The Right Honorable George Cadle Price, 92, former First Minister, then Premier and ultimately a two-term Prime Minister of Belize, and the foremost architect of Belizean independence — affectionately referred to as “Father of the Nation”, was this weekend given a final farewell from his family, his party, citizens of the nation, and friends and sympathizers from abroad, as well.
Almost instantly after his death, at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, September 19, 2011, the tributes started gushing forth from various quarters –from ordinary Belizeans whose paths he crossed, even briefly, during his many travels across the Jewel, to those whom he instructed to walk in his large footsteps, as guardians of the People’s United Party (PUP), which he served from its creation until his descent from the highest post, party leader, in 1996, to those at home and abroad who were privileged to witness his handling of the former British Honduras’ winding and difficult route to independence, as Belize.
And so, Belizeans of all generations paid their tributes by different means – whether it was by lining the streets as soldiers of the Belize Defence Force (BDF), bearing his casket, marched through the Northside, down North Front Street and passed Pickstock Street where Mr. Price lived for much of his life, or by visiting the Bliss Center for the Performing Arts on the Foreshore where the body lay in state for public viewing (the casket was closed), or by following the proceedings on radio and television.
Not even early-morning showers in Belize City could stop residents of the Old Capital from paying their last respects to the former Prime Minister and architect of Belize’s independence.
At 3:00 Saturday afternoon, a private Mass at the Holy Redeemer Cathedral was held for Mr. Price’s family to give their last farewells. Grandnephew Henry Charles Usher, party chairman of the PUP, addressed the gathering and offered his remembrances of Mr. Price as both family man and politician. (He had no children of his own, but had two brothers (now both deceased), seven sisters and numerous relatives.)
At the close of the Mass around 6:00 p.m., the casket left en route for Belmopan via Orange Street and Cemetery Road, and at the corner of George Street, a recording of the National Anthem could be heard playing as residents there paid tribute.
In Belmopan, the body was taken to the George Price Center for Peace and Development, where it lay in state all of Sunday. We are told that tributes by schoolchildren have been left at Mr. Price’s Belmopan residence on Oriole Avenue, off the Ring Road, since his passing.
An estimated 4,000 Belizeans in Belize City and Belmopan viewed the casket during the days of public viewing.
And this morning, church bells across the country tolled at 6:30 a.m. as the final farewell moved into high gear.
Most of the 1,800 seats assigned at Independence Plaza for the official state funeral were occupied by dignitaries and Price family members. The general public, estimated at well over 2,500, congregated in the open space across from the Plaza and along the Central Walkway as far east as Constitution Drive.
Much of the program was given over to a spartan multi-denominational mass presided over by the chief clerics of the Roman Catholic and Anglican dioceses, Methodist mission and Evangelical Association.
In his homily, chief celebrant Most Reverend Bishop Dorick Wright, who as Bishop of Belize City and Belmopan, and resides at Holy Redeemer which George Price regularly attended, reminded the gathering that young Catholics are taught the response in the Baltimore Catechism to the questions “Who made you?” and “Why did God make you?” as: “God… made you to know him, to love him, to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him in heaven.”
Bishop Wright said that while Price initially felt the call to serve God as a priest, and trained at seminaries in the U.S. and Guatemala for that purpose, he ultimately took a different path by entering politics. The other two individuals who went with him to Augustine Minor Seminary, Facundo Castillo (deceased) and Richard Francis, 95, both served in Belizean Catholic parishes, including Belmopan. Price, by serving the Belizean people as he did, served God as well, the Bishop told the gathering.
Bishop Wright also reminded the attendants that contrary to beliefs in some quarters, there is life after death, and that in one way or another, we will be reunited with Mr. Price in the hereafter.
Dr. John Waight, F.R.C.S. Ed., Price’s nephew, in giving the eulogy, reviewed the high points of Mr. Price’s public life and sterling political career, before turning to his relationship with his family and people.
According to Dr. Waight, Mr. Price spent his life out of the public eye quietly, reading, receiving visitors and continuing, by all accounts, to preach the vision he developed and molded for the nation. He was a fan of horse racing and classical music (he could play the piano and pipe organ since high school), once owning a horse himself, and he doted on his younger relatives.
He noted that Price cheated death while sheltering from the deadly 1931 hurricane that struck Belize City on September 10, 1931, while boarding at St. John’s College (High School), then located along the seaside at Loyola Park (where the Esso compound is today), on the Southside.
“It can well be said that his life had been spared for a higher purpose,” Dr. Waight remarked.
Opposition Leader John Briceño said that Mr. Price was “beloved” by the Belizean people because “of who he was. He was a man who walked among us as ordinary folk, never flinching from his love for Belize and the people. He was strong enough to lead a revolution…His family was the Belizean people; his home stretched from the Rio Hondo to the old Sarstoon.”
While advocating that Belizeans show respect and forge ties with the wider region, at home, Briceño said, the Leader Emeritus’ vision and understanding of what Belize could be, convinced others to join the “peaceful, constructive Belizean revolution” begun under the PUP, and the party, he promised, would “rededicate” itself to the task of nation-building, and providing “honest, accountable government that cares about the Belizean people.”
According to Briceño, when he spoke with Price after he first became PUP leader in 2008, the older man told him to remember that the party must be united and serve the people.
Prime Minister Dean Barrow opened his address with a well-received line about the power Mr. Price still holds, even in death, to see his wish for the young nation fulfilled: “…this is exactly the way it should be. Thousands of grateful Belizeans saying goodbye to the avatar of the nation. It is destiny fulfilled. What Mr. Price strove for all his life, he has been able to produce in his death. We are now a country totally united. United in homage to our National Hero, and his creed of one Belize.”
First addressing members of the Price family who were present, the P.M. said he was reminded “that this clan of which Mr. Price was the foremost exemplar, is a very distinguished one…other members of this family, in their own right, are and have been fine contributors to our country, successes in their various professions and callings, similar to Mr. Price in his. The point I am trying to make is that he must have been just as proud of you as you were of him. My heartfelt condolences to all of you.”
The Prime Minister then shared his childhood memories of Mr. Price working the neighborhoods of the division Mr. Barrow himself would eventually lead, on Kut Avenue, and went on to discuss the work ethic and passion for personally connecting with the people and paying attention to the smallest of details that gained him the moniker, “Father of the Nation.”
As an adult, said Barrow, he saw Price personally greet hotel workers in Honduras while on a bipartisan delegation to meet with Guatemala over the unfounded claim to Belize, the one problem Mr. Price was never quite able to solve.
The P.M. recalled that at those meetings, he saw two sides of the future Prime Minister: his gentle, personal side, which made him “the most compassionate of men,” and his “complex and uncanny…steel trap” mind that enabled him to stand on equal footing with the then-Guatemalan president, Vinicio Cerezo.
Regarding Mr. Price’s singular devotion to his personal relationship with God, the P.M. quoted the late National Hero’s own words, as told to Trinidadian Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul: “I have this recurring dream. I am in church. Someone is saying mass – (Robert Sydney) Turton, my old employer, or Pinks, one of his managers – and I wonder why I, who would so much like to be up there, am not, and that old sinner is.”
The PM added, “Well, let no one doubt that Mr. Price is up there now, united at long last and saying mass with his Almighty God.”
In summary, said the Prime Minister, to rousing applause, “The PUP will never have another leader like George Price. But then the country will never have another Prime Minister like George Price.”
After the solemn ceremony, the BDF performed its last duty to the former Prime Minister, bearing his body to the already prepared tomb at Lord Ridge Cemetery, 50 miles east.
Along the way, villagers in Cotton Tree, Mahogany Heights and Hattieville made their presence known, and from the junction with Fabers Road up to the cemetery itself, primary and high schoolers from Belize lined the route, taking advantage of the holiday given by the Government last week for Mr. Price’s funeral.
With family members looking on, Bishop Wright performed the last rites, Maya Island Air Cessna aircraft gave tribute at the scene in silent formation, and the grave was laid.
The Right Honorable George Cadle Price: January 15, 1919 – September 19, 2011. May his soul rest in peace.