Thunderous applause erupted in St Anne’s auditorium Friday as students and teachers heard the surprise announcement: After years of fund-raising the school would have a swimming pool.<\/P><\/p>\n
Howard “Butch” Kerzner, Kerzner International’s Chief Executive Officer, visited the school on Friday and announced that Kerzner will donate a quarter of a million dollars – $250,000 – to construct a new state of the art pool at the school that sits atop Fox Hill.<\/P><\/p>\n
The gift was the result of a casual comment made to Mr Kerzner by St Anne’s Principal, Cynthia Wells, when he visited the school two days earlier.<\/P><\/p>\n
During that visit Mrs Wells told him that even though the school had no pool, their swim team came second in a recent competition between all of the Anglican Schools.<\/P><\/p>\n
“When I was among you all a few days ago talking about all sorts of things my heart was really touched,” Mr Kerzner told the school assembly on Friday. “Barrie Farrington and I got talking and so today I am here to announce that my dad (Sol Kerzner) and I are to donate one quarter of a million dollars to create a swimming pool.”<\/P><\/p>\n
Mr Kerzner was unable to finish his sentence. Jubilant students and teachers rose to their feet in thunderous applause.<\/P><\/p>\n
Mr Kerzner said the company hopes to start the project immediately. “Whatever it takes, if it takes a little bit more, we will make sure that the pool gets done,” said Mr Kerzner as he urged students to start taking out their swim trunks.<\/P><\/p>\n
This latest donation is in keeping with Kerzner’s commitment to assist in the development of the Bahamas. It also a major step forward for the school that has for a number of years been holding fund raising events to accumulate enough money to build a pool.<\/P><\/p>\n
Kerzner International has been a major supporter of St Anne’s. Last year the company made a special donation to the school’s library.<\/P><\/p>\n
Mr Kernzer said that since moving to the Bahamas in 1996, he and his family have been welcomed and accepted by the Bahamian people.<\/P><\/p>\n
“I left my home country, South Africa, about 25 years ago,” said Mr Kerzner. “For many years I lived in various places. It was not until I came to The Bahamas around 10 years ago that I truly could say to myself: ‘I have found a new home.’<\/P><\/p>\n
“My wife, two kids and I love this country. What we have going in this country is just astounding. I believe that in 10, 20 or 30 years, we, together with everybody, are going to build some amazing things in the Bahamas. The story is just getting started.”<\/P><\/p>\n
The Tribune<\/SMALL><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This latest donation is in keeping with Kerzner’s commitment to assist in the development of the Bahamas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}