Penny Saulter, Contributor PEARNEL CHARLES has seven living examples of the sort of leadership he can offer Jamaica.
"If a person can manage and properly run a family, you can do it for a business, you can do it for a nation. Everything that your family involves, from the beginning to the end, represents a government. The relationship you have with your wife and children, the budgeting and allocation, the planning for the future, the questions of education the instilling of discipline everything."
His seven adult children, among them three medical doctors, a dentist, one lawyer and a PhD candidate, are successful professionals who, in the spirit of their father's and mother's social activism, are all working at improving the lives of others. It's a record, Charles, who in November will contest an election for leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, takes immense pride in. And for good reason too raising such a large family takes many of the strengths needed to run a country successfully vision, compassion, patience and a sense of humour.
But raising a family, he points out, is no simple or flippant task, not for the weak-willed, and certainly not for the ill-prepared.
PROFESSIONALS
"My children are professionals today because it was prepared for them," he says. Before starting their family, Charles and his wife Gloria carefully planned how they would approach their family life. With his involvement in politics and the trade union movement demanding significant amount of his time, much of the day-to-day supervision of the children was left to his wife, he admits. But as he, and his daughters Carol and Patreece and son Pearnel Jr., relate family anecdotes in the living room of their comfortable Red Hills home, it becomes clear that without his vision and guidance, they would be a different clan.
"From day one, the toys they used may have influenced their profession. My wife gave them medical toys, and those toys had them at ages 4, 5, 6, offering assistance with plastic instruments. Now look there are four of them in the medical field," he says, adding whimsically, "but that's only because one got taken out and sent to law school instead! I figured, since it's probably going to be very hard for me to die from illness with so many doctors in the family, it was time for someone in the family to be a lawyer."
Today three of the Charles children live abroad Patrick, the eldest, is a computer engineer living in Chicago. Michelle, who lives in Florida and is a dentist and a businesswoman who runs her own spa. Pamela, is a family doctor working on her specialisation in a New York hospital.
Here in Jamaica, Carol runs a nursing home for the elderly and Patreece is working on her PhD at the University of the West Indies (UWI). Peter is at UWI specialising in neurosurgery.
Pearnel Jr. is helping his dad campaign and waiting to be called to the Jamaican Bar.
CONSCIOUS DECISION
"It was a conscious decision that to start a family we should prepare for a family. I think too many Jamaican men and women neither got counselling on parenting nor educate themselves on the responsibility of parenting before they started having children," says Charles.
His strategy for family is a simple one, but clearly, one that is quite effective.
"I am a social activist. I've never allowed my children to live above my consciousness of what is happening in the society. If they get anything above that, it is pointed out to them that they are enjoying a privilege that someone else is not enjoying."
As early as they can remember, the Charles children have spent the days before Christmas wrapping gifts for poorer children in their father's constituency.
They were taught to share their toys with kids from children's homes whom their mother would bring to the house for weekends from time to time. Although some of them stayed a very long time. As she recalls those experiences, Patreece Charles, who is reading for her PhD and working with Food For the Poor in violence-riddled Spanish Town, says "Being a part of her father's political career in that way has made her job today very easy to handle." At Food For the Poor, Patreece's main focus is community building, but occasionally she finds herself being counsellor, confidant and friend to the people she works with.
"Daddy always took us places with him in his constituency, and I've always interacted with the needy. I think from childhood I was being prepared to serve. In school, I joined service clubs, I used to work with children's homes, and it all prepared me for working for Food For the Poor."
Patreece, whose bright smile is instantly disarming, is married with a four-year-old son, and is the only member of the Charles clan who is actively considering a life in representational politics right now. That will have to wait for a while, however. She said, since she wants to finish her studies, and possibly have another child. Her elder sister Carol, who now runs Glo's, the elderly nursing home started by their mother, also gives motivational speeches at schools, encouraging young people to do their best at everything.
"Being close to politics, it made me not a bashful person when dealing with the public. Now, I can relate very well to people from different backgrounds, and I definitely believe that it has a lot to do with our growing up with daddy."
COMPASSION FOR PEOPLE
While she shares anecdotes of the many trips to the constituency in the country, trips she says, honed her compassion for people, her two-year-old daughter Danielle, climbs on and off her lap gleefully. Danielle is just learning colours, but right now, there's only one she seems to remember, identifying everything she touches with a loud 'Green!' much to the amusement of the adults.
Pearnel Jr, a law school graduate who expects to be called to the Bar in November, says that while his father's unorthodox parenting style sometimes wasn't much fun growing up, he's happy and proud of the role that his father played in his upbringing.
"He used to wake Peter and I up at five in the morning with a big clanging bell, you know, the ones that they carry to Labour meetings, and he would make us milk the cow, and we had to do all sorts of yard work before getting ready for school. I went to Campion, and none of my friends would believe me when I told them," Pearnel Jr recalls laughing.
But that was part of the plan too, says Charles.
"They were born in the urban centre, and I am a rural boy. I told my sons that I was never privileged to sleep while the sun was rising, so I would wake them up in the morning and have them go outside. My father took me to milk the cow, take grass for the horse, and when I told them what I used to do they would laugh. So I went to the country and brought home a cow," he said nonchalantly, as if every family living in upper St. Andrew had a family cow grazing in the backyard. Not only was there a cow, points out Patreece, but there were chickens to be fed by the girls, dogs, and lots of chores for all the children to do.
Charles' own rural upbringing, filled with days on the farm and exciting Anancy stories by night, he says, instilled in him a sense of self, a spirit of responsibility, and the discipline to persevere through big and small tasks. Over the years, however, it's not just his own children who have benefited from his 'ol' time Jamaican' upbringing and parenting style.
"I've used my family as an example to many, many families and children in my constituency. And I've told them that once my biological family has done it, they can do it too."
SUCCESSFUL AND WELL-ROUNDED
But as successful and well-rounded as his children are today, it wasn't all easy. Charles recalls struggling with a teenaged Peter, who at times was disruptive, both at home and at school.
"I remember when Peter, who is currently studying to be a neurosurgeon, wasn't on that path. At 14 years, he told me that he was going to stop going to school because it was a waste of time, especially since a man at a studio told him he had a good voice and could be a deejay."
For days after the initial announcement, says Charles, he followed his wife's advice and spoke, counselled and pleaded with the boy, but when Peter openly defied him and stayed in bed past 7 a.m. one morning, cutting school for the third day in a row, Charles decided it was time for action.
"Well, a couple of good licks and eight years later, he was in medical school. Now he will serve the world with his talent, so I suppose I did the right thing," he says.
It's a tough love approach, but Pearnel Charles is happy with how their children turned out, and believes that tough love is precisely what Jamaica and the Jamaica Labour Party needs right now.
