The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

LUKE Rolle, one of two men killed when his boat hit a reef near Rose Island on Friday, owned and operated a popular conch stand in Eleuthera.

His friends and family are now coming together to keep his business alive.

Jamal Williams-Gardiner, a close friend who helped with McGuiver’s Conch Stand, said the entire Eleuthera misses Rolle, not just the Wemyss Bight community.

He called him a “nice man to work with”.

“If you mad, just go there, he’ll have you happy, and he’s one way all the time,” he said. “I go there, help him out with the conch, skin the conch for him, trap it out, jook it out, we there talking, and he’s a MacGyver – do everything. He loved people.”

“He ga be a big miss because anything you call on, he ready to help you. If he can’t help you, he’ll tell you he can’t, but he’ll make some phone calls and be there for you.”

Mr Rolle shared the conch stand with everyone in his life, from family to friends and Eleuthera residents from all settlements on the island. His children contributed to running the business.

Mr Williams-Gardiner said since the death, he has talked to a sibling of Mr Rolle about running the conch stand.

“He said once the wife give him an okay, he’ll be coming up here to make sure the conch stand will continue going on,” he said. “I tell him I’ll still be here to help them out, whoever come there.”

Garnique Johnson, whose cousin, Grace Sweeting-Rolle, was married to Mr Rolle, said the family is not taking the loss well.

“It’s mentally taken a toll on her from being with someone all these years and it’s just you two, and it’s home, it’s work out there to the conch stand and then home, and then everything she need him to do she doesn’t have to ask, he does, so he will definitely be a big miss to her and the kids,” she said. 

Mr Rolle was a father of five children, according to Mrs Johnson, who described him as a family man who constantly talked about his wife and children. She said he was preparing to visit his mother in Andros, whom he had not seen since January when his father died.

“Anytime you go to his conch stall, you’re bound to laugh,” she said. “He’s always telling you a joke, telling you a story, telling you something about life. When you leave from here, if you’re depressed, you’ll leave from there happy, and that’s why most people go to his conch stall.”