COMMENTARY: BY OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 24, 2023—I had a restless night last night as I reflected on the mentally debilitating mistakes I made in my life. High on that list the failure of my first marriage to Camille Brannum, a native of Washington, D.C., hence the reason why I moved to D.C. in 1975.
I had the good fortune of meeting Camille Brannum, who was a teacher in the Bronx, New York, at the time, while she was vacationing in Nassau in the summer of 1970.
Camille had a Master’s degree in English from Howard University, and at the time she and I shared an equally committed allegiance to the Black Power movement in the United States. We were married in Washington, D.C., in June of 1973, and my good friend and journalistic colleague Cordell Thompson, who was at the time working with Jet Magazine, attended the wedding and arranged for a photo of us cutting the wedding cake to be published in Jet.
After the wedding, Camille resigned her teaching job in New York and moved to Nassau with me. My very good friend, the late Stanley Wilson – brother of Sir Franklyn Wilson – and several other friends who were regulars at the Eagle Rock, a club through Sunlight Village where we were daily patrons, organized a home-coming “reception” for us.
Among the guests at the reception was the late Livingston Coakley, who at the time was Minister of Education, and when he found out that Camille was a teacher, he invited her to come and see him the next day. A week later, Camille went to work as an English teacher at C.C. Sweeting High School.
At the time, I was the target of overt victimization by the then Progressive Liberal Party government as a result of the fact that I supported the decision by the Dissident Eight to leave the PLP in 1971. I subsequently became founding editor of the FNM’s newspaper, The Torch of Freedom, after the party was established following discussions with “moderate” members of the racist former United Bahamian Party (UBP) government at Jimmy Shepherd’s Spring Hill Farms homestead in Fox Hill.
After the PLP’s victory in the September 1972 general elections and the FNM’s decision to reduce its financial support for The Torch, I no longer had a job. I was still unemployed when Camille moved to The Bahamas with me after we were married. Fortunately, we lived very well on my savings and her income as a teacher.
However, when rumours started circulating that Camille and several other American women who were married to Bahamian men used their regular weekly meetings as a “cover” to meet their boyfriends, because of my insane jealousy, I confronted Camille about this rumour one night when I went home for dinner. One of our daily routines was to have dinner together, no matter what other commitment either of us had.
I shall never forget the night that I went home for dinner and Gladys Knight’s “Neither One Of Us Want To Say Goodbye” was playing on the stereo in the living room. When we sat down to dinner, as accurately as I can recall, Camille said, “Honey, we have got to talk. I can’t go on living like this. Your accusation that I have been unfaithful really hurt me. I’m going home. I love you, but we have tried living in your country, let’s try doing so in mine.”
I loved Camille with a passion, so I naturally I agreed to move to the United States. She was under contract to the Ministry of Education until June of 1975, so I initially moved to Miami, where my Aunt Amanda an Uncle Lawrence lived at 1510 N.W., 69th Terrace in Liberty City, in December of 1974. Then in February of 1975, I moved to Washington, D.C., where Camille’s mother had leased an apartment for us at 738 Longfellow Street, N.W., where I lived for 18 years, even though Camille and I were divorced in 1976.
I thought I would provide this background as to why I left The Bahamas because I still love the country of my birth with a passion; however, I am also immensely proud to be a citizen of the United States of America, especially at a time when the democratic principles that undergird the greatness of this country are being denigrated by proponents of evil institutionalized racism. But that’s a topic for discussion at another time.
Meanwhile, for the first time in my life, I would like to admit that one of the greatest mistakes I made in my life was not doing all that I could to ensure that my marriage to Camille Brannum endured the rigors of time. I have been married three times since then, and all three of those marital unions were, for different reasons, very emotionally rewarding, but not on the same level of my love for Camille.
As I mentioned earlier, I had a restless night last night while reflecting on the mistakes I have made in my life. It didn’t help, of course, that my beloved Washington Redskins were embarrassingly defeated by the Dallas Cowboys, 45-10; however, I was still basking in the euphoria of the Progressive Liberal Party’s candidate Kingsley Smith’s landslide victory in the West Grand Bahama and Bimini bye-election on Tuesday night and loss did not affect me as much Redskins losses usually do.
Another reason for my restless night is that I have had to abandon plans to visit Freeport and Nassau over the Christmas holiday as a result of my serious mobility problem, for which I have been receiving once-a-week therapy sessions at The George Washington University Hospital Outpatient Rehabilitation Center.
Initially, I thought that my mobility problem, which has gotten worse over the past several months, was due to repercussions from two hip replacement operations I had — left hip in 2012 and right hip in 2013 – but I had an MRI Spine Lumbar done at GWU Hospital earlier this week on Tuesday and it confirmed the diagnosis of Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Robert S. Sterling, whom I saw on September 12, that my mobility problem is related to a spinal condition.
I have still not yet been notified about my new treatment schedule, but it is highly unlikely that my mobility problem will improve sufficiently for me go home for Christmas, which is one of the reasons why today, while reflecting on the mistakes I made in my life, I have been “binge-listening” to Gladys Knight’s “Neither One Of Us Wants To Say Goodbye” and similar songs, including “Love Is a Many Splendid Thing,” the theme song of a movie with the same title, starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones, that I saw two nights ago.
Yes, indeed, “Love Is a Many Splendid Thing.”
GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS –“NEITHER ONE OF US WANTS TO BE THE FIRST TO SAY GOODBYE (1973
https://youtu.be/KX8fZ-lWhFA?si=-VkW5rTyqfAFHHQL
GLORIA LYNNE – “LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING”
https://youtu.be/tPvJxL9UIj8?si=4ue3Lrw1HJKThVff
