Chapter 46

With Jim home bound, and Millie, Colleen and Rebecca refusing to leave his side, I was free to explore the idea of purchasing the island nation of Nauru, and turning it into a self-supporting community. The Judge cleared the road with the 'government' of Nauru, which turned out to be a dispirited group of people, exhausted from decades of fruitless struggles, trying to keep people fed, housed, clothed, and the island economically afloat.

With the promise of better living conditions, including education and medical care, the council gladly surrendered power, and I bought their country for eleven million dollars, which was the their national debt, along with a promise of millions more in improvements. An additional three million, six hundred thousand dollars was divided up among the eighteen hundred families that populated our country, as per our agreement, and our bank opened temporarily inside the Island Airport, which I promptly renamed Bell Harbor Airfield, after my very best friend, Jim.

Millie and Jim flew out in the seven-thirty-seven, accompanied by their medical entourage.

Rebecca, Colleen, and Regina flew in with them. Benjamin came ahead with me, and we met the seven-thirty-seven, which was close to the largest bird our airfield could handle. Jim and Millie went home soon after we dedicated the airfield, when a heart unexpectedly became available. Jim underwent successful transplant surgery as soon as he arrived back home.

Our work was just beginning, and with Parliament long since disbanded, we moved our operation, and ourselves, into the former Parliament House, located near Bell Harbor Airfield, and began the work of organizing a nation. Jim spent months convalescing, but returned to near full health. When he came back, he initiated delicate negotiations that earned us enormous international support for our remake of Nauru.

The fresh cash that we distributed directly among the local families was kept out of the hands of corrupt bureaucrats, purchased immediate good will. Along with that came a source of ready, willing, and affordable labor. We built on our good name by quickly replacing the old, dilapidated water works with a new, modern one that was built for another city, and redirected to Nauru through the magic of bribery. Once fresh, clean, and dependable water began to flow, our residents became our strongest allies.

Rebecca had picked out designs, and pre-ordered everything necessary to open a new combination medical center/hospital, that we named Temple Restoration Medical Center. She staffed it on day one, with four doctors, seven nurses, and a variety of aides, technicians, lab assistants, phlebotomists, clerical support staff, cooks, cleaners, and radiologists, recruited locally when qualified and from other island nations - all anxious to spread their wings in a modern, well-funded setting. Rebecca, thinking ahead, included a medical services educational wing to be built along with our planned expansion and modernization.

Colleen set up a local court, and offered no-cost legal services, advice, and assistance with the many and varied needs for residents of our island nation. We adapted the US Constitution, altered for our special circumstances, and installed recently retired Judge T. Clyde Thorson, from Branson, as our first presiding judge, and installed him in a wonderful courtroom, purchased, disassembled, shipped, and reassembled on Nauru. We even hired his former court clerk, who lost her husband and had no children, to make the move with him and Sandra

Our engineers quickly began upgrading electrical service, phone, and sewage disposal. We used some modern tricks and a very state-of-the-art satellite system to connect every home and building on the island. We even set up a low cost cable TV service that cost exactly two dollars a month, complete with Internet for an additional dollar.

The real work was done by our agricultural people, who moved in and went to work reclaiming the mined out areas. We hired dozens of shipping lines to bring in high quality topsoil, and by spring and the expected monsoon season, we had covered many thousand acres of naked, useless, phosphate dirt, with a bed of groundcover that held the soil while our farming took hold, and helped turn much of our worthless land into lush, green farmland.

Our next challenge was shipping in live fruit and citrus trees to start our farming operations, along with cattle, pigs, horses, chickens, and all the necessary support to raise and breed them.

Our new barns brimmed with activity, and our hen houses nearly burst with productivity.

One risk we ran was having our support staff grow tired of living on such a tiny island. To help with that, I bought a Dash-100, turbo prop aircraft, and set up a free air service back and forth to our neighbors. We rotated everyone in and out to get regular R & R. Pretty soon after arriving, our support staff began to intermingle and the inevitable marriages and birth of children soon followed. Beth Ann and Millie oversaw our Welcome Wagon-style committee that celebrated and supported new families, as their children were born.

The Nauru Island School District was born with Sandra Thorson, Superintendent overseeing all phases of Nauru education. Sandra loved the interaction with our residents, and became an effective and passionate defender of their education.

Once water, power, solid and human waste disposal, and transportation were re-engineered, Nauru became a very lovely place. Because the trust owned all of the land on the island, worry about resort owners, or developers was not an issue. Our residents owned the inside of their homes, and my trust maintained the outside at no cost to them, as a benefit of living in Nauru.