Give me my flowers…..
By: Will Johnson
In the church on the day former Island Councilmember Hugo Levenston’s burial ceremony was taking place, my son Chris turned to me and whispered that I should try and put Mrs. Carmen Simmons-Nicholson and her brother Mr. Max Nicholson “Under the Sea Grape Tree” as they had made a big contribution to Saba as brother and sister. Up until now I have concentrated on people who are already deceased. However after thinking it over, I decided that I should start making exceptions and giving some people their flowers while they are still in the land of the living.
The reason Chris brought this up is because Mrs. Carmen Simmons-Nicholson recently (December 21st, 2011) celebrated her 80th birthday with a Mass followed by a reception.
Where did she and her brother Max get all the ambition from? Undoubtedly their father Nel Nicholson from St. Maarten must have had good business genes which he passed on. I did not know him but my boss Fons O’Connor used to tell me about him. Fons said that as boys when they played marbles and if you lost to Nel and wanted your marbles back you would have to pay for them. By the time he was in his twenties Nel was coming up in business on St. Maarten even though things were slow at the time. He even owned the property on the Front Street where the St. Rose arcade is now located.
I had reached this far on Christmas morning. As I was looking up information on John Lionel Nicholson, I heard the ambulance in Windwardside. Just the day before Dave Levenston had called me and said that he had just come from seeing Max and that he was not looking well. He suggested that I try and see him. Max had just returned from St. Maarten where for the past years he had been undergoing one treatment after the other. On Saba, Boxing Day or Second Day Christmas as we call it here is the traditional day for visiting friends, so I said to myself I will call and see when it is convenient to pass by the house. In the afternoon my son Peter informed me that Mr. Thadeus Nicholson, son of Max had stopped him on the road and asked him to inform me that Max had been taken back to St.Maarten and that he was not doing well. In the evening I had visitors and one of them told me that she had just received a message that on Facebook they were saying that Max had died. Just after that the calls started coming in.
Maximiliaan Wilhelm Nicholson was born on August 19th 1934 here on Saba. His father was John Lionel Nicholson who was born on St. Maarten on February 19th, 1908, and who died on Aruba at the age of 47 on October 14th, 1955, and his mother was Polly Geraldine Nicholson born Dunker who died on Aruba on April 9th, 1951 at the age of 43. After primary school here on Saba he went to St. Maarten to school. He stayed at Mrs. Zilah Richardson’s place on the Backstreet with other Saban students like Leo Chance and from Statia people like Ms. Louise van Putten and so on. Leo used to tell me how when Max fell in love with his future wife how they would tease him about it. He later married Margaret Germaine Nisbet and they moved to Aruba where his father had businesses.
I first met Max in 1962 or so when he had recently returned to Saba from Aruba. At the time I worked on St. Maarten and one of my functions was to prepare bills-of-sale for my boss Fons O’Connor who among his many functions was also the Notary. We used the old formula for bills-0f-sale going back to the very beginnings of European settlement of these islands. I saw where Max and his sister were selling land on the Front Street where the St. Martin’s Home for the Aged was later built. Their father Nel had purchased it from the Van Romondt family to whom it had originally belonged. I made it my business to contact Max and suggest to him that the price was way too low. Ten thousand guilders for such a large property on the beach on Frontstreet even back then was low and the property was probably worth ten times that much. However Max being such a good Roman Catholic told me that they had already agreed to sell it to the Nuns for that price and that he could not come back on the agreement. So that is how it went.
At the same time Max was getting ready to test the political waters. He started the True Democratic Party and the party colour was Orange. My father was number 2 on his list and my brother Guy was number 6. There were two parties running against the Democrat Party in that election. During the election Max made an agreement with the Democrat Party that he would work with them. That did not sit well with most of his party members who then threw their votes on the Saba People’s Party of Mr. Peter L. Granger. The D.P. got 178 votes, the S.P.P. got 208 and Max got 73 votes. The results were that each of the bigger parties got 2 seats and Max 1 seat. An agreement was struck whereby Max became a Commissioner and Arthur Anslyn was Commissioner for the D.P.
Of course the D.P. of Claude Wathey was not happy with the change. I always remember Max telling me of his first day on the job. He was only 29 years old at the time. He had made a number of promises during the campaign. The very first meeting Mr. Van Delden informed him that the financial situation was that bad that he would have to go around and tell the workers that they would be laid off. And guess what? Max was given a list by Van Delden of people whom he had promised during the campaign that they would be given raises. One can imagine what a reception he received from his voters. Another thing which happened was that Max decided that the Administrator and the Commissioners need a halfway decent place to in which to meet and to receive people in more privacy. The two rooms cost around fls. 5.000.—.The very first meeting that the Windward Islands council met, it was decided that since the offices were not budgeted to reduce the small Saba budget by an additional fls. 5.000.—as a sort of punishment. Despite these setbacks Max continued on. In 1967 there were no elections and a compromise list was set up consisting of the various political figures on the island. It was also decided that Max and Arthur would stay on as Commissioners.
In 1971 the WIPM party under my leadership contested the elections and won. As the Lt. Governor of the three islands had been married to my sister who had died and even though he was remarried, I could not take my seat as a member of the Island Council and the Executive Council to which I was elected. Max ended up in the opposition, a post which he held until 1975. In that year he ran again but he did not get the one seat which the party got. I became Commissioner at the time.
During the period 1975 to 1979 I was extremely busy on island trying to better the Island’s Finances and to get projects from Holland. There were so many meetings taking places on the other islands pertaining to Constitutional changes that I would ask Max to attend in my place. Never once did he say that he was not in government or that he was opposition. Never once did anyone ask him what you are doing here. I would notify the other parties at the meetings in advance that he would be there representing me as Commissioner and the Government of Saba and it was done. Max enjoyed going to those meetings. Especially when there was a meeting on Aruba, he loved to go. He loved Aruba and admired it greatly how the Arubans were planning and putting things in place for the separate status they were working towards. I remember once driving with him from San Nicolas to Oranjestad and Max pointing out to me “Johnson boy watch the light poles. You ever see light poles set out so straight in your lifetime?” The relationship between him and I grew to the extent that when the elections came around in 1979 he approached me and suggested that it did not make sense for us to oppose one another and that he would be willing to run on the WIPM ticket. So said so done and we won the elections and got all five seats. In 1987 he again ran on the WIPM ticket. In 1999 he ran on the WIPM ticket when I returned to Island politics.
In 1966 Max ran with the W.I.P.P. party for the seat of Senator against the D.P. party headed by Claude Wathey. In 1985 Max again ran on the WIPM party. In that election I was elected as Senator. In 1990 he ran again with the WIPM party in the election for Senator. He was given the post of State Secretary. Before that in 1982 he had served as Spokesman for Saba in the Parliament of the Netherlands Antilles. He would always remind me that he had pioneered both positions as they had not existed in the Islands before he occupied those posts. The last time he ran was in 1994 on the Saba Development Party after we had a political falling out. However most of his political career was with the WIPM party and because of my relationship with him going back to when the TTDP was established in 1963.
In the private sector Max was a pioneer. He started the Voice of Saba in 1971. I had submitted a request for a station at the time. Leo Chance was Minister and he called me and convinced me to withdraw my request in favour of Max which I willingly did. Max also got the license for the SHELL oil company and over the years he established a number of companies in the telecommunications sector and he also established the cable television on Saba and St. Eustatius. I remember going to Statia with him to talk to the Government there at the time. At the airport here on Saba I remember someone asking him where the two of us were going and Max answered: “My boy this Johnson asked me to go to Statia with him on behalf of the Dutch Government. They want to start some kind of military base there and Johnson’s wants me to help him convince the Statia Government that it is a good idea.” Wherever he saw a business opportunity Max would toss his hat in the ring and most of his business ventures were successful.
During the nineties Max was also appointed as Act. Lt. Governor in which position he served for several years. The relationship between him and I remained well on the whole with disputes flaring up now and then. However we shared good friends like Elmer Linzey especially who could be relied on to bring order in the house and to not let the differences of opinion go too far.
In his last years Max suffered much with his health. But he would never let on. Every time I would speak to him on the phone, he would say: “Johnson boy things are good; it is only the knees which are bothering me.” In the meantime God only knows how many ailments he had and how much he suffered without complaint.
When he was State Secretary he called me one night about the Medical School. A Dr. de Brauw had visited Saba about starting a Medical School. My brother Eric had overheard a conversation on St. Maarten between Dr. De Braauw and some others. They were on their way to St. Kitts and Eric convinced them to try Saba instead even though they had never heard of the island. Long story short Dr. de Braauw died and the process came to a halt. Max convinced me to give a try with Dr. Frederick. I will write that chapter separately sometime. Long story short the Foundation which had been started by Dr. de Braauw and my brother Eric was continued. As Senator I was able through then Minister Crastel Gumbs to get the necessary licenses from the World Health Organization. The rules changed during the lapse in time and the new process took a lot of arm twisting on my part from the Federal Government under Prime Minister Dr. Jandi Paula to get new guarantees and permits. Max, Eric, nor I, ever asked for anything out of the Medical School. We wanted it to succeed for the people of Saba.Max was always after me to bring pressure to bear on the Medical School to put down some decent buildings. He felt that would be a stronger guarantee that the school would remain on Saba. And so I was able to get them to buy the land and put the buildings down which you can enjoy today, thanks to Max’s insistence. A week before he died the Notary sent papers for Eric to sign. I wrote a letter to the Notary which would not be suitable to be published. And I hope that someone from the Medical School will call Max’s widow and give her sympathy. She will be lucky if they do. My brother Eric who was a Member of the Founding Board never did not get a call during his illness nor did his widow get a call after he died.
Max has now moved on to other territory where there should be eternal rest. However knowing Max if there are any business opportunities in the great beyond rest assured that he will be trying his hand at something which can turn a profit there.
Max was a great church man and a benefactor of the Roman Catholic Church in The Bottom where he lived and the church in which his sister Mrs. Carmen Simmons plays the organ. This article which started out with the intention of paying a tribute to the both of them ended up being a eulogy for Max, and so I was not able to give Max his flowers while he was still in the land of the living. And the story of his sister Carmen will wait until another time as she is still very active in her community and her story is not yet complete.
May he now rest in peace and my sympathy to the entire Nicholson family, his sister Mrs. Carmen Simmons and the other relatives. H.W. Beecher wrote the following which in this case applies to Max¨”When the sun goes below the horizon he is not set; the heavens glow for a full hour after his departure.- And when a great and good man sets, the sky of this world is luminous long after he is out of sight.—Such a man cannot die out of this world. – When he goes he leaves behind much of himself. – Being dead he speaks.—“
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The Saba Islander 