By  Fernando Davis

While the late Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart has undoubtedly left an indelible mark on the lives of many, few however can claim a front row seat to his life as did lifelong friend Colin Mills.

Mills, owner of the Double V Multi-Purpose Complex in Pineapple, Ocho Rios, who shared a 67-year friendship with the Sandals Resorts International founder and former chairman, said while he has had sufficient time to grieve, he continues to have a difficult time commenting and reflecting on their decades-long relationship.

“This is a man who paid off a $53-million debt when I was about to lose my business here at Double V to creditors,” Mills said during a sit-down interview at his business complex on (Saturday) January 9.

“This is a man who paid the tuition fee for my daughter…who is now a lawyer…to finish college in the United States. Without ‘Butch’ Stewart I would no longer have Double V. Without my friend ‘Butch’ Stewart I don’t know where I would be in life.”

Mills said when he got the news that Stewart – the person who was the best man at his wedding – had passed, it was one of those surreal moments where he simply went back to bed, hoping it was “just a bad dream”.

He said it was only when he got out of bed the next morning and saw his wife Valerie sitting on the porch crying her heart out that it dawned on him that ‘Butch’, the man he had known for almost all his life and the bond and trust they had forged over all these years, was indeed gone forever.

“I have known ‘Butch’ Stewart since he was 11 and I was six years old,” Mills added.

“I remember when he turned 12 and I was seven, he used to go and shoot fish and I would go down to Silver Seas (Ocho Rios) and sell [the fish] for him. Whatever he wasn’t able to sell, he would let me have them, but not before telling me that I should [make sure the fish is sold]. Yes, I was the fish vendor and he was the fisherman.”

Mills, his voice now cracking, said that was the beginning of their special and lifelong friendship, recalling that the late hotel mogul used to live in close proximity to what later became Double V and where “my mother worked with his mother for nine and a half years”.

The Double V boss said he could tell from very early in the game that Stewart had a special business touch, noting that it was something that was also detected by the hotel mogul’s grandmother who predicted that he would one day have the entire Caribbean eating out of “his hands”.

“I remember one day when ‘Butch’ was coming down from his home with a bicycle, at the time he was the only one in Pineapple with a bicycle, and ran into a guy [Dee Dixon] who had a goat, and which he [Butch] wanted to buy,” Mills reminisced.

“The guy said ‘no, I won’t sell it to you but I will swap [you] the goat for the bicycle’. ‘Butch’ gave him the bicycle and the guy Dixon gave him the goat. Three weeks later the goat had two kids, putting ‘Butch’ on the business map. Yes, ‘Butch’ became a businessman when he was 12 years old, by shooting fish and having me as his vendor and by trading for the goat that would give him other goats.”

Mills mused that those were the kind of deals that would propel Stewart into becoming one of the most astute businessmen of his generation – the visionary and the man with the Midas touch.

“’Butch’ knew that if he had a goat or a fowl, then you can make a profit. He knew that he could make a profit from the goat, something that the bicycle could not do for him. Back in those days there was no money to be made off a bicycle or a motor vehicle and ‘Butch’ knew how to invest. Just like land. He and I had that philosophy that land will not meet in an accident so you just buy it and watch the value grow.”

Mills recalled that Stewart’s grandmother, Ethel Stewart, who died in 1955 at age 84 and who had a profound impact on the business icon’s life, knew from early that greatness would not elude her grandson.

“Ms. Ethel picked up early that ‘Butch’ was dynamic and had the business mind. I was there when she told my mother that,” he said.

“She also said the same thing in the Roman Catholic Church in St. Ann’s Bay [the school Stewart attended at an early age] that he would one day have the entire Caribbean in “his hand middle”.

The Double V boss also noted that Stewart was kind to a fault and found it very difficult to say ‘no’, especially to a friend. He added that [that] was the main concern of Ethel Stewart – that her grandson’s kryptonite was his penchant for helping all and sundry.

“If you are his friend and he can’t help you right away, you will see him take some time all alone and with his eyes filled with water, not wanting anybody to see him crying. He wouldn’t stop until he could help you. He will never make a promise to you that he will not keep.”

For her part, wife Valerie Mills said she will never forget the day creditors gave her and her husband a couple of weeks to exit the Double V property and all seemed lost.

She said that, on the way from Kingston, while crying her heart out and unbeknown her husband, she made a call to Stewart to tell him about their plight.

“He simply told me to remain calm, always assuring me that he would deal with the matter,” she noted. “Within days he had the matter settled and our business was saved. He is the kindest and greatest man that I have known, other than my husband. He would later pay the final years of our daughter’s college tuition in the United States, calling her accomplishment as a lawyer one of the greatest investments he has ever made.”