By Erasmus Williams
Basseterre, St. Kitts, March 21, 2018 – Based on his fatherly instincts and his personal loss of his own mother when he was one-year-old, former St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas promised Tuesday to “whatever I can do” to ensure that Shymir Ta’yrhon Glasy Finch survives.
The baby is the only son of the late Jimmyliah Finch, 20, a soldier in the St. Kitts-Nevis Defence Force, who along with her 19-year-old sister Naomi, were murdered not far from their home on March 1, 2018.
“I was moved when I saw in the arms of a lady, standing next to the grandmother and mother, a child crying in the midst of the burial ceremony, a little boy child; just a few weeks old, there, at the graveside, unknowingly seeing his mother being lowered into a grave. He would never ever remember what her face was looking like, but he was there,” Dr. Douglas told a packed and overflowing Town Hall Meeting of his St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) at the St. Peter’s Anglican Church Hall Tuesday night.
“And what that brought back to me, were the days of my own mother, when I was child. I did not have the privilege of knowing my mother – she died when I was just over a year. And as I studied the situation at the graveside at the Springfield Cemetery, I was moved to draw closer to that child. I said to the young lady who was holding that child in her arms ‘let me look at this little tot. She then said to me, ‘do you know he was born on your birthday 14th January? That grieved my spirit,” Dr. Douglas said.
“Whatever I can do to ensure that this child survives, I will do it because you never know what this child will eventually turn out to be,” said Dr. Douglas to the resounding applause of the crowd.
Photo – Former Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, the Right Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas (left) holds the head of two-month old Shymir Ta’yrhon Glasy Finch in the arms of a family member.
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