My friend Courtney Strachan, businessman, Kiwanian and former Chair of the Antiquities Commission, died three days ago a victim of the current pandemic. He was 66 years old and man of great wisdom, compassion and knowledge. This is personally sad but on a wider scale we are losing so many of the mature generation with the knowledge and institutional memory of our country. This threatens the stability of our nation. We must pray for our nation today as we visit our various worship spaces.
In our Fox Hill Community this past week we also lost a number of our prominent, mature citizens. Richard Rahming of Step Street, one of our country’s foremost experts in explosives. We lost Mrs. Delano Knowles, the widow of the late Apache Knowles, of Davis Street.
They carry to their graves a wealth of history and institutional and community knowledge.
So today I share with you the music of Aretha Franklin. She sings Mary Don’t You Weep. Taken from the passage of the story in the gospel of St John Chapter 11 where Jesus raises Lazarus from the grave and his sisters said ” Master if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Later on in Chapter 11 he says ” I am the resurrection and the life. No one comes to the father but by me.”
Let us together remember those today I have listed who have fallen and some of our church leaders of Fox Hill Bishop Austin Saunders, Bishop John L Ferguson, Pastor David Johnson, Monsignor Preston Moss, Canon David Pugh, Rev Enoch Backford who have all preceded us.
I am sure there are many others.
Let us live as a people with the hope and the expectation, we shall meet them again.
Senator Fred Mitchell
Chairman
Progressive Liberal Party
25 October 2020
