And while the 10th September 2020 was unlike any Tenth Celebration - including the one in 1931 when thousands died - many of them enjoying the Tenth - when a Category four hurricane struck at 2:00 pm that day.
In the 89 years since then Belize has gone from colony to nationhood - and now, in 2020, we are on the cusp of entering a new phase of leadership - as the major post independence leaders, Sir Manuel Esquivel, Said Musa and Dean Barrow have all retired or are retiring in the next 6 weeks.
60 year old John Briceno and 42 year old Patrick Faber are up next for national leadership - but do they measure up to their predecessors? That's what we asked PM Dean Barrow on Wednesday:
Jules Vasquez, reporter
"But there are people who will say that you and Mr. Musa, when you all ascended to the highest post in your party and the highest office in the country that you all were men of substance, While certainly none of you when you entered were universally loved and, as you depart, perhaps much less so, indeed, in both of you all, you both emerged from a strong intellectual and ideological background and indeed the feeling from many is that your successors are not men of equal substance."
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, UDP Queen's Square 1984-2020
"I don't know that I would agree with that that. Perhaps neither one has had a chance to prove his mettle in quite the way that applied to Said and to me, and you have to be tested before you can show the stuff of which you are really made. I think that certainly speaking for the new leader of the United Democratic Party, there's no doubt in my mind that he has what it takes."
