Photos by Avia Ustanny
LEFT: Egbert Spencer - retired Inland Revenue Services official. RIGHT: Gwendolyn Spencer today. The retired nursing tutor was awarded with the Government's Order of Distinction in 1972.
Avia Ustanny, Outlook Writer
After retirement, what comes next? This is not a question which retired Inland Revenue Department official, octogenarian Egbert Spencer, and his wife, retired lecturer in midwifery, Gwendolyn Humphrey-Spencer, needed to face. For this couple, what came next was more work.
Until recently, both retirees were retained by the Government service to continue working in the field in which they are both experts.
After retirement also came a new fascination with their extended family. Married for 51 years and the parents of three children and grandparents of seven, they spend hours each day discussing the doings of their offspring and grandchildren, who have all been outstanding in their career fields.
Law enforcement
Son Wayne Spencer is chairman of the Board of Commissioners in Los Angeles, and pursues a career in law enforcement.
Daughter Althea Spencer-Miller is an ordained Methodist minister who resides in the United States. The other son, Noel Spencer, is the co-founder of a bank and a legislator in Orange County, New York.
Among the Spencer's grandchildren is 18-year-old Phillipa, a prolific athlete, who recently won four scholarships totalling U$$200,000 to university and was named a national student achiever.
The senior Spencer, Egbert, born in Port Antonio, was the son of Arthur Spencer, a policeman who descended from Scots people who settled in the Black River area of St. Elizabeth. His mother, Florence Davis Pinada of Portuguese origin, was from Portland.
Arthur and Florence had nine children, whom they took with them each time the policeman was transferred to another location. This man, eventually, became one of the first black men to own a business at a time when "black people could only get jobs pushing hand carts or carrying goods," his son notes.
Egbert attended school in Hope Bay while milking cows and feeding goats in the mornings, before he was sent to Kingston to attend Calabar High School.
He was an avid reader who loved physics and who thought that engineering was to be his career. After he passed his senior Cambridge, he attended Kingston Technical and took correspondence courses, he landed an apprenticeship with the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo). It was very short lived, however.
"The German u-boats were sinking the ships with supplies and raw materials. JPSCo began laying off staff," Egbert Spencer explains.
He then decided that his next stop would be the civil service.
The service, he said, paid much better than most jobs and also had great opportunities for promotion. He joined up.
Life was enjoyable for the young man who played senior league football with Lucas club, tennis, badminton, baseball, softball and also sailed, rowed and went fishing at nights.
On Sunday mornings, he would sail up and down Kingston harbour with his partner Clive Bernard, a Kingston pharmacist.
It was out of Bernard's living room window that Spencer was looking one day in 1946 when he saw Gwendolyn Humphrey riding a bicycle, coasting on one pedal to the gate.
He was impressed.
Later he would observe her relaying tennis. He urged Clive to tell him about her. Gwendolyn notes that she had just then graduated from nursing school.
The two eventually met when Clive Bernard contrived to introduce them to each other at Gwendolyn's graduation dance, an affair for which she did not have an escort. They were smitten with each other but Egbert, Gwendolyn states, had many girlfriends.
Gwendolyn notes that "Egbert had a lot of girlfriends who wrote him beautiful love letters."
His sister, she said, would bring them to her to read.
Hired by the Collector General Department in Kingston, Egbert was rapidly promoted in the service, but this often meant postings to rural areas such as Falmouth, where he was very lonely.
He admits, "The family life was such that I decided if I was going to live in rural areas, I would need to get married. I knew I was going to be transferred again."
Promoted again and asked to return to Kingston, he asked his friends to help him find a wife, a task which really meant helping him choose from his many female acquaintances.
His friends unanimously decided that Gwendolyn Humphrey should be that woman. His boss at the Collector General also brought pressure to bear. The Humphreys were a well-known family in Kingston.
Gwendolyn comments, "He went to my father and spoke to him." Egbert replies, "She decided to be my partner for the rest of my life."
They got married, but Egbert Spencer's fear of a rural posting was never realised. His next job was at the airport where he would work in Customs until his retirement. The Collector General had started an enforcement department for which he was given the responsibility to train everyone after only six years in the service.
The civil service was the place where black Jamaicans had greater possibilities of promotion, unlike the banks and even the law enforcement bodies, Spencer notes.
Over the years, he did significant work with the betting and gaming sector and local factories in relation to excise regulations.
His wife, working as a nurse in the government service, also did well. Assigned to the Victoria Jubilee Hospital to work in midwifery, she quickly became the Labour Ward sister and was offered a government scholarship to take a midwife's teaching diploma at a school in London.
Leaving her three children behind, she also pursued other courses at the University of London. After graduation from the midwifery programme in 1956, she came back as Tutoring Sister in midwifery at Victoria Jubilee until retirement in 1976.
In 1972, the Jamaican Government awarded the Order of Distinction to Gwendolyn Spencer.
Neither Egbert nor Gwendolyn was to enjoy much of a retirement, as they were both asked by the government service to return to work. Gwendolyn Spencer was re-employed by the Ministry of Health in December 1976 to work in the family planning programme and remained with the hospitals until December 2002.
Egbert Spencer retired from the Collector General (renamed the Inland Revenue Department) in 1983, but his service was retained until May 2004, working as a resource person in the area of Operations
