Avia Ustanny, Outlook Writer
Beryl Cameron, retired teacher, listens while husband Frank Cameron, speaks about their hymns. - Carlington Wilmot/Freelance Photogrpaher
THEY ARE a crotchety pair, but after 50 years of marriage and almost a century past their birth, they can be forgiven anything. Slimmed by age and sharp of tongue, Beryl and Frank Cameron drift around their spacious home in north St. Andrew each day with eyes turned inwards to personal contemplation.
Ninety-three year old Frank Cameron is Jamaica's oldest living hymn (not song) writer. Beryl is a year younger and is the former principal of Somerdale Preparatory School in Vineyard Town and was also a teacher at Wolmers.
Nearing their 100th birthday, both are locked into a present in which the past only dimly figures. But, those around can relate their history.
Frank Cameron we are told, was a contemporary of poet Claude McKay, he whose verse If We Must Die was used by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to rally a nation at war;
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die....
Both Claude McKay and Frank Cameron were members of the Jamaican Poetry League which was birthed in the 1920s and which flowered well beyond the war years. The current Poetry League, we are advised by good sources, is the third incarnation of the group.
The war years and the decade after were times of fierce intellectual ferment in Jamaica. Frank Cameron was to meet the woman he would marry, Beryl, in a Kingston debating society where intellectuals met.
Beryl was the daughter of Orange Street hotelier Stephen Tulloch who his daughter said was the soul of kindness. Stephen Tulloch would feed families in his downtown community by inviting mothers to come in on Saturdays for a cash gift as well as a packet of food.
"He was kind to the poor," Beryl recalls, saying that she remembers the long lines in front of the cashier on Saturdays.
About Frank's parents, we know little, but for his father he wrote these lines:
To my father
I know too well the many days
When fathers care in simple ways
Brought love and light that went to show,
The prudent paths where I should go
I know too well the unshed tears
The burning hope for future years,
When truant youth at times mis-spent,
The golden years as childhood went
I know too well the good things done
That make me proud to be his son
Frank, an accountant at Beckford's Auto Supplies until he retired, was a man with a second career driven by his love for words and music, and given expression in published poems and hymns.
While his short-term memory is poor, the poet still remembers sharply the 1920s and 30s when Claude McKay, Rupert Meikle, Aimee Bailey and J. U. Claire were members of the Poetry League with him.
He was also an ardent member of Lyndhurst Methodist Church who did decades of work for the church, producing and publishing their newsletter, doing their accounts and writing music.
In wrote, to music by Frank Barber, 'Hark all Men';
Around us lie the open field
Of man's distress and current need
Give us dear Lord thy grace to wield
The sword of truth in word and deed
So shall our lives lead in the way,
Men groping for the light of day...
Beryl's first marriage (Frank is her second husband) produced children Joy and Donald but this union was over by the time Frank came along. She married Frank in December 1955.
Beryl Cameron, reflecting on their 50 years together said that Frank was "a good man and a Christian".
He, she said, would involve himself in everything cultural too. Frank, was easy to live with. "If he wasn't I would not have stayed," she said with all seriousness.
Now in their 50th year of marriage and ninth decade of life, the couple consider themselves fortunate. Beryl Cameron claims that her life has been marked by permanent good health, with her only medical episodes involving the birth of her two children. "I had a proper diet everyday of protein and vegetables. And, as long as I have known myself, I have always taken a tonic - a vitamin supplement."
Joy, the couple's daughter who lives with them and is their primary caregiver, said that her parents and especially her mother has contributed a lot to the welfare of people around them. "There is nobody who has worked for us who has not been helped to move forward. There was one school girl from the country who my mother taught to do all the homely things and then taught her teach. She realised that she had a brain and then put her into nursing. At nursing school, she used to come first every year."
Other domestics have been sent to do typing. Joy remembers her mother drilling these women in spelling while they were doing the ironing.
From school, some of her distinguished past students include Dr. Carol Ball-Thompson and attorney-at-law Churchill Neita.
Another man, John Wilson, still sends gifts after many decades as he states that Mrs. Cameron taught him not only lessons but , "how to be a gentleman".
Beryl Cameron's values are the traditional ones and she is glad that the man she chose as a life partner is a gentleman.
Humour she says, one of the reasons why their marriage has endured for a lifetime. Always, in their earliest years, Frank Cameron could be described as jolly and pleasant. "You have to have humour. Do not allow everything to get you down."
Mrs. Frank Cameron, as you will have observed, is the more forthcoming of the pair. But, we will give her husband the last words, words which suit our purpose here:
In the march of time once again we pause
To honour those who served our country's cause,
To plant the seeds of fruits we reap today,
As they passed along our history's way;
For them the days of toil and doubtless stress,
For us the fruits to reap, their work to bless
- Excerpt from the poem 'Our National Heroes' by Frank Cameron.
