GG's Achievement Award winner - Etla Sawyers - Community involvement extends far and wide By Noel Thompson, Freelance Writer WESTERN BUREAU: ETLA JOSEPHINE Sawyers has worked for 29 unbroken years in the health sector as mentor, counsellor, and adviser and yet has not grown weary. Mrs. Sawyers, affectionately called "Nurse", and now residing at Potsdam district, near Munroe in St. Elizabeth, was born in Brighton district, St. Elizabeth to Emma and David Graham, both farmers, on June 3, 1929. Her childhood education began at the Clapham Elementary School where she later passed her first and second Jamaica Local Examinations, before moving on to the Nightingale Grove Elementary School where she passed the third Jamaica Local Examination. Having passed her examinations, Etla thought she was ready for the work force so she made several applications seeking employment as a teacher, but she could not land a job. She then applied to the Jamaica Defence Force to work in its clerical department, but she never got the telegram, which the JDF had sent her. Feeling somewhat frustrated, she decided to join the Jamaica Constabulary Force, but her mother discouraged her, so she started farming. Things started changing for the better in 1954 when she picked up a part-time teaching job at her alma mater Clapham Elementary, but for the next four years, she found herself in full-time employment hop-scotching between the Fullneck, Pisgah and Clapham Elementary Schools. Etla soon realised, however, that she did not like talking too much, so in 1958 she answered to a new calling midwifery. She commenced formal training at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital, which concluded within two years. She was then sent to Potsdam in St. Elizabeth to give of self and service to the people of that community and some nine other districts. She kept a busy schedule working at the prenatal and childcare clinics and making home visits, delivering babies. To date, Nurse Sawyers has safely delivered more than 3,000 babies in and around South-East St. Elizabeth. In those days, transportation was a privilege. The roads were sometimes long and winding and were in bad conditions, but this did not deter her from trodding the rocky terrain with her torch lamp. Although circumstances had prevented her from having children of her own, she has fostered four. But she did not limit her learning capabilities and so between 1979 and 1988 she successfully pursued further studies to enhance her career in supervisory management, report writing and statistics. In August 1983, she was awarded the Prime Minister's Medal of Appreciation for work done in the Potsdam community, but to date, the Governor-General's Achievement Award is the most prestigious award she has received, of which she is extremely proud. One thing that stands out in her memory was how she met her husband Fergus. "He was a farmer and he and a friend of mine used to come into my district to sell their produce. We met in 1964 and the friendship started there. One year later we got married and it has remained intact for the last 36 years," she recalled. "I got involved in a lot of things. I noticed there was no basic school in Potsdam, so I started the first one here and today it is a thriving school in the community." After batting selflessly and untiringly for 29 years, Nurse Sawyers retired in 1989, after serving as a supervisor of midwives in the parish between 1986 and 1989. One year later she went back into full-time employment as school nurse at Munroe College. She worked there until 1997. Today, she is still employed to that institution but on a part-time basis. Nurse Sawyers' involvement at the community level extends far and wide. She is a long-standing member of the Moravian Church at Bethlehem and has held several leadership positions in the church, such as elder and president of the Women's Fellowship. Other organisations in the parish such as the Jamaica Agricultural Society, the Jamaica Cancer Society and the Malvern PC Bank have benefited from her expertise.
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