Bunny Wailer’s family to formalise Livingston Family Trust

April 10 commemorates both life and death for the siblings of reggae icon Neville ‘Bunny Wailer’ Livingston, and they are using the occasion to unite and remember ‘Jah B’, as he is affectionately called, and also their father, Thaddeus ‘Thaddy Shut’ Livingston.

As the date approaches, Bunny Wailer’s youngest sister, Donna Carridice, told The Gleaner that the family is intent on formalising what she refers to as the Livingston Family Trust and quoted from a release which explained the significance.

“Thaddeus departed on April 10, 1992, while Bunny was celebrating his 45th birthday at our family home at 10 Darley Crescent in Washington Gardens. I would have to make mention that Bob Marley, as our stepbrother, contributed to finalising our father’s purchase of this home in the late 1970s. These family facts also relate to the National Heritage Site recognition of the Wailers home on Second Street in Trench Town, where I, as a sister, was born and grew up in those formative years with Bunny and Bob. I hold the unforgettable memory of Bunny saving my life as I fell from the second-floor balcony of that home,” Carridice stated.

Bunny Wailer would have celebrated his 75th birthday on April 10.

She highlighted that Thaddeus Livingston’s estate is integrated in many ways with their brother’s life and achievements as a musical artiste, a reggae icon, ganja activist and “Nyahbinghi Rastafari persona”. Carridice mentioned that the Wailers Museum, which stretches from 10 Darley Crescent in St Andrew, Trench Town in Kingston, and Nine Miles, St Ann, “was conceptualised by Bunny and partner Maxine Stowe as one of the achievements in him being an architect of his own legacy during the last 10 years of his life”.

FULL SUPPORT

Seeking to set the record straight on what she called “the recent misinformation surrounding the family home at 10 Darley Crescent and the media allegations of an attempt to remove our brother’s minor daughter and her mother,” Carridice stressed that the property is owned by the Livingston family, and not her brother. “However, the family is in full support of it being a part of the Wailers’ Museum as it clearly honours our father Thaddeus, who has willed it to us collectively, including Bunny. The home was occupied by several of Bunny’s children for months after my brother passed, and we all had access to it.”

She said that the house was subsequently abandoned, with a significant amount of assets unprotected and left without light.

“It’s on observing this scenario over weeks that we took entry to the premises,” she said.

That action resulted in a stand-off between two factions of the family.

Carridice is now focused on the upcoming birthday of her brother, and preserving his legacy and that of her father.

“We continue to keep in our hearts hope, faith and memories the life of the [Bunny’s] common-law wife, Sister Jean Watt, whom we also grew with, and her family, in Trench Town, and that closure in her being found is achieved so we may celebrate the many positives of their multi-decade relationship,” she stated.