When the bell tolls

The trees waved their branches, and the leaves clapped their hands, while the birds sang as the casket bearing the mortal remains of the pioneer Circulation Manager of The NewDawnNewspaper Mr. Sam Harris went down slowly into the freshly dug brown earth, his final resting place.

The late Mr. Harris or ‘Sam” as he was affectionately called by his workmates and manty colleagues was interred Tuesday afternoon, 11 October in his home village Gbarngalah, Sanoyea District, Bong County in Central Liberia following funeral rites.

He died on Friday, 7 October at the S.D. Cooper Hospital on 12th Street, Sinkor in Monrovia following a protracted ailment. He is survived by his fiancée, daughter and aged father, among hosts of other family members. 

The deceased was a 2015 graduate of the Department of Accounting from the College of Business and Public Administration of the University of Liberia on Capitol Hill in Monrovia.  The Management of the Searchlight Communications Incorporated, publisher of The NewDawn was fully represented with a three-member special delegation headed by its Business Manager, Mr. John T. Manjoe.

The occasion was characterized by grieve and sobbing faces with even kids in the village asking the Heavenly Father (God Almighty) why He should call “Sam” home so soon. The entire village was speechless. Elders, including those described as fathers of the land kept conspicuous silence, only shaking their heads in apparent disbelief that their son, who left Gbarngalah town and came to Monrovia to pursue higher education to improve his life and by extension his family, would who have retired from labour so suddenly and returned home in a brown wooded casket.

“We wonder why will young people undergo difficulties in life, but as soon as time reaches for them to reap the fruits of their labour, death will just come and take them away. Sam is not the only person, who faced such fate; there are others to come up in life. We have seen a lot of other young people who, have suffered from the cold hands of death”, one villager lamented.

However family members encouraged themselves, saying it is the fulfillment of God, as no one can tell for sure when, where or how they will die, while others said the sudden and irreparable lost was predestined by the Almighty.

By Lewis S. Teh-Editing by Jonathan Browne