And while he was loved on San Pedro, Barry’s Bowen’s footprint
was all across Belize. He was without compare the most enterprising, progressive,
risk-taking businessman in Belize. And he was all Belizean. Bowen was born in
Belize as were his Welsh and French parents and grandparents. He never held
dual nationality and never sought to invest outside of Belize. Today we asked
the current and former Prime Minister about the importance of being Sir Barry.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“He was quite clearly a Belizean giant, a colossus in terms of Belizean
enterprise. What I found particularly impressive was the fact that while he
could have sat back and simply raked in the money in terms of Belize Brewing
Company and the Bottling Works which were sure fire hits, he always ploughed
the money back into other ventures in the productive sector that were far riskier,
I think really distinguished him and stamped him as a Belizean businessman and
Belizean entrepreneur, a Belizean innovator of the first order.”
Rt. Hon. Said Musa, Former Prime Minister
“I need to say very emphatically that the loss of Barry Bowen, his
death is a great loss for Belize, because Barry Bowen has been one of the biggest
investors in Belize, one of the great financial contributors to the development
of Belize, in sports, community, whatever have you, and he typifies for me the
true entrepreneur and we have so few of them in Belize that Barry Bowen stood
out, an outstanding Belizean in sense of being enterprising businessman, somebody
who was not averse to taking risks and the way he went about doing it. Belize
today has one of the state of the art breweries in Central America. Belize thanks 
to Barry Bowen has a state of the art shrimp processing facility, a world class
shrimp farm facility, perhaps a too expensive investment as it is turning out
now. But that was Barry Bowen, he always did things with class. He was a man
of quality, you look at Chan Chich, his resort again, very done with finesse.”
Hon. Michael Finnegan, Friend & Former Employee
“I think we will suffer a loss by Barry Bowen leaving. As you know
I have been critical of him and I have always praised him on the other hand
because I can draw a line in the sand and be magnanimous, Barry Bowen is one
businessman in this country and that puts his money where his mouth is. Barry
doesn’t just order sardines and spam and milo and coffee, Barry is creative
and could generate employment and could generate business, business on the local
level, employment on the local level. I think this country loses something when
you lose Barry Bowen.”
Jules Vasquez,
“Speak if you can, you were an employee of Mr. Bowen in the 70s.”
Hon. Michael Finnegan,
“I can always remember a phrase I heard him say to some of the workers
downstairs. I was walking in and he was walking out and the workers were standing
downstairs and they were all staring at Barry and up comes Barry and Barry looks
right at them and he said to them, ‘don’t watch me grow, grow with
me.”
Email
Print