By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 15, 2022 — The Cabinet Office announced today that a State Recognized Funeral Service for the late Dr. Eugene Newry, former Diplomat, Educator and Neurosurgeon, will be held on Friday, June 17, 2022, at 11:00 a.m. at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, West Hill Street. Interment will follow in the Catholic Cemetery, Tyler Street.
The body will lie-in-repose in Suite B at Bethel Brothers Morticians, Nassau Street, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 16, 2022.
Viewing for the general public will be from 12:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 16, 2022.
The service will be broadcast live via the ZNS Radio Network from St. Francis Xavier Cathedral at 11:00am.
I would most certainly liked to have attended Dr. Newry’s funeral, but unfortunately I can’t; however, I shall watch it on ZNS.
As I noted in a commnetary I wrote in BAHAMAS CHRONICLE after Dr. Newy’s death at the Princess Margaret Hospital on May 22, Dr. Newry was one of my heroes
He was also a very close and very dear friend from when I worked at Bahamian Times, the Progressive Liberal Party’s newspaper,in the 1960s.
He was one of a Band of Brothers who formed the nucleus of the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA), an action group within the Progressive that was primarily responsible for Sir Lynden Pindling emerging as the “supreme leader” of the PLP.
Dr. Newry was a regular at the office of The Bahamian Times on Andros Avenue in the Grove and even back then, he was known to be an erudite scholar who spoke several languages.
After the PLP won the 1967 general election — establishing a Black majority-rule government in The Bahamas for the first time — Premier Lynden Pindling arranged for me to go to London for one year’s advanced journalistic training at the London Evening Standard.
While I was in London, Arthur A. Foulkes – my journalistic mentor, who became the founding editor of Bahamian Times after he left The Tribune in 1962 — made an official visit as Minister of Tourism to London and Paris in 1969. Mr. Foulkes took me along with him on his trip to Paris, and one of the memorable highlights of that trip was a reunion with Dr. Newry and his wife Francoise, who were living in Paris at the time while he continued his medical studies, after having attended university in Canada.
I had not seen Dr. Newry for several years, but in 2013 I was appointed Press, Cultural Affairs and Information manager at The Bahamas Embassy in Washington, D.C., to assist the newly appointed Bahamas Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Dr. Elliston Rahming, in representing The Bahamas diplomatically.
Dr. Rahming was subsequently transferred to New York to become Ambassador to the United Nations. He was replaced by Dr. Newry, who presented his credentials to President Barack Obama on Tuesday, December 3, 2013.
A neurosurgeon by profession, Dr. Newry was The Bahamas’ Ambassador to the United Nations before being transferred to D.C. as Ambassador to the United States on August 19, 2013. He previously served as the ambassador to Haiti and the Dominican Republic from 2002-2007 under the first Perry Christie administration.
Dr. Newry and I quite naturally had a remarkably good working relationship during my four-plus years under his diplomatic ledership before the change of government in The Bahamas in May of 2017.
His tenure as Bahamas Ambassador to the U.S. officially ended on July 31, 2017.
