Variety epitomized the official funeral of Sir Branford Mayhew Taitt at the Gymnasium of the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex earlier today.
The range of those attending from all walks of life was as broad as his trademark smile; as those who packed the ground space of the Gymnasium included leading lights in fields ranging from pedagogy to cricket to journalism to medicine to the clergy, as well as politicians from both sides of the local divide.
They all came – led by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart and his Cabinet, Opposition Leader Mia Mottley, and veteran politicians – on a sunny, cloudless morning to bid farewell to “an architect of modern Barbados”, a lover of music, master of language, politician, mentor, hero, father and “a man who loved all things Combermere”, according to his eldest child Sharonne Taitt-Primus.
In a two-and-a-half-hour ceremony followed by a 30-minute graveside service marked by the raising of the Combermere School Song, Taitt-Primus said in her eulogy, “Dad loved his family – no question…Dad attended every pantomime and NIFCA performance that his children participated in”.
Fondly recalling his insistence that they “grow up among the people” in Stanmore Crescent, Black Rock, St Michael, instead of a more exclusive spot offered to him upon his return to Barbados to be a part of then Prime Minister Errol Barrow’s Cabinet in 1970, she pointed out that he scheduled his life around his family: Sharonne, Monique, Branford Junior and late wife Marjorie.
She also commended his widow, Lady Taitt, as “a spiritual woman who loved and cared for our father to the very end”.
Full story in tomorrow’s SUNDAY SUN
