, wakes, funerals and the celebrations afterwards are still rudimentary parts of Bahamian life, and will perhaps persist in that way for hundreds of years, so long as Bahamians continue to be born, to live, and to die.

Finding Peace Against the Raging Tide of Politics

P. Anthony

THE WHITE FILE For The Punch – 20 December 2010

by P. Anthony White

General elections, in The Bahamas tend to bring out the “ugly” in Bahamians who take the issue perhaps far too seriously, forgetting that there will come tomorrow when, like it or not, they will have no choice but to live with one another.

We remember a situation back in 2007 just after that year’s general elections, in which the Free National Movement had emerged victorious. There was bitter resentment on the part of some supporters of the losing Progressive Liberal Party, especially the young.

One evening in the upstairs bistro in Coconut Grove, the old fellow who was always hanging loose there chalked up his cue stick as he prepared to break the balls for a game of pool with his young police friend from Hospital Lane.

Nearby his nubile young lady, resplendent in a pair of tight-fitting blue jeans and a blouse the colour of brilliant morning sunshine sat sipping a tall glass of Mother Pratt and cranberry juice, watching the man with a deep love and adoration which seemed to bloom with intensity each passing day.

It was twenty-seven days after the general elections, and yet among a group of young fellows playing dominoes in the northeast corner of the establishment there was raging an argument over the outcome of those tempestuous polls.

The old fellow shook his head from side to side with a mixture of disgust and sadness across his brow as he broke the balls, sending the yellow six into a corner pocket as his young opponent chalked up.

On the television monitor above the bar where the buxom barmaid stood with her hands under her chin there was projected the PPV movie, The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith.

The other set in the room was tuned to ZNS TV-13, which was carrying a live broadcast of the 72^nd annual session of the Bahamas Baptist National Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention from St. John’s Cathedral of Native Baptists on Meeting Street.

In the corner as a young man dressed in a flaming red T-shirt with the message “It’s A Matter of Trust” slammed a domino tile on the table, he blurted out, “Take that. You’all PLPs ain’t never going to accept that cut hip we done give you’ll.”

“Accept? Accept that you’all done tief some seats and now you’all won’t give the PLP all our Senate seats?” That was one of the other young men at the domino table, as none of them, amazingly, missed a beat in the game.

“Hey, you fellows don’t start that s— in here again,” the barmaid shouted. “The election finish so just go back to what was happening before May 2^nd. Play nice now.”

It was as if she were scolding a couple of youngsters running around the schoolyard, but then that was pretty much reflective of the general attitude in far too many parts of the community these days.

The old fellow listened to the exchange in seething silence as his young pool partner shot fruitlessly.

Then the two of them paused and, along with his amused young lover, set their gaze on the television and the Baptist convention broadcast where, ironically, the subject was peace and national unity following the recent elections.

There bringing greetings to the assembled delegates and guests in the ancient and historic church was the new Minister of National Security and Immigration Tommy Turnquest.

Said the Minister: “This 72^nd Convention comes at a very propitious time in the life of our country, because it is a time when, more that ever in recent times, The Commonwealth of The Bahamas stands urgently in need of healing and of the divine intervention of Almighty God.”

Understandably, that passage completely passed the young fellows playing dominoes and continuing their ferocious political argument centred on the results of the election.

The only difference was that they were now talking in softer tones following the chastisement of the barmaid, who was by this time herself glued to the convention on television.

“Yinna tief Blue Hills,” one said.

Another retorted, “Yeah? Well everybody know you’re tief MICAL.”

“Well, everybody know . . . ”

The old fellow could take it no longer. Slamming the cue ball hard on the table, he bellowed.

“Everybody shut your goddam traps and come over here and listen to what they’re saying to you.”

None of the young fellows moved, but halted their domino game and turned to watch the convention from their corner of the room.

They continued to exchange angry whispers through the remarks by the president of the Bahamas Methodist Conference, and then through a concert piece by a young Baptist band. The old man had sat next to his lady, holding her slim wrist as together they watched.

The preacher was the immediate past president of the Bahamas Christian Council, and in addition to calling for political reform and public disclosure of campaign donations, he too voiced the need for healing and unity.

Neglecting such healing at this time, Rev. William Thompson said, would remain at the nation’s peril.

Only two days earlier when he addressed the Bahamas Christian Council’s National Service of Repentance, Healing and Unity, the Anglican Archbishop of the West Indies had implored Bahamians to stop fighting over the May 2^nd elections.

On that occasion the Most Reverend Drexel Gomez noted:

“Although (the) election is resolved, people are still fighting the election, and we have to leave the election behind us.”

Archbishop Gomez warned that The Bahamas has allowed politics to “get out of hand.”

They were all preaching abiding truths – the highly-placed politicians, the church leaders, the editorial writers, even common folk like the sage old man hanging loose in Mother Pratt’s constituency – and there was no doubt whatsoever that they were perhaps practicing that peace and unity at their respective levels.

Indeed the wonderful spectre of the assemblage in the front row at St. John’s Church last that night – the Governor-General, the Leader of the Opposition, the Minister of National Security and Immigration, and alongside and behind them Government and Opposition parliamentarians – bespoke utter peace and unity.

But how far and how swiftly and how effectively was that message traveling? Who was then and is today taking a firm stand among the corridors of the simple and the unlettered, as in that corner of the upstairs bistro and saying with some authority and finality, enough is enough, and then taking the time to explain exactly why?

Rev. William Thompson was still preaching when the old fellow donned his hat and took his young lady to the front door. He had voted proudly for the FNM on May 2^nd, and she, well, she was a proud member of the Progressive Young Liberals.

“You fellows finish listening to what the man telling you on TV,” he said, then put his arm around the slim waist as he and his young love walked down the stairs, together into the night.

Those two, at least, were enjoying sweet peace, perfect peace.