THE WHITE FILE
Stan Benjamin: Who follows in his train?
by P. Anthony White
“The climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain;
O God, to us may grave be given
To follow in their train.”
(From THE SON OF GOD GOES FORTH TO WAR)
Last Friday afternoon during a brief homegoing ceremony, a number of people put forward warm and touching tributes to the memory of 97-seven year old Stanley Benjamin who passed away in Florida in January this year, and was cremated with his ashes returned to The Bahamas.
It all took place in part of the dining area of the Peace and Plenty resort in George Town, Exuma where, without doubt over the past four decades Stan Benjamin had existed as the greatest offshore friend and generous benefactor of the Exuma community.
Following the ceremony his son, Barry, with the crowd following, walked to the end of the dock at Peace and Plenty, and solemnly dispensed the ashes in the waters of Elizabeth Harbour where, in six weeks or so, intrepid Bahamian skippers will be competitively plying their sloops during the 56th National Family Island Regatta.
Stan Benjamin, who hailed from Cleveland, Ohio, had gone to Exuma around 1968, had fallen in love with the island and its people, and apparently after convincing is wife similarly to fall in love with the island, eventually purchased the Peace and Plenty, soon afterwards beginning an ambitious renovation and expansion programme.
The Peace and Plenty resort, long popular with yachtsmen and fishing enthusiasts from abroad, was also the hub of social activity in George Town year round, but especially every April during regatta, primarily because of its premier location at the edge of the harbour with its front row seat during the races.
Stan Benjamin went on to establish the Peace and Plenty Beach Club outside George Town, and later the Fishing Lodge near The Ferry in Little Exuma, but those were business ventures, remembers the man, and enterprising Jew with a heart of gold.
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However, stay, the real story of this amazing man, Stan Benjamin, will come, but first there is a related Bahamian historic backdrop, and even in his death the story of Stan Benjamin can certainly stand out as a primer, a rule book for investors who need to be prodded into doing what they truly ought to do.
Most people remember a controversial address by former Prime Minister Sir Lynden Pindling back in 1969 at the opening of the Bahamas Oil Refinery Company, when he warned that if Freeport did not bend to an order of social reform, then Freeport would have to be broken.
For years afterwards, and especially when Grand Bahama was experiencing difficult times because of some flight of investment capital, many Bahamians, especially critics and opponents of Sir Lynden’s Progressive Liberal Party government, used to charge that it was that “Bend or Break” speech that began the economic downturn of the island.
What is too often conveniently forget, however, was the fact that during that address Sir Lynden, then Head of Government for just over two years, had prefaced what some felt was the damning promise, with a warning that Freeport, where foreign licensees in the Port area were turning profits hand over fist, needed urgently to cultivate a “social conscience”.
By that the Premier was suggesting that it was not sufficient for monied foreign entrepreneurs with faith in the Bahamian economy to come, invest, make a profit, and to meet all the prescribed requirements for the payment of licenses and other fees, and to provide employment for Bahamians, but to look around in the community to see where they could exist in the programme of social development.
No matter what the fall-out from the Bend or Break speech, Sir Lynden was absolutely correct, and after that many foreign investors with the wherewithal got the message, took an interest in the communities in which they operated, and as a result put back some of their profits to help uplift the communities in which they were privileged to operate.
Interestingly it was that same year of the Bend or Break address, 1969, when Stanley Solomon Benjamin first visited Exuma for the first time, returning again and again to a place where he was obviously comfortable and to people with whom he was comfortable.
He eventually, in 1996, purchased the defunct Exuma Frozen Foods property in Hooper’s Bay, afterwards lending the property to a group which was interested in starting up a resource centre for teachers.
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After becoming personally interested in what the group was attempting to achieve, he set about creating a U.S. based foundation through which there could be attracted donations as a tax relief for U.S. citizens.
In time he donated the Hooper’s Bay property to the Foundation which, in addition to its work in Education, became a source of tremendous social outreach and community development.
In due course there was established on the Foundation’s property an offshore campus of the College of The Bahamas, the only such facility outside New Providence and Grand Bahama, which today boasts dormitories on the campus where a number of potential Bahamian educators who came with only teaching certificates were able to achieve full college degrees.
The Benjamin family continued to be involved in the Foundation, along with local members such as the chairman, Warren Rolle, former government Financial Secretary and chairman of the World Bank; Danny Strachan, commodore of the National Family island Regatta Committee; Lester Smith, real estate developer; and former educator Chris Kettel, a long time Exuma resident who manages the whole operation.
Meanwhile the overall manager of the COB Exuma operation is another retired education and long time Exuma resident Jenny Kettel.
There also exists on the compound a school for children wuth special needs for whom there is no place in the regular school system, and who would otherwise be bereft of any opportunity for organised education.
Over the years, spurred and inspired by Stan Benjamin’s passionate and relentless generosity and Philanthropy, the Exuma Foundation since its inception has been able to raise in excess of $2 million in donations to carry on the wonderful work of education and social outreach in Exuma.
An arm of the organisation named, interestingly, Our Father’s Business, focuses resources and energies on a number of physical needs of Exumians, to the extent, for example, pf constructing five or so homes along teh lines of Habitat for Humanity, and outreach programme of which sometime back former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was a driving force.
Our Father’s Business also operated from the Hooper’s Bay campus, and has made many contributions in other ways to the relief and enhancement of the conditions of Exumians caught in the grip of dire need.
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And so, even though Stan Benjamin, who lived within a heartbeat of a century, went to his Maker earlier this year, his spirit of passionate and relentless generosity and philanthropy continues to pervade the noble work of the Exuma Foundation he nurtured from infancy.
In teh meantime, through his years of involvement with Peach and Plenty, which is the fulcrum of George Town’s tourist activity, he became aware that teh facility was not simply an exciting investment, but also a source of employment, some spinoff businesses, and an overall beacon in the downtown area. Against that backdrop, Stand never ceased to enhance the property, and this to sustain and make Exuma’s broad tourist product attractive.
In recognition of those efforts, in 1998 he received the Ministry of Tourism’s special award, in addition at one point to receiving the Sustainable Tourism Award primarily because he had installed Exuma’s very first solar heating system at the Peace and Plenty, and because on occasion when things were tough, such as during low occupancy periods, he never flinched from in jecting his personal funds to ensure that the operation kept running.
In 2004, Stan Benjamin was named The Bahamas’ Hotelier of the Year.
But Stan Benjamin was esteemed, regarded, and remembered most because of his outreach into the Exuma community for all the four decades he had been there, whether he knew it or not, responding with a purpose to Sir Lynden Pindling’s petition to investors, local and foreign, for the exercise of a social conscience.
According to the Exuma Regatta’s commodore Danny Smith, who spoke at last Friday’s memorial service, “The bottom line is that the Exuma Foundation, which today is such a meaningful plank in the platform of Exuma’s social development, could hardly have been possible without the vision, the imagination, and the generosity of Stan Benjamin.”
Hundreds of others were and are investors all over The Bahamas where, so often, there is a need for outreach. How many of those others are following in Stan Benjamin’s train?
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P. Anthony