By Ira Philip

Because of the widespread ‘gone but not forgotten good spirit’ generated by the 2014 Somerset-St George’s Cup Match we are finding it more and more difficult to close our files on this year’s celebration.

As a result, for this feature yours truly decided to project a few of the eye-catching images we captured during the actual play, along with the experience of one particular, very popular spectator.

She is Rosheena Swan Love, who is now safely back at her domain in Seattle, Washington State on the Pacific Northwest of the US.

She had been planning this trip for three years and was looking forward to it with great anticipation, which we will explain further down.

Rosheena is a hard-driven Bermudian, who is known as a “tour de force” particularly for the handiwork that has won her many prizes and recognition for entries in her state’s annual exhibitions.

She is also fully conscious of her rich Bermudian heritage. Her father was the late Eldon Stuart Swan, born in 1910.

Eldon was the great grandson of Charles Roach Ratteray and Rebecca Ratteray.

Also he was the youngest of six children born to Jacob Bean Swan and Harriet Rebecca Ratteray.

His eldest sister was Evelina, who married into the Pearman family.

They were all deeply rooted Somerset families. Rosheena remembered her father as a mason contractor, with a passion for building family homes of quality and beauty, many of which can be seen throughout the Island.

The one he built for his St Kitts & Nevis-born wife Ismay Agatha and the nine children they raised was atop Cook’s Hill overlooking on one side the Great Sound as well as the surrounding areas including Herman’s Hill.

The family was raised with all the Bermudian customs and traditions, the most memorable being Cup Match time and Christmas morning when Eldon’s fellow members of the Somerset Brigade Band came to play Christmas carols and were refreshed in turn.

Rosheena as a young girl, worked in the bindery at the Bermuda Press.

She and a friend from there went to a social event at the old US Air Force Base, Kindley Field, where she met a non-commissioned officer by the name of Love. It happened to have been Valentine’s Day nearly fifty years ago.

They married and eventually, happily settled in far off Seattle.

Three years ago as a tribute to her parents, Rosheena began hand-crocheting, in red and blue Somerset colours, what turned out to be a masterpiece, from squares five and a quarter inches each that she crocheted.

In all it took three years of her spare time and a total of 256 squares to complete what turned out to be the size of a double bed spread.

In the same time frame she crotched one in St George’s colours.

She brought the two pieces on this trip in high hopes of having the Somerset spread displayed at Cup Match. That proved to be a futile effort which she can best explain.

However Rosheena compensated for it by displaying to her many curious friends and relatives leftover squares she shaped into a shawl and could drape around herself as she excitedly watched the thrilling game on the third-level deck of the camp her former close Sound View Road, Somerset Island neighbour and friend Marita Thompson, née Bailey.

Among those getting an actual feel of the masterpiece was Rosheena’s nephew, Member of Parliament Kim Swan. He is a son of Hubert and Barbara and a grandson of Eldon Swan.