Bahamas News

Former Housing and Immigration Minister Shane Gibson and his wife, Jackie, were among scores of mourners that gathered yesterday at Lakeview Memorial Gardens on John F. Kennedy Drive, to mark the one year anniversary of the death of former U.S. reality t.v. star Anna Nicole Smith.

Members of the U.S. media were kept behind barricades as Smith’s former attorney turned boyfriend Howard K. Stern recalled the memories he shared with the former Playboy Playmate.

He said Anna Nicole should have lived to hear her daughter call her “momma,” rather than the child only knowing her mother through photographs.

He said if she had lived, Anna Nicole “would be bragging to everyone who would listen” about her baby girl.

“She would make people listen about how beautiful and smart DannieLynn is, and she would be right,” Mr. Stern said.

“That’s how things should be and no matter what anybody tells me it doesn’t make things any easier that that’s not how things are.”

On February 9, Anna Nicole was found unconscious in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino near Hollywood, Florida.

The former Playboy centerfold later died the same day at a hospital. Her sudden death started a tabloid frenzy in a Broward County courtroom over her body and the paternity and custody of her infant daughter.

Eventually, Anna Nicole was buried at Lakeview next to her 20-year-old son, Daniel.

Daniel died at Doctors Hospital on September 10, 2006, three days after his mother had given birth to his half-sister.

A coroner’s inquest into the young man’s death has so far revealed that Smith had a combination of eight different drugs – a mixture of stimulants and depressants – in his system at the time of his death.

According to expert testimonies, the methadone – a drug used to treat heroine addicts – was the most lethal.

Mr. Stern told those attending the memorial that he just can’t stop thinking, “Why?”

“Why are things the way they are instead of the way they shoud be?” he questioned.

“I stand behind what I said at Anna’s funeral, the truth, the only real truth is what you live. It’s not what is said in the media. It’s not what’s said in court. It’s what you are hearing with your own senses, and the truth about Anna, what I know for a fact, is that there was nobody stronger, nobody smarter, nobody more compassionate, nobody funnier and certainly no body more beautiful.”

Mr. Stern said those who really knew Anna Nicole, knew what she was “really all about.”

“We loved her. We respected her. I worshiped her and I still do,” he confessed.

Mr. Stern added that Anna was “right about everything.”

“The people who she thought was using her – they were. They people who she thought were trying to get famous off of her – they were. The people who she thought would sell her out – they did. The people who she thought were liars and thieves – they are. Few people who knew Anna might not realize how smart she actually was because unless she wanted you to know you didn’t know,” he said.

“When Anna died part of me died. The best part.”

Mount Horeb Baptist Church Pastor Dr Lloyd Smith – who presided over the celebrity’s funeral service – presided over the memorial service yesterday, which lasted less than an hour.

One-year-old Dannielynn and her father Larry Birkhead was also in town for the memorial service, which was also attended by Mr. Gibson’s parents.

In the final months of the Christie Administration, Mr. Gibson had come under fire for his close relationship with Smith who was a permanent resident of the Bahamas.

The allegations at the time were Smith’s permanent residency application was fast tracked because of her relationship with Mr. Gibson.

The debacle eventually climaxed with his resignation from the Christie Cabinet right before the May 2, 2007 general elections.

During a Coroner’s Inquest into Daniel’s death, Frederick Taylor, an inspector at the Central Detective Unit, told the court how he arrived at the hospital to find the then Minister of Immigration and his wife in the hospital room as Daniel’s body lay on a nearby bed, waiting to be transferred to the morgue.

Source: Bahama Journal