Editor’s Notes

In Mom’s description of the Fourth of July party in 1954, she writes of the U.S. Consulate building:

…the lovely old building has survived to the present.

The U.S. Consulate at the corner of Gabourel Lane and Hutson Street became the U.S. Embassy when Belize gained its independence in 1981. At the end of 2006, the U.S. Embassy was moved to the capital city of Belmopan. The former Consulate building in Belize City was officially decommissioned at that time and was demolished in 2011.

 

Later, in her description of the Fourth of July in 1955, Mom describes meeting Joan Gerli, who was in Belize on a fishing trip with Chris Hempstead. Some years later Joan and Chris married.

Joan and Chris became my parents’ good friends. Mom and I visited them in 1965 and Mom visited them in 1987.