Morris, Francois coming to grips with son’s death

Rexford Morris and Joel “Ras Natty” Francois grew up together as boys in Chateaubelair, going to the mountains and hanging around the seines on the waterfront. Both men migrated; Francois, in his late teens, to Antigua to live with his father, while Morris became a sailor in his early 20s and eventually settled in the USA.{{more}}

While Morris remained in the USA, Francois returned to St Vincent in the late 70s and became a Deejay, farmer, then club owner. However, the boyhood chums were reunited by the death of Bertram “Bolo” Stapleton.

While Morris was Stapleton’s biological father, Francois was a surrogate father to Stapleton for most of his life. Both men sat down with SEARCHLIGHT to share their stories.

Rexford said that he was standing in a parking lot in Connecticut when he got the call that his son was shot dead. “I fainted,” he said. Morris revealed he had last seen his son in the summer of 2007 when Stapleton visited him in Connecticut with his family, including his youngest son who was born around that time.

“When he finished law school, I encouraged him to practice in Antigua, but he insisted that he was going back to St. Vincent to practice”, Morris said. “He told me that he came from the gutters and he is going back there to help his people”, he added. Morris said that he believes that his son came for a purpose and that he has fulfilled that purpose.

Natty said that he was on his farm when he heard the news. “I had to drop everything and come out,” he said. “Imagine that I always think that Bolo woulda bury me. He used to tell me: ‘Natty ah know yo love yo big casket, an ah will make sure yo get it’,” Francois related.

Francois said that he got to know Stapleton from the time he was a boy, as he could have stayed in his yard and see in the yard where Stapleton lived with his sister in a little wooden house close to the police station. Francois also said that he always knew that Stapleton would make money, because when Stapleton was younger and he gave him a dollar to buy rice, Stapleton would cook yams or bananas and save the dollar, telling him the yams or bananas had in the same things as rice.

Francois said that he also admired Stapleton’s outspokenness: “When I used to run van, I would drive the van to town and park up and go in “The Slum” to smoke weed. After a while, I would hear some body say ‘Ah way Natty day’, then Bolo would come and say ‘Natty, nah so people a run business, if yo war come ah Town fo smoke weed, ah betta yo get somebody foh drive e van’”. Francois said he used to get mad, but he had no choice but to respect young Bolo’s views.

Francois told SEARCHLIGHT that whenever the Stapleton family visited Chateaubelair, they would stay at his home and they would all travel to his farm for whatever foods and fruits they needed.

“Bolo was my son, friend, brother and adviser”, a grieving Ras Natty said. “I don’t know if I will ever get over this”.