A life changing event
In 1902, Victor Depaz was in Bordeaux, France to complete his education. At the end of May, he heard the news of a series of devastating volcanic eruptions from Mount Pelée, on the island of Martinique. He received a telegram from a family friend in Fort-de-France that the first eruption on May 8, 1902 had claimed his entire family. The family home, the distillery and the entire estate also disappeared. The words of that telegram stopped the course of his life. He was no longer a loved, promising and privileged young man. He had no purpose. Alone and helpless, Victor was orphaned at the age of sixteen.
Human life is a gift that comes to us with no guarantee of happiness or success. In an instant, our fortunes can change through no fault of our own or despite our best efforts. A child who has come to expect the safety and love of her family is less prepared to lose love and care in the blink of an eye. Most people who experience such a calamity feel helpless and see no other option but to accept that happiness has been replaced by despair. People and animals around the world often capitulate or accept the cruelty of fate. Not doing that is an exception, a word that means weird. One is exceptional if one deviates from the norm. Victor loved his family and his life. He wept for them. He prayed for them. So, he decided to be exceptional. Victor became a man the day he received a telegram. Víctor Dépaz, now a sixteen-year-old man, decided to keep for himself the purpose that his family had destined for him.
The path to a purpose
Victor fought the overwhelming urge to return home to St. Pierre. The human need for closure during death in the family is horrible, yet he could not succeed in his purpose if he gave in to it. He would honor his family by completing his education, which was now doubly difficult because he had to find his own money to do it. His life became one day at a time, one week at a time. He devoted himself to reading, becoming a voracious reader. He read about industrial techniques and linked what he learned about it with his memory of how agriculture worked and the rum distillation process. Having suffered financially, Victor read about banking techniques. He used his story, which was compelling, to reach the French of influence and means. That was how he financed the search for him to return to Martinique. One day at a time, one week at a time, and it was years before he mustered the means to return home. In 1917, at the age of thirty-one, Víctor Dépaz returned to Martinique. At St. Pierre, he cried again. He grieved in the cradle of his childhood, in the land that buried the unmarked graves of his family. So, he once again resolved to be outstanding!
The strength to lead others
St Pierre was left in ruins. The 1902 volcanic eruption was a deadly horizontal protoclastic explosion. His family was part of the more than 29,000 who were killed! Ruthlessly, Mount Pelee had sent a second post blast to take out two thousand responders! The volcano was quiet now, and so was St. Pierre. Very few people had come to clean the ruins to make a living there. Goal, Victor Depaz was at home! He found a Catholic priest who fought to restore the town’s cathedral, the moral symbol of hope. Victor devoted himself to the priest’s purpose, pledging to share the bounty of his estate, which he said he would restore. Encouraged by this man of hope, the priest dedicated himself to sending friendly hands to Victor. Remembering the importance of details and how perseverance had brought him home, Victor applied what he learned from what he had read. Blue sugar cane was the heart of the family business. From can to can’t, can see (dawn) to can not see (sunset), Víctor and those who helped him returned to cultivating the land of the Depaz farm. Later, he built a windmill to turn the rollers that would squeeze the juice out of the cane. Applying the exact technique of his father, he distilled rum from pure cane juice. But he found that other distilleries are now adding sugar or molasses to increase output and lower costs. Depaz rhum would be limited in quantity and more expensive unless he incorporated those changes as well. However, if he did that, it would be against his purpose. Victor had plenty of justifications to do whatever was necessary to survive. However, he had decided to claim the family legacy from him. By recreating his father’s exceptional product, he had achieved his resolve. Now he resolved to have France recognize and honor that product!
a continuing story
Through dogged determination, Victor was able to establish the agricultural process of using only cane juice in the distillation of rum as a distinct standard. The French Appellation d’Origine Controlee (AOC) meets that standard to this day, and rum distilled from blue sugar cane juice grown on the Depaz estate earns AOC approval year after year. Victor got married. He rebuilt his family’s house exactly as he remembered it. He and his wife filled that home with eleven children, with love and hope. Through his children, Víctor set the course for the continuation of the Depaz family saga. They say that cream rises no matter how much it is stirred. An exceptional person is always a winner because he doesn’t stop trying no matter how hard he gets knocked down or how hard he gets knocked down. Victor Depaz’s legacy is complete and lives on in a growing and prosperous family, estate and fine rum distillery, exactly where he was supposed to be in St. Pierre, Martinique. Victor Depaz was a shaper of the world.