Editor's note: Journal Staff Writer Philip Marcelo will be traveling to Liberia in August to report on that country's progress 10 years after the end of a devastating civil war. This is the latest installment of an online and print series called "Rebuilding Liberia: The R.I. Connection."
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Rhode Island has a large and active Liberian community.
But outside of that community, many may not remember that the family of former Liberian President Charles Taylor - the notorious warlord at the center of that nation's nearly 15 years of civil war - also counted itself among its ranks.
At one point, Taylor's then-wife -- Enid TupeeTaylor - lived in Pawtucket, as did a sister and brother. Another brother and another sister lived in Providence.
But most of the family returned to Liberia when Taylor rose to power there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Taylor fought a years-long civil war before being elected Liberia's president and serving from 1997 to 2003. Eventually, he was forced to resign, and was arrested and tried by a United Nations court for war crimes. He is now serving a 50-year sentence.
But before his bloody rein, Taylor had a colorful background that is as much a part of New England lore as it is of Africa.
The short version is this:
Taylor, a native Liberian, was educated at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.
As president of a leading group for Liberians living in the United States, he was a prominent voice among those opposing the administration of Liberian President William Tolbert in the late 1970s.
When Tolbert was overthrown and executed in a military coup in 1980, Taylor returned to Liberia to serve in the new administration.
But his time as purchasing director in Liberian President Samuel K. Doe's regime was short-lived: Taylor was accused of embezzling nearly a million dollars and fled to the United States.
The U.S. attorney in Boston eventually charged Taylor with diverting the stolen money to a fictitious corporation in New Jersey and had him arrested in 1985.
Taylor ultimately was imprisoned at the county jail in Plymouth, Mass., while waiting extradition. Somehow, he obtained a hacksaw and managed to escape.
Leaving his family behind in Rhode Island, he returnedto Africa, and spent the next four years building an army to overthrow his old boss, President Doe.
That army, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, was notorious for being trained and funded, in large part, by the late-Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed dictator of Libya.
Taylor's army also sent units of often drug-induced child soldiers into battle, setting a tragic precedent for future African conflicts and leaving a lost generation of youths in its wake.
I'll have more to say in later on Liberia's civil war years and this lost generation.
For now, it's enough to consider the lasting legacy of Charles Taylor, a former New Englander who propelled a civil war that still ranks among Africa's bloodiest conflicts ever.