Off to Jamaica

Move to Jamaica

“After two years in Suriname, we moved to Jamaica. Jamaica is an island in the Caribbean, we lived in Kingston. Our address was 22 Millsberry Ave. Our phone number was: 937-9324 don't ask me why I remember that, I just do, it just sticks in my brain. We lived there in Kingston and it was an improvement from living in Suriname, living in Suriname was fine, there was some good things there, but then we moved to Jamaica. Jamaica is a beautiful island - just beautiful; it is located just south of Cuba an easy access from the United States. A lot of people like to go there. Tourism is a huge industry there.  Jamaica also has a lot of bauxite, and so aluminum companies are there. There are several American companies that had large plants large sites that were mining bauxite and getting it to the point of alumina and then shipping it to the states to make aluminum. Alcoa was building a huge plant site there. They sent my dad there to be an assistant construction manager for building the plant site there in Jamaica; we were there for three years.”

Memories of Jamaica

“The school that we went to was named The Priory it was a private school. Jamaica is a British Crown colony, so it has a lot of English influence. This private school, The Priory, was based on the English school system. You had forms instead of grade levels. You were in the first form, or the second form, or the fifth form, or the 12th form. It was Kindergarten to the 12 grades of school. 

When you went to school you were assigned a hall. Kind of like an athletic organization. They had three different halls, there was Oxford blue that was the house that I was in, yellow which was Princeton, they were all based on names of colleges, and the red group was McGill University, so everybody in the school was assigned to a house and then they would have athletic competitions between the three different houses, they wouldn't have competitions with other schools they did it all within the school. 

We would be in school from eight in the morning until one in the afternoon and then you would go home for lunch, and then if you wanted to participate in any sports you would come back in the afternoon. I remember doing gymnastics, I did tennis for a while, they had a theater organization, they had lots of different sports things that people could do, they had track and field, they did rugby, I remember seeing my first experience, I remember seeing a young man coming off the field and he had this big huge gash in his leg, so when Amy said she wanted to do rugby, I immediately thought of that and said, “Ahhhh, that is too dangerous.” 

It was a very good school it was very international, the families that lived there in Kingston, were ambassadors, or representatives, or people from all around the world, they would send their children to this private school. My goodness there were kids from thirty different nations, and it was this wonderful mix of people from all over the world. It was great.”

“I remember fun outings when we would go out to rent some boats and drive out to one of the little caves that was south of the island and we would spend the day out there snorkeling and the snorkeling was just wonderful just beautiful all the sea life that you could see and we had great experience snorkeling out there among the reefs.”

“A couple of things that were kind of key to me when I was living in Jamaica, first of all is music lessons. My mom found just down the street at the bottom of the hill, we lived at the top of this little hill, and at the bottom of the hill there was a piano teacher by the name of Mary Johns. Fortunately for us our next-door neighbor, her daughter was taking piano lessons from Mary Johns, so we got on the list to be able to take lessons from her.  She was amazing, she had been trained in England under the Royal schools of Music, she trained us using the Royal schools of music program. It would include piano playing, it would include music theory, it included getting tested every year, by an adjudicator that would come from England who would go around and test all the students. We had a certain curriculum that we had to play -  we would go from this piece to that piece - there were three different pieces that we had to play it was all levels, we would take a theory test, we would do sight-seeing, we would do ear training, and so for three years I took piano lessons from her. I just grew by leaps and bounds I think my mom had other kids taking piano lessons from her, probably Keith was doing it, I don’t know if he was super willing but anyways he did it for a while, he liked music, but I was the one that really enjoyed it. My mom was also taking piano lessons.”

When Lisa was 10 years old, she had the opportunity to learn the violin. “I took violin lessons from this old lady, and she was just this lovely lady, she was tall and slender with an elegant carriage just the lovely violin player. I took lessons and my mom also took lessons because she felt like she would be able to encourage me better with my practicing if she had a little bit of training. I took violin lessons and my mom also took them. It was great, not as fun practicing the violin for me as it was doing the piano, but I was starting to learn how to do it.”

‘In Jamaica we had a maid and also a gardener who would take care of the yard, and the maid would take care with helping cleaning the house and take care of helping with dinner preparations, and a little bit of helping with the kids, and housework, laundry, and with five kids there is lots of that. It was while we were in Jamaica that my brother Randall was born. I remember that I was 11 years old it was very exciting to have another little baby in this family, we had a little brother and it was just wonderful, just delightful. So that brought the total to six kids- four boys and two girls.”