Meet `Teacher Rose’ - oldest living Baronian
Guyana Chronicle
May 9, 2004
IT TOOK a while for the bright green door to the house where I had pressed the bell to open and when it eventually did, there stood a slimly built bespectacled elderly woman with short grey hair.
That person was none other than Rosaline Iona King, better known as Teacher Rose, who, at 99, is the oldest living person in the Beterverwagting/Triumph neighbourhood.
The fact that Teacher Rose lives alone and gets regular assistance from a helper, Audrey Abrams-Daly, attests to her fairly good health. She has slight deficiency in hearing and seeing, but her memory is intact and her voice is strong.
Teacher Rose was born on February 12, 1905, to Joseph and Mary King. She was the eighth of 10 children - seven girls and three boys - and lived in Dr Miller Street, Triumph, until 1962 when the racial violence in the area forced the family to break down the house and relocate to Beterverwagting
Teacher Rose attended the St Mary-ye-Virgin Anglican School under the tutelage of Mr. William Arno. Her class teacher was Teacher Joe.
She remembers schooldays being “very nice, not like now-a-days. We used to sing and play and be happy.”
She remembered too, her eldest sister, Christina, taking her to school at age six and how she was placed in the `run-about’ class. Later, she was transferred to a smaller school that was constructed in the same yard and was headed by Teacher B.
With a burst of laugher, Teacher Rose recalled Teacher Missy who she said used to “really teach us, but never forgot the cane.”
Among Teacher Rose’s schooldays friends, all of whom are now dead, were her very best friend Mabel Ogle, Louisa Cummings, Edna Nichols and Jane David.
&We used to visit each other at home and had lots of fun playing in the afternoons. We used to go to the back of the school and play and play until one of my brothers, Ucal, would come and say `Rose you’re not going home; look, take my books. I’m going round the village.’ And that would be the end of play for me for that day as I had to take care of his books.”
She wrote and passed the Group B examination – Nature Study, Hygiene and some other subjects. She did not pass the Group A examination which consisted of Mathematics and English.
I never liked the Arithmetic; I always used to fail it, so I did not pass the Group A exam,” she candidly explained.
In 1920, Teacher Rose said she sat and was successful at the School Leaving Examination at St. Augustine School in Buxton which was an examination centre at the time.
&The results came out in the papers and my family was elated. In June the same year, I began my first job as a pupil teacher at the St Mary-ye-Virgin Anglican School under Headteacher Arno,” she recalled.
Her salary then was five dollars, and she recalled going out to work on the first day, decked out in a “nice dress” made by her sister, Flora.
&When I got my first salary I took it home to my parents. I gave it to my mother. My father was not so pleased. So I said to him, `you going to get next month’,” she reminisced, adding, that her mother put up the money saying “this is my daughter’s first salary, I gon put it up, I’m not spending it.”
The fact that she was the only working child for the family made Teacher Rose the pride of her family.
The true Teacher Rose came to the fore when she was asked if she was willing to share with the Chronicle some of her “courting days” as a young girl.
Without hesitation and a hearty laugh she said: “The first boy that I had loved, he wasn’t living very far from me, but my parents didn’t know.”
It may have been a case of `out of sight; out of mind’ as her love for Lewis Park waned after he and his family subsequently left the village.
Teacher Rose said a “police boy” named Lionel Adolphus Welcome later captured her heart, but waited until she was at the ripe old age of 80 to propose and marry her!
Back in her youth, she became pregnant with his child and was forced to quit teaching.
&In those days, you dare not stand in front of a class with your pregnancy, not married and let them children see you. Oh no! I sent in my resignation,” she remembered, the tone of her voice changing, reflecting the seriousness of such actions and how one was perceived then.
&God blessed me with my one child, a boy, Clement Leonard Welcome. He was born in August 1930 and you know what, I got him at age 25 when I was a pupil teacher. (Welcome) ... was stationed at the police station in BV.”
&My parents never knew about the police boy until I got pregnant. I used to get away to go and meet him,” she disclosed with another hearty laugh.
But according to her “he was very wild, though,” adding, “you know deh story - every place they go and station…”
Teacher Rose said she met her husband while attending a `dance’ at the St Mary’s School, but he never proposed to her until she was 80 years old.
He had stopped speaking to her and left the village after the baby was born.
But, after a long absence, “he came back to me saying: `girl, I know I wrong you, but we can marry now; you got a son.”
She was off the job for a few years when she was called out to act for one of the teachers who was going on leave.
Teacher Rose said the teaching profession took her to a number of places around Guyana including Kabakaburi, Waramuri, Santa Rosa. During this time, one of her sisters tended to her son.
“Then one day, I was acting at the Government School when Father Burgan who was a priest for BV and Lusignan, asked if I was interested in having a permanent job. That was how I went to teach at Lusigan where I spent 19 years.
So, what led to the marriage so many years later?
With a chuckle, Teacher Rose replied: “He must be realise he was getting old and wanted someone to care for him… I had loved him.” Her husband died in 1987.
Her son, who also became a teacher, migrated to England where he still lives. Through him and some nieces whom she had also cared for, Teacher Rose was able to make three trips to England –where she has two grandchildren - and four in the United States.
She remembers going to the dances and wearing dresses with uncommon styles which she and her sisters got from a brother who used to import items from England.
&When we know they have dances coming up, we used to look through the catalogues, pick out the dresses we liked (and) he would buy it the same time he was buying stuff for himself,” she added.
&I loved green …,” she recalled with another hearty laugh, and pointed out: “You see, I even paint my house in green.” The suite in her house has touches of green and the crocheted cushions were also of the same colour.
And, revealing her jovial side, she said she remembered how she used to tease the parish pastor and one day when she asked him: `Father how many commandments were there?’ He said: `Eleven’.
Curious, she asked: `What was the other?’ And he replied: `Thou shalt not tempt your parish priest.’