The Tribune

AT 4 o’clock on Tuesday, November 8, the bells of Christ Church Cathedral will ring out as those who were fortunate enough to know Hugh Gordon Sands crowd the stately structure where this great Bahamian will be put to rest, his life story recounted, his contributions memorialized.

Speeches will overflow with all his accomplishments, the many firsts he achieved from his days as the only island black on a college team in the teeth-chattering freezing pre-dawn mornings of rowing practice in the UK to his years in Education, from his position as headmaster of THE Government High to his leap into the private sector and his meteoric rise to first Bahamian to head Barclay’s Bank for the Bahamas and Caribbean region. He’ll be remembered for his service as chairman of both Bank of The Bahamas when the institution became the first to recognize that Bahamians deserved trust services, just as they had been providing for ex-pats, to his simultaneous chairmanship of the College of The Bahamas. Posthumously, he will be thanked over and over for there is hardly a segment of Bahamian culture or life that this mild-mannered, strong-willed, thoughtful man named Hugh Sands did not touch. I wish I could be there for the accolades, though I know I would be awash in tears as I was when I learned of his death on October 27.

What they won’t see is a man who walked into my office one day after asking if he could drop off something to me and left me with his life story to tell.

“I’ve kept these newspaper clippings and a few copies of remarks I made and I don’t know if they amount to anything,” he said humbly, “but maybe when you have time you could take a look…”

So the cardboard boxes sat for a while, tucked away in a corner where they would not interfere with an already overloaded things-to-do-or-die mental list.

Then one Saturday, I opened the first carton and spread the papers out and Hugh Sands came to life on that old emerald green carpet on the office floor.

The first thing that fell out was this poem he wrote at the start of a new year. These are his words exactly as he penned them in the poem he called NINETEEN NINETY SEVEN:

I AM GLAD

I AM RELIEVED

I AM DELIGHTED.

A BIRD

HAS TAKEN FLIGHT.

I HAD WATCHED FOR AN HOUR

MY INITIAL IMPRESSION

THE BIRD HAD DIED

SO STILL IT SAT.

WAS NINETEEN NINETY SEVEN

TO BE LIKE THIS?

THEN IT TURNED ITS HEAD

TO MY RELIEF.

NOT DYING IT LAY

BUT NEWBORN

GATHERING STRENGTH

FOR ITS FLIGHT OF LIFE.

4th January 1997.

The movement of a bird’s wings reassured this highly-accomplished man that when the world seemed a little too quiet, it was just gaining strength. There was a sensitivity about Hugh Sands that ought to be remembered in that church service today where other men may be able to reflect on what real manhood looks like.

That poem was just the beginning of a tour into his wholeness as a human. Each of the news clippings told a different story and if you read closely enough, you could find a lesson that he could share with the child or grandchild who would understand it best or need it most.

He knew every grandchild’s strength or worry, he appreciated them as the unique individuals they were, he pictured their long lives hoping he could help contribute a little richness of content gleaned from his, like leftovers that get better when the flavours settle.

Before the cartons that sat in the corner of my office, I had known Hugh Sands as chairman of BOB and COB.

Over the next few years, I learned how special he truly was, how much he worshipped and adored his wife, June, how much he cared about his family as he did about his country, how hard what seemed easy on the outside to accomplish really was.

My heart goes out to his widow, to his children and grandchildren who made his heart soar. To each he wrote a personal chapter in the book published just for them, The Sands of Time.

Here is the introduction:

I am older than I was before.

It is true that we all are. But there is something about reaching your 70s, as I have, that makes you more aware of how much time went before and how much is left ahead. It was during a sunset, a particularly sensational evening when the Bahamian sun danced its daily descent gently dropping down to the horizon and lighting up the sky with colours of salmon, pink and orange as if to say ‘I am not leaving this day without leaving you with a memory of my farewell’ that I began to think of not leaving without leaving you, my loved ones, some memory of what my days had been and what lessons I had learned, not so colourful and brilliant as the sun but with quiet meaning that may make some of your decisions easier and your dance at the end of the day more meaningful.

I tried to write these memoirs myself but maybe I was too close. In the end, I asked someone else to assist and with a sigh of relief, dumped the box of writings, poetry, academic reports and even a few speeches and articles about me off to a friend’s office. It was best, I thought, to trust them to a writer. Maybe they were of no value whatsoever. If they were of any worth, I just wanted to share them for personal reasons with those I cared about and loved deeply, you.

To my incredible wife, June, my accomplished children and my grandchildren, each of you so individual with your own personalities as if you were all born to stand on your own two feet, these memoirs are for you. If anyone else reads them and takes something away from them that makes them feel warmer, happier, more at peace with themselves than they were before, that is an added blessing.

Rest in peace, Hugh Gordon Sands, rest in peace. You have given all you ever needed to give and we are all better off for it.