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Famous People Mix on IslandsBy GEORGE CONSTABLE. TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands — You never know what famous person’s path might cross yours after you step off the plane at Beef Island International Airport and set foot on theBVI.. We just missed television’s The Galloping Gourmet (Brian Kerr) the night we sailed across Sir Francis Drake Channel for dinner at the posh Peter Island Yacht Club. Kerr’s yacht had pushed off from the moorings an hour or two earlier.Sen. Hubert Humphrey was at Peter Island the week before. At Treasure Isle Hotel we had just missed Dr. Benjamin Spock whom hotel manager John Burrough said, ‘‘Had cut up like a proper card on the dance floor below the veranda bar.”England’s Prince Charles had set the island on its collective ear last summer when he stopped for a chat and drink at The Pub in Road Town. Tortola’s Fort Burt Hotel was rebuilt by DuPont heiress Pauline Stewart, and she pays frequent visits to the island. The Treasure Isle was built by English millionaire Herbert Showering, inventor of the English bubbly, BabyCham, and relatively new owner of Bristol Cream.Laurance Rockefeller, developer of the exclusive Little Dix Bay Hotel on Virgin Gorda nearby, sails in aboard his schooner, Sea Star, for an occasional visit. The very beautiful former movie star Maureen O’Hara and her husband are building a summer home onLittle Mountain Estate on Beef Island (they live in the American Virgin’s St. Croix).These are some 'of the very famous, the very rich people who visit and inhabit the BVI, They aren’t “be-longers.” Name dropping? Why not?We met the territory’s top legal officer, Madam Atty. Gen. Paula Beaubrun,a lovely lady, the first woman to hold such high office in the islands. We chatted with Cyril Romney, former islands’ Administrative and Financial Secretary who today is vice president ande V '. Her favorite drink is Chi-vas Regal, but, her usual, everyday refreshment is Dewar's White Label ($2.98 a fifth). She has a houseful of dogs, a WeTsh corgi which, “I call Maple because she is as sweet as maple syrup,” an Afgan, a big, black West Indian pooch which she calls Nuisance jmd her Haitian maid. Yvette, calls Miserable.She loves having visitors, and her main culinary treats are saltfish pie and saltfish cakes. She has trav- * eled to such places as Iceland, England, Europe, Canada and the U.S.PAULA BEAUBRUNsecretary-treasurer of Ane-gada Corp., the company formed by Sterling Bank to develop the second largest island in the BVt★We met and “ate” soupwith Carlos Downing, editor and publisher of the Tortola weekly newspaper, The Island Sun.Paula Beaubrun was born at St. George’s, Grenada, where her father became the first West Indian, to serve as Colonial Treasurer. Occasionally he served as Acting Governor too. Paula followed in her father’s footsteps by becoming the first woman Attorney General.I smacked my lips approvingly and found Carlos spooning a second huge portion into my bowl. His wife, Esme, who is a Justice of the Peace and dress shop owner, meanwhile poured glasses of homemade guav-aberry wine — very thick,sweet and potent.Dressed in a flowing blue gown and holding a tall glass in her hand, the charming Attorney General would say, “Whiss-kee, my deahs, to be is Scaw-teh. Nawt that frightful American bour-bon or Canadian rye.Her brother, Prof. Dr. Matthew Beaubrun, was Grenada’s first psychiatrist and has just left his post as chairman of the psychiatry department of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica to return to Trinidad. • ★Paula, 45, of course is a lawyer, a barrister, is the way she puts its, and was appointed to the island’s top legal post 11 years ago,' She likes golf, but since there is no golfing in Tortola (it’s too hilly), she hits practice shots in her garden.Paula then insisted that we follow on to her splendid home where she served the inevitable Scawtch, gin’n and a delicate bowl of- her equally delicate and tasty pumpkin soup. We also sampled some exquisite, though terribly sweet, cashew nut preserve which she makes. ,The Hon. Cyril-Romney was largely responsible for the issue last June of the first official BVI coinage. He was born in Tortola and is 33. At 14 he won a scholarship to the secondary school in St. Kitts and became a high school principal at 18.Newspaper editor Carlos Downing invited us into his kitchen to watch the finishing touch applied to his fungi soup, a soup of spinach, okra and onions with salt beef- added for flavor. The spinach broth was ladeled over an ample blob of fungi (sounds like fun gee) which« is nothing more than corn , meal cooked in boiling water to the consistency and taste of mush.He was graduated from Erdiston College, Barbados, with first-class honors in academics and practical teaching and in 1954, became principal of the territory’s largest school. Leaving. education 14 years ago, he served as Administrative Secretary and then returned to college. After receiving a master’s degree from Syracuse University, he went back to the islands and was appointed Financial Secretary. Today, he is a member of the Tourist Board, is married and hasfive daughters.These are only three of the BVTs more well-known arid popular “natives.” Another' favorite was the maid, Miss Ada Barzey, the person who first warned me^' lt;ADA BARZEYto be wary about fire coral. Neat, polite and inclined toward bursting into tearswhen those she serves leave the island, Ada calls herself “miss” as the majority of Tortolan women do, despite the fact that they might be married. Ada has had three husbands and five children.(Next: Dr. Thornton and the Linton Bells)CYRIL B. ROMNEYFOR YOUR SAVINGSCERTIFICATES
Newspaper Details
News Journal
Mansfield, Ohio, US
Sun, Sep 01, 1974
Page 32
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 08 May 2022
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