One Year On: Hon. Sylvester Mondubue “Greg” Grigsby | Commentaries

One year ago today, we said goodbye to our husband and father, Sylvester “Greg” Mondubue Grigsby.

Liberia knew him as a statesman, a diplomat, a Minister of State, and a proud son of Sinoe County who gave more than forty years of his life to the service of this country. He carried Liberia with him into every room he entered, on every continent where he worked, through every season this nation passed through. He believed, stubbornly and without apology, that Liberia’s best days were ahead of it, and that they would be built by Liberians.

We knew him as the man who came home to us no matter what.

For fifty-one years, he was a husband. For all our lives, he was our father. He crossed oceans and boarded late trains for us. He believed in showing up as an expression of love and he always showed up.

He lived by the wisdom of Gye Nyame – Except for God.

We come to his grave to talk to him but we know he is not confined to one small space, he is free: able to roam, unbound by anything, with nothing holding him back. He is in heaven as his family’s and friends’ and Liberia’s fiercest advocate. He is still watching over us, still pushing for us, still making his presence known.

A year has taught us that grief does not end; because the way we expressed our love in the physical sense has nowhere to go.

We do know that before he was a diplomat, before he was a Minister, before he was any of the titles the world gave him, he was a boy walking through the gates of the College of West Africa on Ashmun Street.

CWA made him. He said so often, and he said it plainly. He graduated with the Class of 1969, and for the rest of his life, he believed that one of the surest ways to change a country was to put a child in a classroom and keep that child there.

Last year, in his memory, our family established the Sylvester Mondubue Grigsby Scholarship for Liberians attending the College of West Africa, administered by the CWA Global Alumni Association.

The scholarship exists for a particular kind of student: one with ability and will, but without the school fees. 

Awards will be made annually in accordance with guidelines established by our family and carried out by the CWAGAA Scholarship Committee in partnership with the school. Recipients will be selected based on financial need, character, service to others, and academic promise. They will be announced each year on October 15, his birthday.

He lives on in his friends, his family, and in the lives of all those he changed. He lives on in family group chats, old journals, the shirts we wear to remember him, letters, and voicemails. He lives on in our dreams and in our hearts.

And now, God willing, he will live on in a classroom on Ashmun Street, in a young Liberian who may never meet him, but who will finish school because he was here.

Gye Nyame.

 

-His wife and daughters

Cleopatra Dudley Grigsby

Diana Grigsby

Scheagbe Mayumi “Umi” Grigsby