[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8164-8165]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING THE LIFE OF JEREMIAH GUMBS

 Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise today to publicly pay 
tribute to Jeremiah Gumbs. Jeremiah Gumbs was a patriot of both the 
United States and Anguilla, West Indies. Gumbs served in the U.S. Army 
in World War II and was a successful businessman in New Jersey, owning 
Gumbs Fuelers. He went back to his native Anguilla, opened a popular 
resort on beautiful Rendezvous Bay, and helped Anguilla become less 
dependent on Britain. Jeremiah and his wife Lydia educated their four 
children in the U.S.
  I am pleased to submit for the Record, Jeremiah Gumbs obituary of his 
remarkable life, which appeared in the New York Times on April 10, 
2004:

       Jeremiah Gumbs, a hotel keeper who became a hero in 
     Anguilla when that sliver of sand upended Britain's 
     postcolonial design for the Caribbean islands known as the 
     Lesser Antilles, died there on Thursday, his family 
     announced. He was 91.

  Mr. Gumbs, an institution on an island that today has a population of 
12,000 people, reached a world audience in 1967 when he went before the 
United Nations with the islanders' objections to a British plan that 
lumped Anguilla's 35 square miles into a self-governing state, St. 
Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, associated with Britain.
  Considering the 70 miles of blue waters between Anguilla, the 
northernmost of the Leeward Islands, and the new authorities in St. 
Kitts, not to mention the many different flags that flew on the islands 
in between, such as St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, the Anguillans 
balked.
  ``After 300 years of neglect as a British Colony,'' Mr. Gumbs told 
the United Nations, ``the people feel they are able to take care of 
their own affairs.'' Indeed, he said Anguillans wanted independence.
  The people of Anguilla voted for it, 1,813 to 5, but Britain did not 
recognize either the referendum or Mr. Gumbs as a leader of the 
secessionist movement. But a special United Nations subcommittee on 
colonialism listened to his formal arguments for Anguilla.
  It was a ``natural paradise,'' Mr. Gumbs said of the island, but had 
been left undeveloped under British rule, without running water, 
electricity, phones, or a decent road. A new highway, built with 
European aid, has recently been named for Mr. Gumbs.
  The British protested United Nations involvement, while other 
Caribbean commonwealth islands sought to mediate.
  Britain asserted that the island was ``completely dominated by a 
gangster-type element,'' referring to Mr. Gumbs and the chosen leader 
of the rebellion, James Ronald Webster. It sent a troop of London's 
Metropolitan Police force to keep order and stop the secession 
movement.

[[Page 8165]]

  But efforts to patch the link to St. Kitts failed. In the end, 
Anguilla got part of what it wanted, becoming a self-governing British 
dependent territory with its own elected officials, an arrangement 
codified in 1971 and brought up to date with Anguilla's new 
constitution in 1982.
  Jeremiah Gumbs was born in Anguilla, the youngest of nine children; 
his mother was a baker and his father, a fisherman. He started school 
in Anguilla, but economic hardship drove him as a boy to work the cane 
fields in the Dominican Republic. Starting at age 15, he worked for 2 
years in oil refineries in Aruba and Curacao before returning to 
Anguilla to teach himself tailoring.
  At age 25, he went to live with a sister in Brooklyn and took night 
classes at City College on a scholarship. He hoped to become a dentist, 
but was drafted into the Army in 1941 and was given American 
citizenship at the time.
  After the war, he married Lydia Gibbs of Perth Amboy, NJ, and, using 
his G.I. bill money, trained as a furnace installer. He started his own 
company in Perth Amboy, Gumbs Fuelers, and made a success of it.
  When he took Lydia to show her Anguilla, it was she who planted the 
idea for another venture-tourism on the island's untouched beaches. 
They bought 14 acres, later doubling the amount, and in 1959 started 
building Anguilla's first beach resort with their own hands.
  They rented the first rooms in 1962, opening what has become the 
Rendezvous Bay Hotel and Villas, a cornerstone of the island's growing 
tourism industry. As a businessman with local roots and a civic leader 
acquainted with the ways of the world, Jeremiah Gumbs became a natural 
choice to serve as the island's roving ambassador during the Anguillan 
revolution of 1967-1969.
  He managed the hotel until about 5 years ago and remained a jovial 
host after that. Lydia Gumbs died about 3 years ago. Jeremiah Gumbs is 
survived by three sons, J. Alan, the managing director and owner of the 
Rendezvous Bay; Clyde, of Atlanta; and Duane, of Edison, NJ; a 
daughter, Una, of Edison and Anguilla; and seven grandchildren.
  It is my honor to share Jeremiah Gumbs impressive life with my 
colleagues.

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