The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

NO-one imagined that Dr Anthony Dahl’s retirement to Cat Island would abruptly and tragically end in death just days after he arrived there.

The 71-year-old ordained priest and “nomad”, as his sister Dr Merceline Dahl-Regis remembered him, was killed when a scooter he was driving crashed into a utility pole on Queen’s Highway.

Dahl travelled all over the world, was highly educated and was a well-known professor of languages at Spelman College in Atlanta where he spent more than 20 years.

Perhaps this is why initial reports coming from police and from those on the island insisted that Dahl was an American man who was the victim of Saturday’s traffic fatality.

He was also ordained as a priest in Santiago, Chile, but made up his mind he’d spend the rest of his days living the island life either in Cat Island or Andros, since he spent many days there as a child, his sister said.

So it was no surprise to relatives when the former chairman of Spelman College’s Department of World Languages & Literature announced he would go to the island to see how he would adjust to life there.

While relatives urged that he purchase a car to get around, he insisted a vehicle would be far too much maintenance and instead bought a scooter or motorcycle and headed to Cat Island last Tuesday.

“It is all so sudden you know,” Dr Dahl-Regis told The Tribune just two days after his death.

“As I understand it when he retired from Spelman he went intoa seminary in Boston and he was ordained in Santiago, Chile of all places. Then he came home six weeks ago and he said he wasn’t minded to go back to Chile, but he wanted to retire in the Family Islands and his choices were either Andros or Cat Island because that’s where we spent time as children.

“So in Cat Island the accommodations he found were in Orange Creek where he could stay for two months and he said he would see how that goes before he looked for something more permanent and so he left on Tuesday and we said to him ‘you are going to need transport on the Family Islands, get a car’ so he says no he doesn’t want the maintenance of a car so he went and bought either a scooter or a motorbike and put it on the boat.

“And on Saturday morning he sent a text to his people in Atlanta that he was going to go for a long ride and that was round about 9.30.”

This was the last time he spoke with anyone, Dr Dahl-Regis said.

She and other relatives believe he was attempting to avoid crashing into an oncoming vehicle on Queen’s Highway when he ran into a utility pole.

Despite the nature of his death, she told The Tribune this was probably the way he would have wanted it.

Relatives are also grateful the incident happened here in the country and not somewhere else around the world where Dr Dahl spent much of his life.

Over the weekend police reported an American man had died in the accident.

They did not release an identity but said shortly before noon a man was driving a motorcycle north along Queen’s Highway in the Smith’s Bay settlement when he lost control and crashed into the pole.

He received serious injuries, police said, and was taken to the community clinic in Smith’s Bay where he later died. Officers from the Royal Bahamas Police Force’s Traffic Division are expected to travel to the island to continue investigations into this incident.

This is believed to be the first traffic fatality on Cat Island for the year.