FGCU360.com had the opportunity to interview Cacho, along with some of those whose lives he affected, in 2022. The following story was originally published that year on the occasion of FGCU awarding him an honorary doctoral degree.
Even as a child, Cornelius “Pat” Cacho valued education above most things. Born into modest means in British Honduras (now Belize), he took advantage of every opportunity to learn and better himself.
“Black Americans suffer from a terrible inferiority complex,” Cornelius “Pat” Cacho said. “We tried to make them feel that people should respect them.”
It paid off, and he’s been paying it forward ever since. Cacho has changed the lives of countless young people over the past 30 years, including dozens of Florida Gulf Coast University students. In appreciation for his many contributions and tireless support, FGCU recently bestowed the honorary doctor of laws degree upon him.
Cacho, 96, grew up the only child of parents who possessed few worldly goods but fierce determination and unity of purpose when it came to ensuring their son received an education. They worked hard to pay the tuition required to send him to school. After completing his high school education, he became a messenger in the national Treasury Department and took correspondence courses to become an accountant.
A supervisor took an interest in the ambitious young man and arranged to send Cacho to England to study. There he earned his accounting certificate, fell in love with economics and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the London School of Economics.
Upon returning to Belize, he was appointed the assistant secretary of natural resources, a position in the country’s ministry responsible for assessing and managing natural resources.
“I didn’t know a damn thing about natural resources,” he says.
But he learned. Among his accomplishments was forging an agreement with a group of Mennonites to relocate from Mexico to create a community in Belize that remains today. The job exposed him to many opportunities, including a six-month attachment to the World Bank through which he made many professional contacts. He spent four years in Trinidad and Tobago, working at the University of the West Indies as a bursar and a lecturer on international economics. Then the World Bank offered him a job as an operations officer. He spent the next 20 years in various capacities within the organization in countries across Africa, Asia and Central America.
Upon retiring, he and his wife, Laura, chose to live in Naples. As they got to know their new community, they saw what he describes as “large and disturbing gaps in education and training among African American children and educational deficiencies in the Black population generally.”