CHILDHOOD SCHOOLMATES and neighbours of Governor General-designate Sandra Mason yesterday sang her praises as they rejoiced at the news of her appointment.
Former St Catherine’s cricket captain Trevor “Tee” Clarke said he was delighted that the girl from next door, whom he played all kinds of games with as pre-teens, was being elevated to the country’s highest office.
“I am so happy. I am the happiest man in the world to know that someone that I grew up with is being so highly recognised. We were next-door neighbours and nobody better could have been chosen. She deserves it,” said Clarke, as he recalled some of their youthful days growing up together in East Point, St Philip.
“She would play all the games, but she left and went to Bayfield to stay with her aunt [former headteacher Gweneth Mason] after she passed for Queen’s College. But when she was up in East Point, she was a normal person with everybody.
“She was good at everything she did. Academically she excelled, she was way above us, but at the local level, she was with everybody. She is still my girl. We pitched marbles and would go to the sea together. We grew up as though we belonged to each other in one family, two houses side each other,” he added.
Clarke said some of the others from the Marley Vale and East Point area who grew up with Mason and went to St Catherine’s Primary School around the same time included former Member of Parliament Rudolph “Cappy” Greenidge, social worker George Griffith, Pastor Hughson Inniss, former Banks left-arm spinner Charles “Tailor” Griffith, Victor “Percy” Brathwaite and Lionel “Love” Blades.
“All the guys in East Point and Marley Vale, Sandra grew up with. Nobody can say anything bad about Sandra. Not a fellow. She would always come back to East Point and St Philip. She never forget anybody. All like now, if Sandra pass me, she is going to shout me. She would shout everybody she knew and would attend all the funerals at St Catherine’s Church. She’s still the same Sandra,” Clarke said.
In Bayfield, or “Mason Town” as the quiet district is affectionately called, Gloria Forde and Michael “Cuckle” Clarke also remembered her as one of the many “Masons” from the area.
“She came up as a little child with my godmother Clostene Batson. They lived together but Sandra Mason wasn’t easy. She would tell you anything, answer you to suit and don’t care,” Forde said.
“I know when Sandra came here in Bayfield as a little child. Sandra was actually like a boy when she used to live down here. She would go into the sea with her company during the vacation time and her aunt used to give her some blows when she come out because she won’t hear sometimes,” Clarke said.
She added that some of the others in Bayfield who rubbed shoulders with the Justice of Appeal were Walter “Scott” Brathwaite, Reynold Weekes, Vere Harewood, Eugene Mapp, Pastor Carlos Mason, Rueben Mason and Winston “Ali Cozier” Mason.
“I used to catch fish and sea eggs for her in those days when they were plentiful. Sandra used to like steamed sea eggs,” Clarke said.
Long-standing Bayfield resident and fisherman, Frank Mason, who still lives right next to the house where she grew up, also spoke highly of her.
“She is a nice person. She is a beauty. Sandra don’t come unless she grab and hug me. Thank God, we Masons rise above the earth because we were down-in-the-earth people. We are intelligent people. She had a good tutor in her aunt Gweneth. I am happy about it. You can come from riches to rags and you can go from rags to riches. I feel like if it is one of my children,” 87-year-old Frank said.
In Marley Vale, Evelyn Skeete also spoke about Sandra’s exemplary deportment from their early days as classmates at St Catherine’s Primary School.
“Sandra was quiet, a good girl; and we sit down in the same class at St Catherine’s Primary. She is very, very, very well-mannered and was always a bright girl,” Skeete said.
“We played rounders and other games together. She deserves everything that she gets; that is hers. You can’t take what is for somebody from them. What is for Caesar, give to Caesar.” (EZS)
