U.S. Independence Day

Celebrating the Fourth of July in a British Crown Colony was a delightful incongruity.

The United States had a consulate, not an embassy, in British Honduras. It was in a colonnaded old Colonial frame house at the corner of Gabourel Lane and Hutson Street, with its side fence adjoining St. Catherine’s Convent and School. The battle between tradition and termites necessitated regular repairs, but the lovely old building has survived to the present.

The year we arrived in Belize, the Consul celebrated Independence Day with a large cocktail party held in the Fort George Hotel.

Danny Powell, the new Fort George Hotel manager who came from Montego Bay, Jamaica, to take over when the McNabbs left, swathed the hotel completely in red, white, and blue bunting, and hung the biggest and newest of American flags in the lounge where the party was held. Naturally, the British flag was flying properly on the hotel flagpole, as protocol required.

Because the Fourth happened to be on a Sunday, His Excellency the Governor, Her Britannic Majesty’s Representative in the Crown Colony of British Honduras, was not able to accept his invitation—policy forbade it. He sent a message, however, congratulating the Consul on the national holiday, adding, “Britain considers the United States her most successful colony.”

 

The following year, Bucher and I left the cocktail party at the consulate and went to the hotel to meet some friends who had been stranded by the weather. Over the preceding weekend, a large crowd of TAN airline officials had come down from Miami with their wives and families for some fishing and skin diving. The brother of one woman had flown up from Guatemala (in his own plane) with a friend who also lives there and a most attractive girl from New York, who had been visiting her mother. The TAN people left on Monday on the regular flight back to Miami, but the private pilot, Chris Hempstead, and his group got only a little way down the coast before the weather got so bad that they had to turn back. That left them stranded here, knowing no one but us…and we barely had met them. Anyway, we called and asked them please to join us for the annual club Fourth-of-July dance and then dropped by the hotel after the cocktail party to see if they would accept the invitation.

They all were about our age and very good company. Chris had been here before and had talked to Bucher at length about possibly building a boat, making more-or-less final arrangements for a 25-foot cruiser. The other man, Tom Kean, didn’t seem to have any business here other than as a sort of copilot and friend, so I gathered that he just came along for the fishing. And Joan Gerli was a most attractive and pleasant girl who, I was amazed to learn, has an apartment with her mother in New York directly across the street from our favorite apartment on 73rd Street. I even recognized the names of her delicatessen men!

We talked them into going to the dance with us and Bucher loaned Chris a shirt and tie, since they had come down just for a sport weekend. It was a good dance, though we spent a lot more time sitting around and talking than dancing. And, really, we had a much better time having the “Guatemaltecos”…who all were Americans…with us.