Oswald Brown Writes

By OSWALD T. BROWN

I just signed on to “The No Spin Zone” Facebook blog a short while ago, and I’m amazed at the number of comments my brief comment on Mario Scott Bannister’s posting on the sale of BTC has generated.

None of the members of the FNM’s HATE BRIGADE commented on the substance of what I wrote; rather, they have continued to attack me with scurrilous and vile untruths about my personal life, specifically suggesting that I was responsible for the death of one wife and the attempted murder of another. I have been ignoring these libelous accusations, but I think that it is time to set the record straight on these attempts by FNM operatives to impugn my reputation and sully my good name.

I have been married three times. My first wife, Camille, whom I married in 1973, was from Washington, D.C. She was a teacher in The Bahamas for two years, but she did not like The Bahamas and this is why we moved to Washington, D.C. in 1975. Camille and I divorced in 1978. She later remarried and to the best of my knowledge she is still living with husband and children in Maryland.

I remained single for many years, but in 1990 I met a remarkably wonderful and beautiful young lady from Liberia, West Africa. Enid Gbenyon’s parents were very prominent in Liberia, and her father on different occasions served as Liberia’s ambassador to Italy and Switzerland. Because of Liberia’s troubled political history, resulting in governments being changed several times as a result of political coups, Enid’s family entered the United States as political refugees. Enid was an extremely smart individual, with a master’s degree in economics.

When the FNM won the general election in 1992 and I decided to return to The Bahamas, we made plans to be married in a “couple years” after I had resettled in The Bahamas. Unfortunately, things did not work out as I had planned and I returned to D.C. in 1994. However, in 1996, I decided to return to The Bahamas permanently and a year later, Enid and I were married in Alexandria, Virginia, where her parents resided.

Once here in The Bahamas, despite her qualifications in economics, she was unable to find a job and she always teased me about the political contacts I was supposed to have in the then FNM government. Her resume was widely distributed and I made numerous personal contacts with individuals that I thought could assist. The only positive response she received was from Tennyson Wells, who offered her a job with a “postal business” he owned or had shares in. She rejected this offer.

We lived in an apartment complex across from Saunders Beach, and as Editor of The Nassau Guardian at the time, as I usually did, I went into the office one Saturday morning to write an editorial for Monday’s paper. Enid was not home when I returned that afternoon, and did not come home throughout the night. Early the next morning I went to the police station and reported my concerns. Her body was found floating in the water off Saunders Beach later that day and her death was ruled as accidental drowning.

My third marriage was to Dr. Jean Turnquest, who is still practicing psychiatry in Freeport, Grand Bahama. We separated almost five years ago. The FNM’s HATE BRIGADE repeatedly accuses me on Facebook of attempting to kill her during a trip to Jamaica. We had gone to Jamaica to attend a wedding in December of 2006 and on New Year’s Eve we were driving up in the mountains (there were five of us in the car – Jane and I, her daughter Vanessa and Cindy and her daughter Alex, two friends from Boston) and a bus with tourists was coming down the narrow mountain road.

I pulled on the side to allow the bus to pass, and when I tried to pull off after the bus had passed, the car skidded on some wet leaves, and if it weren’t for some huge bamboo trees growing out of the side of the mountain, the car most certainly would have plunged over the side of the mountain and we would have all been killed. But God is good. We all got out of the car safely and some Jamaicans from a near-by village helped to pull the car back on to the road. I remember that I was so grateful that I gave them all the Jamaican money I had in my pocket (I think it was around $9,000 ¬– given the then rate of exchange about 120 American dollars) and when we got back to the hotel, we had a wonderful New Year’s Eve.

I don’t know where the rumour started that I tried to kill Jean in Jamaica, but since only five of us were in the car, I’m assuming it must have originated from someone who was in the car. Nonetheless, it’s a blatant lie. Besides, would I try to kill myself? Surely, had the car gone over the cliff, we would have all been dead.

I do not expect that this brief, but accurate, “review” of my marital history will stop the FNM’s HATE BRIGADE from spreading their rumours, but I thought it necessary to set the record straight because I’m fully aware that rumours repeated over and over eventual become “facts” to evil and hateful people who wish you harm.