St. Elizabeth, Jamaica (McKoy’s News)- St Elizabeth Politician Donald Horne Dead at 98: There is confirmation by family members of Donald Horne that he died on July 25 at age 98. Mr. Horne, who served for 25 years as Parish Councillor, represented the People’s National Party (PNP) in the Junction Division during the 1970s, 1990s and early 2000s.
A thanksgiving service will be held for Mr. Horne at the Munro College Auditorium on Sunday, August 20, with the interment to follow at the family plot in Junction, South-East St Elizabeth. The St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation has since opened a condolence book at its offices in Black River.
Donald Horne, who was born in Buff Bay, Portland in 1918, served as a young man at a British military camp in World War Two during the early 1940s, before returning to Jamaica. He eventually migrated to St Elizabeth in the late 1950s, started a family, worked in the former fast-growing bauxite industry, and was an organiser for the PNP and the National Workers Union (NWU).
Donald Horne’s admiration for the founding leader of the PNP, National Hero Norman Washington Manley was of such high esteem, that he named two of his sons ‘Norman Washington’ and ‘Manley’.
Former Jamaican Prime Minister and PNP President P J Patterson, who, as a young political organiser worked closely with Horne in south St Elizabeth in the 1960s, told the Sunday Observer by telephone that Horne had been a valued “colleague in the struggle”.
Patterson remembered him as a “fervent nationalist… formidable political tactician, and a strong believer in local government” who committed himself to community work.
