JAGS’ daughter, Yaa McCartney, commandingly reminds what her father the Hero would want from TCI Today

By Deandrea Hamilton & Dana Malcolm

Editorial Staff

#TurksandCaicos, June 6, 2022 – Yaa McCartney was only five-years-old when she stood across from her father’s empty casket.  Surrounded by Turks and Caicos Islanders in the throes of grief, this 5-year-old had just begun the journey of understanding who her father was and what he represented for the emerging islands of the TCI.

“I didn’t cry because I understood the moment, but because I felt the hurt that surrounded me,” she explained.

Yaa’s perspective is the perspective of a great many Turks and Caicos Islanders today who have no firsthand experience of what it meant to know J.A.G.S McCartney.  They have heard the stories and perhaps in each recant and reflection, each year, they learn a bit more about the indomitable spirit of the man who is still one of the youngest elected leaders in modern history.

But with so many still around who had a front row seat to the spectacular showmanship of the Most Excellent JAGS, and with a legacy that speaks for itself even from his final resting place, Yaa would come to learn so much about the man who was both father and hero.

Still, there were times she remembers feeling resentful of the legacy, worried that the shadow her iconic father had cast was bound to make life more difficult and dim the sunshine for her own life and her family.  Yaa, for a season, felt ‘disliked by people’ however as she learned more about James Alexander George Smith McCartney, that burdensome worry grew into pride.

Through firsthand accounts easily shared with her by those who knew him well, Yaa, now an attorney by profession and whose name is Ghanaian for ‘born on a Thursday’ is resting peacefully in the knowledge of what her father stood for and she was inadvertently schooled in the subject of ‘what it means to be a hero’.

“He was brave, He represented his people and saw beyond political affiliations…although being first at something is commendable, the bar set for a national hero is higher than that,” Yaa said.

Yaa was told of his determination to set the Turks and Caicos people up as first class citizens of their home via constitutional changes.

JAGS McCartney, she found, along with others of his time, had shaped the Turks and Caicos Islands into what we know it as today: a proud nation of resilient, culturally rich people.

The people who spoke to Yaa, JAGS’ eldest child, about her father had much to say about the things he did in order to set this future for TCI in motion, but two things always stood out, his abounding humility and his desire for unity.

“People would say to me your dad would dine with the rich and the poor…he would sit in a chair at your table or on a bucket and your outside stove.”

From the words of his compatriot, J.A.G.S McCartney did what he did for his people without caring about recognition.

In light of the powerful and pervasive legacy this Junkanoo Club legend left behind, Yaa found it commandingly reminded the Turks and Caicos that, “J.A.G.S wouldn’t want us to get bogged down with trivial differences. He would remind us there was still work to be done and it could only be achieved together.  He believed that unity was our greatest asset to propel the Turks and Caicos to its greatest potential.”