The April 22nd Memorial Group has promised to reburyPresident William R. Tolbert Jr. and his officials in dignity and peace.
The late President Tolbert and his officials, along withothers, were buried in a mass grave at the Palm Groove Cemetery on Center Street in Monrovia.
According to the Chairman of the April 22nd Memorial Group, Dr. Richard V. Tolbert, Liberia Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention and the Board of the Liberia Baptist Seminary have granted them the permission to relocate in Paynesville the remains of the late President Tolbert and all those buried with him.
Dr. Tolbert made the disclosure Monday at a program of remembrance of April 22, 1980 to April 22, 2024, held at the mass grave on Center Street in Monrovia.
“We have already begun to plan and work to make this a reality by April 22, 2025. We call upon all well-meaning Liberians, Baptists around the world and members of ECOWAS, Mano River Union and African Union to help us achieve this,” he said.
He acknowledged that President Tolbert was not only President of the Republic of Liberia but also a past President of the Baptist World Alliance, founding member of ECOWAS and Mano River Union as well as past Chairman of the Organization of African Unity, now AU.
Dr. Tolbert indicated that it is estimated that at least 26 persons died that night in the Executive Mansion beside President Tolbert and his 8-year-old son, Momoh.
“Today, April 22, as always, we are solemnly gathered here to honor the memories of our fathers—mostly 13elderly senior government officials, including my father the late Senator Frank E. Tolbert, who were brutally executed in cold blood just a few yards from here on South Beach behind the Barclay Training Center’smilitary barracks,” he lamented.
“We are not here to mourn in bitterness; rather, to remember them in bounteousness,” he said, in the immortal words of the poet Lawrence Binyon, “They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old, age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn, at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them,” Dr. Tolbert asserted.
He explained, “So we are gathered here once again in this the month of April to perform our painful but necessary duty as instructed in the Holy Book to ‘honor our fathers and our mothers’ so that our days upon this earth may be long and blessed.”
He underscored, “April is the beginning of the rainy season in Liberia when the heavens refresh our land with their tears, just as it is also for many of us the season of our annual tears as we every year celebrate the memories of Dr. Tolbert and our loved ones killed in April 1980, but we shall rejoice and be glad in it.
“As we said, on April 12 the memories and pains of 1980 are for us as fresh today as they were some 44 years ago, yet despite everything, we choose to forgive all who transgressed against us in 1980, just as we ask the Almighty to forgive us and this nation for all the atrocities that have been committed since in all our senseless wars as instructed in our Holy Book to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” he maintained.
He pointed out, “But this year, in addition to celebrating the lives of our loved ones, we have an extra reason to be especially joyous.”
According to Dr. Tolbert, “For finally, after 44 years we have found a place where the remains of our former President, Dr. Tolbert, and his officials as well as all those who died with them in the coup of 1980, unceremoniously dumped here in a common mass grave, can be reburied in dignity and peace.
He disclosed that the remains of President Tolbert will be removed from the mass grave to the Liberia Baptist Seminary in Paynesville, outside Monrovia.
