IT has been 10 long years of mourning, 10 years of bottling up the hurt and pain over the senseless killing of a loved one, in what is Jamaica’s first court-recognised case of contract-killing. And now the family of David Darby is ready to forgive and move on.

Today, 10 years to the day since they buried the Telstar Cable founder, the family and staff of the company will demonstrate to the public that they have found healing in their decision to forgive the paid assassins, by staging a free peace concert in Kingston, featuring the likes of Bounty Killer, Ken Boothe, Abijah and To-Isis, among others.

The killers are languishing on Death Row. Their dastardly deed hurt more because they did not know the man they were pumping bullets into until the moment he identified himself to them. The mastermind behind it is still not known to police. But Darby’s family craves closure.

“Forgiveness is difficult, but we believe it has to happen in order for us to heal individually, as a family and as a company,” says Florence Darby, managing director of Telstar Cable and sister-in-law of the deceased.

David Darby’s day had begun like any other, on February 24, 1996. He had taken a team of technicians to Roehampton Close near Havendale, St Andrew, to fix a cable fault. Midway up the JPS pole on which the cable was strung, he saw three men ride up.

“Are you David Darby?” one of them asked. “Yes,” he replied.

On cue, the men opened fire, hitting Darby in the head. As he plunged from the pole, his technicians watched helplessly and in shock at the horrifying thing that had come to pass before their very eyes.

Collecting their senses, they rushed their wounded boss to the Kingston Public Hospital, where doctors declared him dead. When the news hit members of the family, it was like a kick in the stomach.

“It was hard. I cried every night and every day,” recalls Sharon Webley, the mother of three of Darby’s four children. “Being a single mother, I found it even more overwhelming, especially when I think of the children,” Webley says. “But with the help of God, I’ve weathered the storm.”

At the time of his death, Darby’s children – Taneisha, Sheree, Karen and Amanda – were 14, 13, 10 and three years old respectively. Darby will not see his first grandchild, born Tuesday night this week to Taneisha, now 24.

To ease the pain, Webley regularly told the children about the virtues of their father. “He was an extremely hard worker who did not take vacation and worked seven days, because he always said he wanted his children to be comfortable,” she recited to them. “He did all this for you.”

David Brian Darby was born in Lucea, Hanover, on March 14, 1956, one of five children to Dennis and Joyce Darby. He grew up in St Catherine, demonstrating an early love for things mechanical and later motor racing. After St Jago High School, he went to work with his father’s construction and quarrying business, DM Limited.

In the 1980s, he asked his dad to guarantee a bank loan for him, took the money and started his own business, distributing satellite dishes which he would install and fix himself. Out of the disaster that was Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, he saw an opportunity and made lots of money replacing satellite dishes wrecked by the storm.

With that money, he was able to go into the cable business way ahead of the pack. But it was here that he would meet his untimely end.

The cable business was a free-for-all akin to the American Wild West. The fight for turf was often bitter and men fought ugly. Family members believe to this day that David Darby was ordered killed by a competitor.

Three years after his death, the government stepped in and regulated the industry, granting official licences on the basis of compliance with a set of stringent rules. But all that was too late for Darby.

But even as they mourned the man they all loved, the family determined in their hearts that he must not be forgotten. Every year since, they have placed a series of newspaper ads in memoriam, causing his face to become familiar. And they worked hard to see the business he left behind grow and prosper.

From one secretary – Veronica Ellis who still works with Telstar – in a small office, the company today employs 40 persons and serves households in Norbrook, Cherry Gardens, Russell Heights, Barbican, Grants Pen, Constant Spring Gardens, New Kingston, Half-Way-Tree and White Hall.

Several family members work there full time, including account executive Sophia Darby Golding, daughter of David’s brother; attorney Dennis Darby Jnr, a director, and his wife, both attorneys. His sister, Roma Darby, is a customer service analyst there. For most of that time, his mother, Joyce Darby ran the business until her retirement just under a year ago.

This year, the family and company decided to make the remembrance a special one. They began the 10th anniversary activities last night with the Peace Concert at the Weekenz Club, under the theme “Victory over Violence”. At the event, Telstar was scheduled to announce a donation to a poor family who had similarly suffered at the hands of gunmen, in memory of its founder.

The Darby family planned to spend today in reflection at a private memorial service, where the words of comfort will be brought by the Rev Lenworth Anglin, executive chairman of the Church of God in Jamaica.

“We are also doing a documentary on David’s life which will run for five days on the Telstar notice board beginning today,” managing director Florence Darby discloses.

“That is also under the theme ‘Victory over Violence’, which is a statement that reconciliation is important and that we are resolved that what David started must continue. What happened devastated us. It has been many years of hurt. But now we seek to heal ourselves.”