By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., October 30, 2024 – I am immensely pleased and proud to be among the distinguished group of individuals who are being inducted into the Bahamas Sports Hall of fame in November for our contributions to the various sports in which we participated in The Bahamas.
My contributions specifically were to baseball and basketball, and although I played both sports as a member of St. Bernard’s Sporting Club in the 1950s and 1960s, I am not being recognized for my sporting prowess, but rather because of my administrative skils during the growth and development of both sports, especially baseball.
As a young sports reporter at the Nassau Daily Tribune in the 1960s, for a couple years I was President of both the Bahanas Amateur Baseball Association (BABA) and the Bahamas Basketball Association (BBA) Back then, I was totally convinced that the best way to improve the standard of play in any sport was to compete against better teams, so for a couple years I took all-star basketball teams to Miami to play against the best high school teams in South Florida.
When being President of both the BABA and the BBA too challenging administratively, I decided to not seek re-election as President of the BBA and devote all my administrative skills to the development and promotion of baseball in The Bahamas.
Following up on plans that were already in place, I took an all-star team to compete in the National Baseball Congress (NBC) annual summer tournament in Wichita, Kansas, in 1965 and again in 1966 before going to London for one year’s on-the-job training in journalism on the staff of the London Evening Standard. I again became President of the the BABA in 1970, and took a team to Wichita in July of 1971.
One of my accomplishments that I am most proud of during my administration in the 1960s was the season when we played regularly scheduled league games on three islands some weekends. Participating islands were New Providence, Grand Bahama and Bimini. We would charter a plane from West Palm Beach to take the teams to whatever island their game was being played and return them to the islands where their team was based.
It was an expensive undertaking, but our gate receipts used to exceed $20,000 for most games played in Nassau.
As I noted in a previous article, I am currently finalizing plans to arrive in Nassau on November 18 and I am as excited as I used to be on Christmas Eve as a young boy growing up with my grandparents Ben and Mabel Elliott at Stanyard Creek, Andros. I haven’t been back home for more than five years, so this will indeed be memorable trip. I plan to stay in Nassau until the end of November and then I go to Freeport, Grand Bahama, where I lived for 12 years before former Prime Minister Perry Christie appointed me as Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager at the Embassy of the Bahamas in 2013.
I held that position, first under Dr. Elliston Rahming and then under the late Dr. Eugene Newry, until 2017 when the Free National Movement (FNM) Government, led by Dr. Hubert Minnis, ousted the PLP from power in May of 2017 and revoked my diplomatic status.
Of course, I was no stranger to D.C., having initially relocated here in 1975 following my marriage to my first wife, Camille Brannum, a D.C. native who had a master’s degree from Howard University. After our divorce, I decided to remain in D.C. and was News Editor of The Washington Informer, an award -winning Black-owned newspaper for more than 10 years before initially returning to The Bahamas in the early 1990.
I was editor of both The Freeport New and Nassau Guardian, at different times, before being appointed Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager by former Prime Minister Christie in 2013, and given my background and diplomatic experience, I was absolutely shocked by the unprofessional diplomatic behavior of the current Bahamas Consul to D.C. Patrick Adderley during my efforts to renew my Bahamas passport in time for my trip to Nassau..
When I called to speak with him, the person who answer the phone transferred my call, but came back on the phone and said he would call me back later. When he did not call back, I called him the next day, I received an email from from Vice Consul Kendra McPhee-Rhule confirming that I had an appointment for 2 p.m. on Monday, October 28, to fill out a passport renewal form. After paying the required $300 to expedite the process, it was confirmed that it shall be ready on time snd I shall be contacted when it arrives in D.C.
