I remember vividly when we first started dating in that we conceived the idea of publishing a magazine in Liberia. We were not sure as to whether it would be one on politics or fashion—or both. God blessed our relationship with consummation in marriage, on July 17, July 17 this year will make us 50 years married. To God Be the Glory! And thank you, Mae Gene! We recall with grateful thanks to the involvement of our parents—the Reverend Byron Zolu Traub, his wife Mrs. Lilian Best, in the successful planning and execution of that great and long-lasting event—our marriage, held at St.
Let me remember and thank also my big brother, the Rev. Canon Burgess Carr, who served as Best man in our wedding—a role I played in his when in he married Ms. Francisca Verdier Carr. Burgess has always given us support in our newspaper endeavors, and, from his post as a senior executive of The Episcopal Church, New York, visited us both in Monrovia and in Banjul, The Gambia.
I can never forget my dear friend, the distinguished British journalist, John C. Gordon, who became one of my best friends when he served as Reuter Correspondent in Monrovia in the s.
John became our chief Agent in London, and became our chief source for all the printing materials and equipment we needed both for the Liberian and the Gambian Observer newspapers. Before he died in London in John called me from his home at Prince Edward Mansions, London, to inform me of his impending death—which made me cry and Mae Gene was there to comfort me.
John informed me at the time that he was willing to me all the Liberian papers he had collected over many decades—a most valuable collection—which his family dutifully sent to me in Silver Spring, Maryland. We thank God for blessing our marriage with many children and grandchildren and two great newspapers in two countries—the Daily Observer in our own dear Republic of Liberia, launched February 16, and the Daily Observer in another country, the Republic of The Gambia, May 11, But before getting into the matter of offspring, we can never forget the challenging, critical and costly pains we endured during our formative years—pains, yea crises we suffered beginning with the very second month of our founding—March , when the erratic, powerful and tyrannical Justice Minister, Chea Cheapoo, summoned me to his office one Monday morning and with loaded guns pointed at me from every direction and blasted me for one and a half hours because we had published a story about him to which he did not like.
