The recent appointment of Felix Stubbs as chairman of the Grand Bahama Port Authority and that of Erik Christiansen as chairman of Port Group Limited (PLG) bode well for the likelihood that a resolution to the long-standing disagreement between the principal owners of the GBPA is on the horizon.

Both Stubbs and Christiansen are well respected businessmen who were recently appointed by the Supreme Court of the Bahamas as independent directors of the board of GBPA and PGL, and together they most certainly are capable of finding a way to devise an arrangement that would appease both sides of the GBPA ownership dispute.

One factor that has been somewhat obfuscated by the combative atmosphere that now exists at the GBPA, however, is the significant role that Sir Albert Miller has played in maintaining a relatively smooth business operation at the company which essentially is a government within a government when it comes to the day-to-day operations of the city of Freeport.

Other than Sir Jack and the late Edward St. George, no other individual could have succeeded in doing what Sir Albert, as CEO, has done to keep the GBPA operating relatively smoothly as the warring parties remained polarized over who owns what percentage of the GBPA.

Sir Albert's success in this regard, of course, did not happen by chance. He and Sir Jack and St. George are credited with being the trio that was responsible for guiding the GBPA through the most sustained period of its growth and development over the past several decades.

Indeed, he initially retired as co-chairman of the GBPA in 2003, but after the devastating storms of 2004, he was brought out of retirement to assist in the many problems the GBPA found itself faced with in the aftermath of the storms. Sir Albert's contributions to the GBPA were put in perspective by St. George in the program for Sir Albert's retirement gala on April 12, 2003 when he described Sir Albert as "a great team member" who together with himself and Sir Jack Hayward have been able to see Freeport grow from small beginnings to the thriving community that it is today.

St. George, who died in December of 2004, was renowned for being an extremely generous individual, but his assessment of Sir Albert's contributions to the growth and development of Freeport over the past several decades was not meant to be an expressed demonstration of his generous nature nor was it a patronizing statement.

Indeed, with the exception of St. George and Sir Jack, no one other individual had a greater impact on Freeport's remarkable growth over the past 20 years than Sir Albert, who had already enjoyed a highly successful career as a member of the Royal Bahamas Police Force when he was encouraged to move to Freeport in 1971 to become vice president of Bahamas Amusements Limited with responsibility for security and human resources at the casino it operated.

Sir Albert subsequently became president of Bahamas Amusements and was serving in that position when St. George and Sir Jack took over responsibility for running the Grand Bahama Port Authority in 1976 and made Sir Albert president of the Port. In those 30 years, he has more than fulfilled our expectation of him and has done magnificent work in the growth of Freeport and the Port Authority, St. George acknowledged, in his message in the retirement gala program.

Describing Sir Albert as a "loyal friend," St. George noted that without him, we could not have achieved what we did. The fact that Sir Albert was the subject of such a glowing tribute is a result of his hard work and unrelenting commitment to self-improvement throughout his life, from his early days growing up in Miller's, Long Island, where he was born on February 23, 1926. To describe him as a self-made man is the epitome of an understatement.

As a young boy, he attended the Grant-in-Aid School in McKann's, Long Island, about five miles away from Miller's, many mornings running that distance to make sure he was at school on time at 9 o'clock. A good student, he did very well at the Grant-in-Aid School and eventually became a monitor. At the age of 15, however, his older sister, Florie Miller, who was responsible for him, moved to Nassau, and soon after that he joined her there.

Sir Albert began his 28-year career on the Police Force in 1943, and spent some time on the beat and in the transport section as well as on traffic duty on Bay Street, before being made a detective corporal in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in 1950. During his 10 years with CID, he climbed the promotional ladder to the position of deputy superintendent by 1961.

He was promoted to superintendent in 1962, assistant commissioner in 1964, and deputy commissioner in 1968.

Sir Albert's rise through the ranks on the Police Force again was the result of his relentless efforts to educate himself. Shortly after he moved to New Providence from Long Island, he received private English lessons from Lambert Parker, and through a friend, he was introduced to Father Frederick Frey, the then principal of St. Augustine's College, who tutored him three nights a week.

"I spent a lot of time with Father Frederick," Sir Albert recalled, during an interview. "I used to take police reports to him, and he showed me how to lay them out and how to highlight the salient points."

After Father Frederick's death, Sir Albert continued his studies under Father Bartholomew Sayles. In 1953, he went to England on his first course as a detective sergeant for training at the Detective Training School in Hendon.

A succession of other courses in England followed over the years, including a six-month junior officers course at Ryton-on-Dunsmore in 1958; a six-month senior staff course, designed for chief officers of police, at Bramshill in 1965; and an administrative security training course in 1969. As deputy commissioner of police in 1969, Sir Albert was sent to Freeport to reorganize the police in this fast developing city.

"We had about five police officers here, and for a long, long time nothing happened in Freeport, and suddenly the place sort of mushroomed," Sir Albert said. "Everything started to move, and I had to set up a fire branch, CID and proper police patrols and all that sort of thing."

One day at the airport going to Nassau, he said he was approached by "a man from the Port Authority who said they had had a meeting the day before and they thought I would be an ideal person to come and work for their casino. At that time the Port Authority owned the two casinos and those two were under a company called Bahamas Amusements, but I told them I was not interested, and I went back to Nassau," Sir Albert recalled.

When the leadership at the Port changed and John Kimball became president, Sir Albert said he was again asked by Kimball to consider accepting the job. He said he told Kimball that he was not interested, but some three months later, Kimball came back with "an incredible proposal" that subsequently changed Sir Albert's mind.

As fate would have it, his decision to give up on his goal to one day be commissioner of police and move to Freeport clearly was an excellent one. There is no question that he would have been an excellent commissioner of police, but today Sir Albert Miller is arguably one of the most successful Bahamian businessmen in the country.

Sir Albert has been married to the former Laurie Gibbs for 60 years, and he and Lady Laurie have three children: Deborah Archer, Mark Anthony and Russell Marcell. Knighted by the Queen in 2002, he describes that honor as one of the most important things that has happened in his life.

Certainly, it has been a long journey and a highly successful one for Sir Albert Joel Miller from the small settlement of Miller's, Long Island, to the pinnacle of success and wealth he enjoys today as one of The Bahamas' most successful businessmen.

* Oswald T. Brown is editor and general manager of The Freeport News. Comments on this

column can be sent to oswald@nasguard.com