50 years ago: Visiting drummer killed in crash, fundraiser for hospital

The front page of the 10 May 1973 Cayman Compass carried what is an all-too-familiar story in 2023: ‘Head On Collision Fatal to Band Member’, with the main headline: ‘Drummer Killed’. Canadian Ross McMillen, 24, who had just started a month-long appearance at Royal Palms with his band, was killed when his mini Moke collided with a Volkswagen bus on West Bay Road at around 3am.

Also on page one, ‘Hospital Benefit Dance Tonight’, was about Barefoot Man and his band performing to raise money for the Cayman Islands General Hospital. The hospital “has come a long way in the past few years, adding an up-to-date laundry, new electro-cardiogram and anaesthesia equipment”, but more improvements were necessary, with the article noting the difficulty of getting a medical flight off island “in time to meet a medical emergency”. Tickets for the fundraiser were $2.50, with drinks priced at a remarkable 75 cents.

Mariculture was in the news again with its products being processed in Jamaica. “To celebrate the return of green turtle meat – the gourmet’s delight”, to hotels and restaurants there and consumer markets in Jamaica and overseas, the Sheraton Kingston Hotel hosted a tasting of various dishes, including turtle aspic and turtle pâté. The article added that products such as turtle soup, oil, hide and shell had recently become available in world markets “through the establishment of the world’s first turtle farm by Mariculture”. Also mentioned was that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature ban on the slaughter of wild turtle “still exists… to prevent turtles becoming extinct”.

Lastly, a photo headlined, ‘Most Modern in the West Indies’, showed construction on the new George Town police station. The two-storey building was to feature “central air-conditioning, a car-to-headquarters radio system, modern cells, lecture theatre and immigration office”.