Mrs. Hanna was laid to rest last Friday following a state funeral at the Christ Church Cathedral.
Leader of Government Business in the House, Tommy Turnquest said Mr. and Mrs. Hanna’s fight for various causes in the country "is a true testament what being Bahamian is really all about."
"(She was) someone who had not been born in The Bahamas, but all her life fought along with her husband for the rights of Bahamians," he said.
"I think all of us, on either side of the political divide ought to be grateful for the contribution that she made to our country."
Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) MP for West End and Bimini Obie Wilchcombe said the Hannas’ fight for The Bahamas is indeed something to celebrate.
"(We need to salute) the fact that she reached out to those persons who were desperate and downtrodden and never at any time forgot that they were among us and that the job is to serve," he said.
"She was that helpmate of her husband . . . and where he could not [serve] because of national matters, she was there."
Hanna moved to The Bahamas in 1955 and refused to call any other country home.
Her family said she not only adopted The Bahamas, but she also embraced it with the love, patriotism and devotion that stand as a true testament to what citizenship, at its deepest level, is really all about.
They said almost immediately she threw herself, heart and soul, into the great struggles that were beginning to take center stage in the life of the Bahamian people in the 1950s.
Mrs. Hanna was also her husband’s greatest and unflinching ally and partner, especially in her support for him as representative in the House of Assembly, beginning with his election for the first time in 1960.
For her contributions to the country, Mrs. Hanna was one of the first recipients elevated to the ranks of Stalwart Councilor in the PLP.
Mrs. Hanna is also the mother of PLP MP for Englerston Glenys Hanna-Martin.
Parliamentarians like Phenton Neymour said he remembers Mrs. Hanna as the true epitome of a wife, a woman and a humanitarian.
He added that oftentimes when he spoke with her, a kind of warmth exuded from her eyes.
This is the very same woman whom MP for St. Thomas More Frank Smith says he remembers, someone who cared for the community in a selflessness and exemplary manner.
St. Cecilia MP Cynthia Pratt, who lost her husband just seven months ago, expressed her condolences.
"It’s only been seven months since my husband has passed, and so it is difficult, very difficult," she said. "If you haven’t lived it, you wouldn’t know it; if you haven’t felt it you wouldn’t know it. So I know what the member (for Englerston) is going through and I want to encourage her today and say that this too shall pass."
Oftentimes holding her head down while members spoke, Mrs. Hanna-Martin rose to thank her colleagues.
"I want to say to colleagues, I thank you," she said. "And I trust that when soldiers of this nature fall or fade, as they say, that we take from it a powerful example in our own lives that’s not just something we put on the decorative mantelpiece, but that we inculcate into our own consciousness, so that when we move forward in our political involvement in our task of national development, that we bring to the fore the same kind of characteristics that we have talked about when others have fallen."
Beryl Hanna was born in 1932.
She died at the age of 77, following a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
- Austin DWI - New York DWI