Frederick Eutrope Degazon

Frederick Eutrope Degazon was the first elected president of Dominica following the nation’s independence in 1978. He was born on January 4, 1913, in Castries, Saint Lucia.

Fred Degazon attended secondary school and college in Saint Lucia and later went to the University of London to study Law. He later returned home to the Caribbean in the 1940s and worked in various civil capacities in Saint Lucia, Jamaica, and Dominica before his retirement in 1969.

Members of Parliament elected him as Speaker of the House in 1977 and later as Dominica’s president after the island gained independence from Britain in 1978. But a constitutional crisis arose in June 1979 and Degazon fled to England from where he formerly resigned as Dominica’s president in February 1980.

The House of Assembly then elected Sir Louis Cools-Lartigue as Dominica’s president on June 15, 1979. But Cools-Lartigue resigned as president the day following his election, and Jenner Armour was elected as his replacement.

Degazon died on October 4, 2008 at the age of 95.