Nurse receives G-G award

By Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter

Robinson

SHE DECIDED to make the most of something that "just happened." Marjorie Robinson had no idea she would have become a registered nurse and make a career of it.

The only female among the five persons from the county of Middlesex to receive the Governor-General's Achieve-ment Award last week, she smiled with delight as the cameras flashed as she accepted her award. She had made a career out of something that "just happened" and she was being praised for it.

"You're placed in a role and you go with the flow," said the woman who was recognised as the person from the parish of St. Ann most deserving of the Award this year.

Mrs. Robinson, who has spent most of her life as a nurse, said her interest in the profession was piqued in a most unusual way. How many persons do you know would have compassion for a chicken?

"I had no idea I was gonna be a nurse. Must have been in primary school with that chicken" she said in between laughs. "Somebody broke the chicken's foot and everybody was running from the poor old chicken. I just got a matchbox cut it up and made a splint for the chicken's foot. It was days after, the chicken was running up and down walking about," she said still laughing.

Her aura is powerfully charismatic. The smile of this 69-year-old would probably calm a raging bull.

Mrs. Robinson was born in September, 1932. The first of four children born to Mr. and Mrs. James Bernard.

She attended the East Queen Street Elementary School and later the Tutorial College formerly of Duke Street, Kingston, where she was driven to succeed after a woman in-sulted her in class. She was about 14 at the time.

"It seems when you are a little bit bright and you get bored, you talk. I always get into trouble for talking ... . Anyway, we were at Tutorial (College) and this lady came in (the class) and we didn't see her. She wiped the floor with us, saying how our parents were poor and so on. Apparently her father was headmaster at some school in the country. She said our parents were trying but we were not making any effort. I said to myself 'I don't know where this lady is coming from but I am going to show her that I am a going to be somebody.' And I've never forgotten it and I suppose that's my motivation to just keep on doing what I wanna do."

She was almost 19 when she decided she wanted to pursue nursing at the University of the West Indies. She couldn't get in. They had a long waiting list. It was a friend who told her of opportunities overseas.

"A friend of mine from Tutorial who was studying nursing in England said to me when I told her I wanted to do nursing, 'you know what you do? Write a letter and tell them why you would like to do it' and I was accepted. I've been doing nursing ever since," said Mrs. Robinson.

She migrated to London, England where she completed a General Nursing Course, and then proceeded to qualify in midwifery. She soon completed a postgraduate course in Psychiatry.

In London she married Raymond Robinson and the union produced four children (one now deceased). She returned to Jamaica with her family in 1962 and worked as a Registered Midwife at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital and University Hospital of the West Indies.

In 1967 she took off again this time to the United States of America where she pursued a BSc. programme including a programme in Paediatric Nur-sing. She worked in several senior positions including Nursing Care Co-ordinator for the Special Care Nurseries, supervising over one hundred nursing personnel. She was recognised in the Los Angeles Nursing Magazine for initiating the Infant Safety Seat Loan Programme for mothers.

She and her husband returned to Jamaica in 1990 and retired in Ocho Rios, St. Ann. But she was soon working again. This time at the Ocho Rios High School where she stayed for ten years.

"Working at Ocho Rios High School I've never seen so many kids with headaches. You go to school at 9 o'clock, school starts at 7, and there is a long line of kids with headaches. What I realised was that they were coming to school without any breakfast," said Mrs. Robinson who later initiated a school feeding programme which currently benefits approximately 50 students at the school daily.

From the very outset she became actively involved in community work. She joined the Kiwanis Club and was twice recognised as Kiwanian of the year because of her total involvement in outreach programmes. She was also honoured by their New Orleans Convention and was the first woman selected for the McAllister Award for outstanding service in the District of Eastern Canada and the Caribbean Region as a volunteer.

Today, her sentiments on her most recent award is the same as her reaction to her career. Unexpected.

"I am humbled. That's not what you're doing it for. For me whatever I am doing I'm getting something out of it. For someone to say thank you nurse or somebody would say in the market, 'Oh, mommy that's the lady that get mi the glasses' and that's where you get your satisfaction," she said.

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