John David Merwin (born September 26, 1921) is a former politician of the United States Virgin Islands who served in that territory's Legislature, as Government Secretary (equivalent to Lieutenant Governor), and as the first native born Governor. He was perhaps the first "politician" to be made Governor as previous appointees were primarily men of the military, industry, or non-elected government servants.
Merwin was born in St. Croix. In the 1950s, he became a member of the Legislature, during which time he voted for a 10-year exemption on all taxes for businesses with $10,000 of capitalization ($100,000 for hotels and housing industries) and a 75% reduction in income taxes for those industries. He was an avid campaigner for a USVI representative in the United States Congress.
On December 23, 1957, he was made Government Secretary. The following year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated him for Governor on August 4, Congress approved and he was sworn in on September 25.
As Governor, he worked to build a second airport on St. Thomas, but that plan was scrapped by his successor. He also worked to boost tourism by attending tourism conventions and even opened a Department of Tourism office in New York, New York.
Famous quotes containing the words john, david and/or merwin:
“Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.”
—William Gouge, Puritan writer. As quoted in The Rise and Fall of Childhood by C. John Sommerville, ch. 11 (rev. 1990)
“For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)