Monday, December 29 2008

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PILE-UP: Piles of garbage on Liverpool Street, Arima, are an eyesore and health hazard for nearby residents. There has been no garbage collection in t...

AS THE year draws to a close, members of the Seventh-Day Adventist community are remembering one of their stalwarts who passed away earlier this year.

Elder Eric John Murray, former president of the Caribbean Union Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists died on September 29 at the St Clair Medical Clinic. When he was appointed Secretary-Treasurer of the Caribbean Union in 1965, he achieved the distinction of becoming the first West Indian to serve as an administrator at the Maraval-based regional office. Murray, 88, had been ailing for the previous four months.

Bessie, his wife of fifty-five years, died three weeks before on September 9. Born in Tobago, Murray was taught and influenced by Lionel P Mitchell, an outstanding Tobago educator, musician, and social activist.

With limited opportunities available in Tobago for further education, Murray left for Caribbean Training College in Maracas Valley in 1941. He was a twelfth grade graduate of that institution in 1945.

Murray was among the early graduates of the Caribbean Training College who travelled to Adventist institutions in the United States to pursue undergraduate studies.

He completed a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in 1951 from Emmanuel Missionary College.

Years later in 1969, he graduated from Andrews University and became probably the first Adventist minister in the southern Caribbean to have earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration. In 1964 he was ordained as a gospel minister in Barbados.

The following year he was appointed as Secretary-Treasurer of the Caribbean Union, the first national of Trinidad and Tobago to hold that position. Previously he had served as Secretary-Treasurer in Adventist organisations with headquarters in the Bahamas and Barbados.

In 1978 Murray was elected as president of the Caribbean Union Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, the first Trinbagonian and only the third West Indian to be president, a position he held until 1991, longer than anyone else. In that capacity he presided over major advances at Caribbean Union College and Community Hospital in Trinidad and Tobago, and Davis Memorial Hospital in Guyana.

During this period he was a member of the General Conference Executive Committee at the World Adventist headquarters in Maryland.

He also served on a Worldwide Committee to study the role of women in the Adventist denomination.

Amongst his other accomplishments, Murray was author of A History of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Trinidad and Tobago 1891-1981(1982), National Biography Handbook of Trinidad and Tobago(1996), and editor and compiler of Religions of Trinidad and Tobago (1998).

While working as president of the Caribbean Union he found time to serve as editor of Caribbean Union Gleanings, a periodical distributed to Seventh-Day Adventist churches in the region.

He was listed in Personalities Caribbean (1973).