Albert T Sands

AN INDUSTRIOUS GENTLEMAN

In 1941, Rock Sound was but a little fishing village on the elongated island of Eleuthera. Nevertheless, it was there on September 24th of that year that Thomas Albert was born to the marital union of Curtis Albert and Geneva Sands. He was the youngest of the couples’ four children. Unfortunately, Mr. Curtis Sands died two years later, the victim of the first automobile accident on the island.
Having been born into an industrious family, whose varied business interests included a small store, a restaurant and a bar, young Alberts’ enterprising spirit got its early nurturing from the daily chores assigned him to assist in the running of the familys’ various commercial establishments, as well as those tasks normally associated with day-to-day household life at that time. In the former regard, cleaning fish for the family’s’ restaurant ranked high on his list of priority duties.

With very few motor vehicles in the settlement, Albert saw an opportunity to provide a service to other small store keepers in the area in getting merchandise, shipped from Nassau via the mail boat, to their respective business establishments. This he did by building a box cart in which he transported their goods from the mail boat to their stores for six pence (seven cents) or one shilling (14 cents) per delivery, given their size. Notwithstanding this extra undertaking, Albert still found time to do all of the other work assigned him in the family.

Unafraid of work, Alberts’ industrious attitude soon saw him rise virtually from being a stevedore to the position of bag boy and stock clerk at the largest store on Eleuthera – The Market – a gigantic business establishment, that later on in his lifetime, as God would have it, he would eventually own.