Remembering Rosalind Robinson

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Significant chapters in Bermuda’s social and cultural heritage resurfaced with the death recently of teaching legend, 102-year-old Mrs Rosalind Robinson. A leading educator in her own right, she was the widow of Dr Kenneth E Robinson, the first black Chief Education Officer in the Department of Education.

Mrs Robinson, whose funeral is today, humbly counted as one of her greatest joys and accomplishments overseeing the publishing of her husband’s illuminating book “Heritage”. That was a promise she made to him, when he was dying, in the the midst of his scholarly documentation of the history of black Bermudians during the first 50 years after the Emancipation of Slavery in 1834.

Over my years as a columnist, Mrs Robinson graciously enabled me to feature her as a “Personality of the Week” because of multitudinous accomplishments on many fronts.. Most recently, when her 100th birthdayon May 26 loomed, I wrote in this Notebook space how she made it known to her family that she did not want the big “splash” they had in mind to give her.

Instead, she entertained them at a family dinner held at “Seville”, her landmark residence at Spanish Point. And on the following Sunday, a wider circle of family and friends descended on her home with flowers and best wishes for the future.

Born in 1910, Rosalind was the eldest and is the last survivor of seven children of John Herbert Taylor of Cedar Avenue, Hamilton and his wife Millo Fubler Taylor, a school teacher. John Herbert was a boot maker, shoe merchant and political activist.

His shop across from Magistrates’ Court in Hamilton was a main centre for the black intelligentsia of the day to caucus on current events.

Rosalind made her mark early in life, becoming a recipient of one of the first government teacher training scholarships in 1931 to Shortwood College in Jamaica, West Indies.

There she established a life-long friendship with Mrs Edna Mae Scott and undoubtedly was an influence in Mrs Scott and her husband Victor Scott coming to Bermuda and leaving their own indelible imprints on Bermuda’s educational system. The old Central School in Pembroke was renamed after him.

Mrs Robinson’s own illustrious career as a teacher began at Central School, before her marriage to Dr Robinson.

In 1936 she became headmistress of Temperance Hall School in Crawl. She pedaled her bicycle there every day along with fellow teacher from Pembroke, Inez Kennedy.

Those were the times when free education for children was light years away. Her salary was £30 a year! In the 1940s she taught at Northlands and Harrington Sound Primary Schools, and taught at Frances Patton School in the 1950, becoming Principal in 1959.

Also she parented two children, daughter, Mrs Shirley Pearman and son barrister Kenneth E Robinson during her teaching years. She travelled extensively with friends after the death of her husband in 1978.

Another of Mrs Robinson’s great joys was giving interviews and reflecting on thow she was a great swimmer at Spanish Point; a champion tennis player; and a in her youth. She was an avid reader and letter writer or what might have been termed a ‘dignified and scholarly blogger,’ back in the day.

She was active right up to her last days, enjoying the surroundings of her lovely home and observing the considerable transformation of the community from the one which she and her siblings enjoyed when they walked from Cedar Avenue in Hamilton to the Pontoons for a swim from Spanish Point to the Channel and back.

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