The Tribune

THE first time I met Eunice Rose she had a rake in her hand. She was explaining to her partner in a part-time landscape business the difference between two types of ferns. The partner was tall, strapping, packed with sinew, muscle and eagerness to work but far less knowledgeable about the greenery in front of him than was the woman next to him with the rake who never broke stride even as we spoke.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked her, showing the middle-aged hard-working yard worker the respect she deserved rather than the surprise I first felt.

“Oh, this isn’t what I really do, it’s just a part-time thing I enjoy,” she said, smiling. “I’m a teacher.”

The juxtaposition between a round-faced, cheerful woman raking and trimming and picturing her in the role of stocking-clad, suited up classroom teacher was a hold it right there for a second moment.

Then she told me more and every time I have met her since she surprises me more and I uncover another layer of this incredible woman named Eunice Verona Rose. She is not just A teacher. At Columbus Primary School, she is the longest-serving teacher. When school resumes, this will be her 25th year. She has taught under six principals.

Eunice Rose has taught thousands of young kids. She’s taught fourth, fifth and sixth graders. For two and a half years, she taught art. At times, she taught nearly half the school in her various roles, including librarian, up to 500 young boys and girls.

And, by the way, she is also a writer. And a writing coach.

As writing coach, she has shown students striving for scholarships how to tell their narrative. For four years, every student she coached rose to the top, winning the $1500 scholarship awarded to the Primary School Student of the Year. She did not just help them tell their story, she helped them understand what their story was and who they were.

She’s also the writer for the Templeton Foundation’s Laws of Life Essay Competition.

Along the way, she adopted two children, raising three altogether, none of whom she gave birth to, but all of them who leaned on her for what wisdom and confidence in themselves she bestowed upon them. She’s the only mother they knew. Today, they are grown -- 18, 20 and 24. One became a lawyer, another a doctor, the third is in college. The extra money she makes raking a yard here and there in addition to teaching and writing and coaching helps pay for that college education.

When her own mother died in 2002, the grief unleashed another talent. Rose began writing poetry.

“Her death led to an outpouring of emotion within and I just started writing. ‘You were there for me. You grounded me - I wish you could see my kids,’ she wrote, though she had none at that time. ‘Most of all, I’ll miss your voice.’

Eunice Verona Rose. If you had not stood there with a rake in your hand, pausing for just a flash to explain the differences in two types of ferns, I might never have gotten to know you. And I would have missed much more than your voice. I would have missed meeting a woman of incredible worth and depth.

A Piece of History a Step Ahead of the Tractor

With so many of our historic buildings destroyed by neglect or demolished by tractor, it was a relief to know that one I thought had been torn down last weekend was actually carefully dissected and its artifacts saved.

I’m talking about The Little House, the last remnant of the old Royal Victoria Hotel. It would have taken a tractor only minutes to demolish the strangely beautiful and perfectly proportioned octagonal cottage at the southwest corner of the property on Shirley Street in downtown Nassau. Even as weeds grew around it over the years and its wrought iron gates to the front entrance on Parliament Street showed their age, the Little House maintained its quiet dignity.

On Saturday, the tractor did show up, but it was just to clear away the debris. The Little House had been disassembled thanks to the Antiquities Monuments & Museums Corporation in agreement with The Central Bank. Abaco pine floors, walls, other artifacts were preserved and are being stored.

There were those who wanted to preserve it as it was, but space required for the new Central Bank created challenges. Preservation in part is better than none at all and demonstrates a growing sensitivity to the importance even as we lose too much of our past to make way for a future that cannot hold a candle in architectural integrity to what we are trading it for.

Once resurrected in its new space wherever that may be, the model of the Little House will be the last living legacy of the Royal Vic. The hotel, built in 1861 in the throes of the American Civil War at a cost of a little over £20,000 was a risk taken by a government eager to capitalize on the trade the war effort generated and the unexpected bounty for The Bahamas. With the hotel and its stunning gardens, visitors and locals alike danced the night away under the stars while the steel pan band played from platforms strewn among a grand silk cotton tree that had at one time tumbled in a storm and its giant trunks grown up sideways as if meant to be the accidental stages they became.

The hotel quickly became the grand dame of social life, the centrepiece of the urban playground in a burgeoning tourist mecca which boasted as many as 500 visitors a year.

A century passed and in 1971 with other properties like the Montagu Hotel providing stiff competition, the downtown Royal Victoria sadly closed her doors. Fire consumed the structure in the 1990s, but miraculously left the Little House in the far corner of the property that had been home to its manager and his family untouched. A descendant still lives in Nassau. We hope she will be able to tell tales of the past when the new version of the Little House is unveiled.