THURSDAY, DECEMBER
23, 2021
VOLUME 115, No.51
Sir James’ send off Pages 1,3,5&6
www.thevincentian.com
Relief supplies stolen Page 4
EC$1.50
Arise Dr. Denis Byam Page 12
NINE NIGHTS opens Page 22
Teachers’ salary issues Page 28
Sir James FitzAllen Mitchell KCMG PC (15 May 1931 – 23 November 2021) was St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ second Prime Minister.
Sabrina Mitchell, Sir James’ daughter, chose to focus on her father’s unrelenting support for the COVID-19 vaccine.
UPON HIS DEATH BED, so to speak, former Prime Minister Sir James Mitchell expressed a strong desire to see the whole of St. Vincent and the Grenadines vaccinated against COVID-19. According to his daughter Sabrina Mitchell, as she paid tribute to her father at the funeral service held at the St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Bequia, on Saturday 18th December, her father, in appealing to the population to accept the vaccine he said, “Tell them to do it for me.”
And in continuing to set her father in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sabrina shared that her father incessantly spoke of how “deeply saddened, worried and pained,” he was by the lingering hesitancy among a large percent of the population to take the vaccine. She disclosed that her father, the scientist that he was, believed strongly that the vaccine was the best option in the COVID-19 crisis. In keeping with that conviction, Sir James did not hesitate to get his vaccine and in fact, according to Sabrina, got it as soon as it became available, hoping that others would follow his lead. “It mattered to him that we save St. Vincent from ruin,” Sabrina told those in attendance. Continued on Page 3. Left: Sir James’ casket was carried shoulder high from the ferry to the St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Port Elizabeth.