By Lloyd Hezekiah
On Independence Day, September 19, 2007, Premier Joseph Parry of Nevis announced that the Vance W. Amory International Airport would be extended by one thousand feet toward the direction of Nisbett Plantation. The existing airport was officially opened on September 19, 2002 by Mr. Amory, who was premier of Nevis at that time. Some Nevisians were outraged that the facility bore his name, because he was still in office and it was seen as an act of blatant self-aggrandisement. Other Nevisians were delighted because he was still in office and continued to make valuable contributions toward the development of Nevis.
Now, even prior to the construction and completion of the proposed extension, those Nevisian voices will inevitably be heard again regarding the retention of the Amory name or the selection of another individual name. To avoid such predictable contention it may be wise to look at various approaches regarding this sensitive matter, with the ultimate goal of attaining an amicable outcome. That can be accomplished if it is couched in an historic context, and specifically relates to the future economic benefit of Nevis.
Immediately after the Nevis Reformation Party (NRP) was elected in 2006 to form and govern the current Nevis Island Administration (NIA) the rumour mills churned out reports that some NRP supporters suggested/demanded that the renaming of the Airport should be included in the new government’s priority agenda. Such action would have been regarded by objectively-minded people as a personal insult to Mr. Amory and the public humiliation of a respected public servant. Premier Parry commendably declined to adopt such an action, as it would have precipitated unnecessary turmoil in the body politic. He superbly exemplified that mature and responsible statesmanship often requires a hand that holds a feather rather than a sledgehammer.
Rumours are again floating around Nevis that the NIA eventually intends to rename the airport to honour Dr. Simeon Daniel, that unrivalled giant of Nevisian political life.
Several Caricom countries have named airports to honour esteemed public figures. In Bequia, John F. Mitchell Airport; in Antigua, V.C. Bird Airport; in Barbados, Grantley Adams Airport; in Guyana, Cheddi Jagan Airport; in Haiti, Toussaint l’ Ouverture Airport; in Jamaica, Norman Manley & Donald Sangster Airports; in St. Kitts, Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw Airport; in St. Lucia, George Charles Airport; in St. Vincent, E.T Joshua Airport; in Surinam. Johan Pengel Airport; in Nevis, Vance W. Amory Airport.
All of these individuals impacted their countries’ reputation and development. Their names are important to the citizens of these respective countries, to residents of the wider Caribbean, and to the Caribbean diaspora in distant places. However, with all due respect to those Caricom luminaries, with the exception of Toussaint l’Ouverture, are any of those names recognizable or significant in the wider world? Is the wider world attracted to those countries to learn about them, and about the individuals whose names grace their airports? Surely it is the most expeditious and cheapest way since the creation of airport signage and the installation of the honoree’s photograph/bust/plaque is of minimal cost.
It would be a grave insult to Dr. Simeon Daniel to name the extended Nevis airport for him. His individual stature, vision and accomplishments for his beloved Nevis deserves and demands extraordinary salutation and recognition. Government officials and private individuals—regardless of their political leanings—should explore various options to achieve this.
I propose the creation of The Simeon Daniel Academic Fellowship through a legislative instrument enacted and funded by the Nevis Island Administration as a perpetual memorial to him. Each year this restricted fund would be augmented, not replaced, through fund-raising events organized by the people of Nevis, regardless of their political affiliation. Such annual events would enable all Nevisians to demonstrate personally and financially, their admiration and appreciation of Dr. Daniel’s life-long journey on their admiration and appreciation of Dr Daniel’s life- long journey on their behalf.
The Simeon Daniel Academic Fellowship would be awarded every four years to a Nevisian-born and Nevisian-schooled individual to pursue graduate degree studies in a university selected by the awarded. Dr. Daniel ought to be offered the exclusive prerogative to identify the category of the degree, such as arts, economics, education, international studies, languages, earth science, library science, political science, social science, etc.
The fellowship would underwrite the successful candidate’s degree-related costs including accommodation, books, research and publication, room and board, travel etc. After attaining the graduate degree that candidate would be contractually required to return to Nevis for a specified period of time to contribute the attained skills to the development of Nevis.
The mechanism for creating and implementing the Fellowship ought to be mapped by Dr Daniel, Premier Joseph Parry and former premier Vance Amory, and possibly by designated individuals committed to uphold the Federation’s moto, “Country above Self”. From 1980 to 2007 these three public- spirited gentlemen have respectively steered the Nevis ship of state in the direction of their individual choices. Fortunately they are all blessed with that unbiased, impartial largeness of spirit that enables them to steer the ship collectively, in calm political waters, toward the Port of Fellowship.
Should the NIA eventually decide to rename the airport, what might it be called? Should it revert to its original name “Newcastle Airport”? Should it be “Douglas Yearwood Airport” because the late family patriarch made the land available for the first airship on the island? Should it be Joseph W. Parry Airport”? What name ought to be selected?
Who is that individual whose name supersedes the degrading, infantile politics of Nevis, and personifies the above-party statesmanship for which Nevisains so desperately yearn? Only one name has swirled down from Mount Nevis and fluttered into my empty Nevisian calabash, only one name has butter flied out of it. “The Alexander Hamilton International Airport” Alexander Hamilton? Alexander Hamilton, Nevisian. Who is this man?
Alexander Hamilton was born in Nevis on January 11, 1755 and is it most illustrious son, and also one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. His incomparable achievements are documented in Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography “Alexander Hamilton” which was reviewed by David Brookes in the New York Time Book Reviewed on Sunday, April 25. 2004. One excerpt is:
“When Alexander Hamilton was 10, his father abandoned him. When he was around 12, his mother died of a fever in bed next to him. He was adopted by a cousin who promptly committed suicide. During those same years his aunt, uncle and grandmother died. A court in St. Croix seized all his possessions, sold off his personal effects and gave he rest to his mother’s first husband. By the time he was a teenager, he and his brother were orphaned, alone and destitute.
Within three years he was a successful businessman. Within a decade he was George Washington’s chief of staff, organizing the American Revolutionary Army and serving bravely in combat. Within two years he was one of New York’s most successful lawyers and had written major portions of The Federalist Papers. Within three decades he had forged the modern financial and economic systems that are the basis of American might today. Within five decades he was dead at the hands of Aaron Burr.
Alexander Hamilton was the most progressive, and the most neglected, because he was relentless climber (and nobody has unalloyed views about ambition), second because he was a great champion of commerce (and nobody had uncomplicated views about that either) and third because his bitter rivals, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams outlived him my decades and did everything they could to bury his reputation. So there is no Hamilton monument in Washington, but at least we now have Ron Chernow’s moving and masterly “Alexander Hamilton,” which is by far the best biography ever written about the man.”
The seeds of his extraordinary intellect were sewn in Nevis. They germinated in the soil of Nevis which he observed was tilled by the painful, calloused hands of enslaved Africans. Those seeds sprouted in his household, serviced by free, enforced labour of enslaved souls brutally snatched from their ancestral homelands. Those seeds blossomed during his adventurous business apprenticeship in St. Croix. And they came to sunshine fruition reflected in his ascendancy in the volatile political climate in the United States.
Childhood memories – whether of degradation or privilege—are often mental fingerprints that may stifle ambition. They may also propel ambition that evolves into indelible footprints are evident today in various places:
In Harlem. New York there is the Hamilton Heights Historic District and also Hamilton Place. There is also Hamilton Grange which was his home in Harlem and is a protected New York City Historic Landmark and also a United States National Park Service Site. Who is this “Landmark Man”? He is Alexander Hamilton, Nevisian.
Recently, during telephone conversations with officials of the Bureau of Engraving & Printing of the United States Treasury Department I learned that Hamilton’s image was first inscribed on the $10.00 Note. Who is this man whose pictorial image is touched my millions of hands all over the world today? He is Alexander Hamilton, Nevisian.
In 1812 a pre-existing educational institution in New York was renamed for him. In recent years, Hamilton College has a warded undergraduate scholarships to Nevisians such as Keithly Woolward who is now a lawyer in the state of Massachussetts. Who is that man whose family name facilitates the academic pursuits of students in the land of his birth? He is Alexander Hamilton, Nevisian.
The names of Hamilton and Nevis are in extricable linked together. In 1855 his son James constructed a mansion at Irvington-on-Hudson in New York as his private home and called it “Nevis”. That building still bears that name today and is an off-campus multi-use facility of Columbia University. In 1950, on land that adjoins the Nevis Mansion, the university opened a research center which continues to be called “Nevis Laboratories Center for Experimental Physics”. Who is this man whose family name and birth-island name are twinned with one of the most prestigious universities in the world? He is Alexander Hamilton, Nevisian.
Hamilton, a brilliant diamond of a man. Had human flaws and human secrets like everyone else. The latter related to his ancestral linage. The predominant majority of Hamilton historians are convinced that he had 100% European blood. A small minority intimates that there may be evidence to the contrary. The Butler Reference Library at Columbia University in New York, where Hamilton was once a trustee, a has a letter in its collection that he wrote to his wife Elizabeth(Eliza) presumably on February 19, 1801—“The Papers of Alexander Hamilton”, edited by Harold C.Syrett, Columbia University Press 1961-1987, Volume 25. Page 481. Ron Chernow states in his aforementioned book “One day, Hamilton was riding up to Albany to visit Eliza’s ailing sister Peggy had to choose between bringing her a pie or a basket of crabs. Upon reflection, he told Eliza, he had opted for crabs ‘Perhaps as a Creole, I had some sympathy for them.’ Twenty years before, Hamilton would never have hazarded such a flippant remark about his childhood”. The 1998 New Oxford Dictionary defines “Creole” as “a person of mixed European and black descent, especially in the Caribbean”. Who is this man with boyhood memories of Crabs and Creoles? He is Alexander Hamilton, Nevisian.
In 1785 he was founding member of the New York Manumission (anti-slavery) Society which created the African Free School in 1787, the first school in New York that black children could attend. In 1786 he served on a Society committee that issued “A Dialogue on the Slavery of Africans etc.” Ron Chernow, the author of “ Alexander Hamilton” states in Chapter Eleven, Page 216 that “ Hamilton’s name appeared on a petition that called upon the state legislature to end the New York slave trade and that deplored the plight of blacks exported ‘ like cattle and other articles of commence to the West Indies and southern state’. The petition demanded the termination of a practice ‘so repugnant to humanity and so inconsistent with the liberality of justice which should distinguish a free and enlightened people’. The late Joan Robinson (Nevis Historical& Conservation Society) observes in her 2005 book on Hamilton asks “Was his dislike of slavery due to what he might have observed when he lived just a few feet from the Charlestown slave market,….. or was it what he might have gleaned from living in the same household with his mother’s three slaves and their four children?” Who was this man who so pugnaciously and vociferously helped to ultimately extinguish the financially-rewarding torch of slavery? He is Alexander Hamilton , Nevisian.
