Hurdles: Memoirs of My Life's Unfinished Journey

By Dennis St. Rose

Life is like a journey into uncharted waters where mankind is constantly attempting to navigate the ship of life through the seas of uncertainty. On this voyage, we are not sure if the worldliness we experience in the continuum between birth and death is real or if it is a figment of our imagination. If it is indeed the latter, the question then becomes how or when this phenomenon of our existence will ever be revealed. If the answer to this question is never, we are then thrown into a state of perpetual confusion at the core of which lies the questions Who are we? and Why are we here?

I write this book not because I have the answers to any of these questions but because I believe that by chronicling my experiences, my children, family members, friends, and others who may read it will become more introspective in the living of their lives. No person can write their complete autobiography in advance, but I have tried to select events that, at this point in time, I consider to have had the greatest impact on my life. Many aspects of my life may have not been discussed and others too briefly, but if there is any similarity between my life experiences and those of others, then I hope that they can draw on my lifes story when navigating their respective journeys.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532013133

Dennis St. Rose

Dennis St. Rose was born on July 21, 1937, on the island of Trinidad—a British colony—in the Caribbean. In the year of his birth, the island was in turmoil. It was paralyzed by strikes, labor riots, killings, and generally speaking, chaos reigned. As a young man, he migrated to the United States of America where he completed his college education while working menial jobs under challenging conditions. He eventually pursued a marketing career in the legal publishing business, and after becoming a successful corporative executive with some of the most prestigious firms in this arena, he retired in 2015. He and his wife now live in the picturesque town of Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Copyright © 2017 Dennis St. Rose.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1312-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1313-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016921101

iUniverse rev. date: 12/21/2016

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Beginning

Chapter 2 Preteen Years

Chapter 3 Teenage Years

Chapter 4 Young Adulthood

Chapter 5 The Sixties

Chapter 6 Life In America

Chapter 7 Manhood—A Test Of Character

Chapter 8 A New Day

Chapter 9 Challenges, Progress, And Setbacks

Chapter 10 To Trinidad And Back

Chapter 11 A Shift In Focus

Chapter 12 New Beginnings

Chapter 13 Ups, Downs, And Up Again

Chapter 14 The Nineties—An Unprecedented Decade

Chapter 15 A Rude Awakening

Chapter 16 Hard Times

Chapter 17 Tragic Times

Chapter 18 Living Adjustments

Chapter 19 Retracing Footsteps

Chapter 20 Looking Back—Moving Forward

Chapter 21 Finishing Strong

Chapter 22 The Last Mile

Summary

About The Author

To my beloved children, Michelle, Sharon, Stacey, and D. Anthony, who inspired me to write this book.

And in loving memory of my mother, Florence, who made all things possible.

The hurdles we encounter on the journey of life are designed not to stop our progress but rather to motivate us to leap higher to achieve our goals.

INTRODUCTION

I n 1997 when I turned sixty years old, my children constantly prodded me to chronicle my life’s history. Occasionally I discussed with them snippets of the challenges I had experienced over the years, and because of their profound desire for additional information, I thought I should prepare a more comprehensive record of the ups and downs I encountered. On my journey from poverty on the small island nation of Trinidad in the Caribbean to comfortable retirement in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, in the United States of America, I acquired survival skills, basic life values, integrity, commitment, and, most of all, belief in myself. These virtues have enabled me to enjoy successes and overcome failures, and I was motivated to share these experiences with my children, relatives, friends, and anyone having the desire to join me on this remarkable journey.

Almost twenty years have elapsed since I first decided to embark on this project, and as driven as I was to have it done, I have no regrets about delaying its completion. With each passing year, I have experienced events of historical significance, and had I not related the impact of these occurrences on my journey, then the chronology of my life would be woefully incomplete. What if I had neglected to include in my book the bombing of the World Trade Center in 2001 or the election of Barack Obama, the first African American president, in 2008? These are events that have certainly changed the course of history and have given many of us a totally different perspective about life in general. If there is any correlation between my life and the lives of those who read this book, then I hope they can draw on my experiences to better themselves when navigating their respective journeys.

CHAPTER 1

The Beginning

Birth and Early Childhood

M y birth certificate was vague. It simply stated that I was an illegitimate boy born on July 21, 1937, to Florence Mathlin, a domestic servant. There was no record of a name or occupation in the columns on the form into which the name, surname, and occupation of father were to be entered. These columns were blank. At my baptism, the names Dennis and Anthony were given to me. These names were straight out of the English lexicon, and I assume I inherited them because of my mother having lived in England in her younger years. The last name, St. Rose, which, as I later found out, had its origin in France, was added in the year 1940 upon the marriage of my mother to George St. Rose, the man I grew up knowing as my father. I was born three years before their marriage, and from time to time, this sequence of events engendered mind teasers for which I never really sought answers. Was George St. Rose my biological father? And if so, was I born out of wedlock? If George St. Rose was not my biological father, then who was? This subject was never discussed in our household, and it became less relevant to me as the years went by. George St. Rose always told people that he had four children, and whether or not he was my biological father, he showed no bias in dealing with me. He treated us all alike, and his actions alleviated any concerns I may have had pertaining to a biological relationship. And so my life’s journey began as a paradox. Here I was a child of African descent with questionable paternal parentage and names that suggested that I was either English or French.

In 1937, to be born black in the British colonies was to be automatically cast into a life of indentured servitude. To be black was synonymous with being poor, and expectation for a life with any form of entitlement was beyond reality. This, then, was the socioeconomic framework into which I was born, a society in which any positive accomplishment by a black person, regardless of how minimal, was considered to be highly unusual. The first clear memory of my early formative years was that my brother, Winston, who was born in 1940, and I lived with our parents in a house they shared with my father’s brother, John, in the town of Cocorite, and I attended Ms. Ward’s kindergarten school in St. James, an adjacent parish, where I recall being taught to speak with an English accent, and like other children born on the island, I memorized and sang Irish ditties. At Christmastime, I strained my vocal chords singing about dreaming of a white Christmas, although I had never experienced winter and much less seen snow. How did Christmas become white? I kept asking myself, but I never could understand. On what seemed to be every occasion, I was forced to sing the English national anthem in which we asked God to save our gracious king whom I had never seen, did not know, and quite frankly did not care if he lived or died. I was a residue of colonialism, and everything that I experienced, even at a tender age, seemed repugnant to my natural instincts. Nothing made sense to me.

CHAPTER 2

Preteen Years

New Living Arrangements

W hen I was five years old, my father, who was a police officer, moved his family from the house we shared with his brother to a government-subsidized housing project in the village of La Pastora, Santa Cruz, one of the most rural and desolate communities on the island. I was enrolled in the Santa Cruz Roman Catholic School in the neighboring village of Cantaro, which was located quite a walking distance away from where we lived. Fortunately for me, unlike most of the other children who made this daily trek barefooted over the gravel or badly maintained asphalt road between the villages of La Pastor and Cantaro, I owned and wore shoes and was spared the pain that was probably akin to walking over hot coals. I was accompanied to and from school by Madge, a teenage cousin, who lived with us and who, in addition to escorting me to and from school, showed up at lunchtime with my midday meal that she actually fed to me. Everything is relative, and as compared to the other children, I was considered privileged. After attending the Santa Cruz Roman Catholic School for two years, the government built a schoolhouse in the village of La Pastora, and my brother and I were enrolled in this new school that was much closer to where we lived.

Shattered Dreams

In grade school, I was always considered an above-average student with exceptional learning potential. There were term tests held three times a year, and I never placed lower than second in any of my classes. Unfortunately, however, at around age twelve I encountered a hurdle on this optimistic road to success. My father was stationed in Penal, a village located on the southernmost tip of the island, and my brother and I together with two younger sisters, Lenore and Patricia, who by that time had been added to our family, would anxiously anticipate him coming home on weekends to spend some time with us. As time progressed, however, when he would come home on a weekend or night pass, he was intoxicated. This pattern of behavior became increasingly pervasive and caused my mother great concern not only for herself but also for her four children. We became terrified of him coming home in an intoxicated state, and we showed this by cowering in a corner whenever he did. On his arrival home, the stench of alcohol permeated throughout our little house, and this smell lingered on for days after he left again. He and our mother fought from the time he arrived home until he left, and it became a relief to see him go.

This once docile and caring man had become an alcoholic and had transformed into a monster whose behavior made us into a dysfunctional family. His visits became less frequent, and ultimately, he stopped coming home. My father was gone, and from time to time, I would try to recall the happier days we had spent together, but those were fleeting moments and could not compensate for the hurt that lingered on. We were now a broken home, and although this was not abnormal in our social strata, the mental scars suffered from this wound would haunt me throughout my life.

My mother, who had no marketable skills and very little formal education, became the anchor of our family. She was unemployed, had no personal income, and was forced to rely on whatever little money my father chose to send her on a sporadic basis. As time went by, our living conditions got harder and harder, but here was a woman who was unshaken in her resolve to make sure that her four children all got a proper education and had a better life than she did. On an almost daily basis, her words to us were, Make something of yourself, believe in yourself, and learn to do with what you have. She actually lived those words, and in our abysmal financial situation, we made do with what we had. These words were forever etched in my memory, and I would instinctively adhere to them on my journey through life.

Life in the Settlement

In the late 1940s, living in the village of La Pastora, or the settlement as it was known, was quite an experience. There was no indoor plumbing, and electricity was merely an illusion. At night, three or four pitch-oil lamps were placed in strategic locations in the house to provide indoor lighting. There were no streetlights, and to see or be seen at night, we resorted to the use of flambeaux, which were bottles into which kerosene was poured and rags attached. The open-flame light produced by igniting these rags was dangerous, but with some caution, the purpose was served. During the rainy season, banana leaves were used as umbrellas, or if you were not on the move, sheltering under a mango tree was always an acceptable alternative. The shoebox-size houses in the settlement were all identically constructed: two bedrooms; a mini-living room; a small, detached kitchen; and a latrine about fifty feet from the house. Each house was built on approximately three to four acres of land that the occupants were required to keep cultivated. Getting a daily bath or having drinking water meant making a journey to the nearest standpipe that was located about a quarter of a mile away, usually at the intersection of two unpaved roads.

It was in this environment that we learned to coexist with nature and live off the land. There were deer, agouti, lappe, manicou, tattoo, quenk, and other wild animals that were hunted and killed for their meats and skins. We were relegated to using small, empty aluminum containers as improvised drinking vessels. Breakfast consisted of a buttered hops bread, a loaf similar in shape and size to a hamburger roll, or a slice of homemade bake made from kneaded flour that was roasted in a makeshift oven. The hops bread and bake staples were accompanied by a choice of bush tea prepared from orange peels or a verity of herbs, such as vervine bush, sweet broom, carpenter bush, shining bush, zeb-a-peak, and mint grass, that were found growing in the wild around the house. Occasionally, green tea and cocoa tea were available. Midday meals were usually a combination of boiled pigs feet or salt-fish with cassava, dasheen, yams, and other edible roots or green figs (bananas) with vegetables grown on our parcel of land. Rice, ripe plantains, chicken, beef, fish, and pork were considered special dishes and set aside for Sundays.

We were taught to be aware of venomous insects such as scorpions and black hairy spiders, and there were snakes, the most deadly of all being the coral snake, so named because of its deceptively beautiful red, yellow, and black skin. One bite by this crawler and that’s all she wrote. In addition, there were mosquitoes of every strain, and if stung by one of these flying destroyers, you were susceptible to contracting malaria or some other fatal disease. We had no mosquito nets or insect repellants, and so to ward off these unwelcomed invaders, we resorted to burning black sage bush that produced a smoke with an odor that was repugnant to both man and beast.

A Cultural Experience

Most of our neighbors, in addition to those of African descent, were either second-generation indentured East Indians or Spanish-speaking migrants who made it across the seven-mile stretch of the Atlantic Ocean that divided Trinidad from Venezuela, the nearest country on the South American continent. It was in this environment that I learned to swim in the rivers, experienced the deliciously spicy taste of East Indian cooking, appreciated the rhythms of Spanish music, and witnessed voodoo practiced by the people of African descent. I will always remember the Shango people of African descent fixing a pen for my cousin, Santo, who was now living with us, to write and pass a teacher’s exam. Santo passed the exam and became a pupil-teacher, and his success more or less validated the supernatural powers of the Shango people. I also recall Mr. Hills, the resident Obeah-man / witch doctor, preparing a concoction of herbs to treat an eczema problem that my brother, Winston, had in his hands. Mr. Hills ascribed this problem to the fact that Winston had picked up something that was fixed by someone to cause destruction. His concoction of herbs did not produce the predicted healing results, and Mr. Hills began hinting about amputation. My mother was not comfortable with his recommendation and got a second opinion from a medical doctor who diagnosed the problem to be some sort of rare epidermis disease that was eventually treated and cured with conventional medicine.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and we made our own toys. We manufactured scooters from scraps of wood to which we attached ball bearings. We made spinning tops from tree branches and nails. We played ball with green oranges and grapefruits and bats that were honed from the stems of coconut trees. We utilized all resources that were available to us, and in the process of doing so, we had fun.

The people in my family were all members of the Roman Catholic Church, and I was christened and confirmed in the tenets of Catholicism. A few months after my confirmation and first communion, I became a Boy Scout, and the organization’s motto, Be prepared, became an added guiding principle in my life. So, at the young age of twelve, I had already been exposed to a myriad of cultural experiences, ingenuity, religious beliefs, and setbacks that, in a sense, prepared me for what lay ahead.

CHAPTER 3

Teenage Years

High School Enrollment and Adjustments

A t age thirteen, I had completed grade school, and it was time to pursue a higher education. Money was still limited, may be even more so now, but my mother’s goal of having me get a good education had not changed. Realizing, however, that because of monetary constraints, neither St. Mary’s nor Queens Royal College, the two most prestigious learning institutions on the island, was an option, I was enrolled in a secondary school in the city of Port of Spain, the island’s capital. This new venture created additional problems. Transportation from La Pastora, Santa Cruz, to the city of Port of Spain was on a twice-a-day haphazard schedule. The question then was, how was I getting to and from school? After some discussion, arrangements were made with Tan, one of my mother’s older sisters, and I was sent to live with her in Port of Spain during the week and returned home to La Pastora on the weekends.

The Osmond High School in which I was enrolled was considered the best school based on affordability and the quality of education offered. Osmond High was a Seventh Day