Centenarian celebrates milestone on Kadooment Day

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By Anesta Henry

While thousands of revellers and spectators were on the streets participating in this year’s Grand Kadooment, Eunice Amanda Golda Phillips was the centre of attention at her Glebe, St George home, as she celebrated her 100^th birthday.

Phillips’ attitude and spirit were as bright as the costumes on the road when Governor General Dame Sandra Mason paid her a visit this morning.

In fact, the petite, old lady who was full of energy, told Dame Sandra how much she loved to dance.

Phillips said her love for dance began when she was just four years old.

“I like to go to dance. The first dance was when I was four years. There was a man from St Philip who come and married to a neighbour of mine and he would say come over and play.

“And they would put me in the centre and sing ‘there is a brown girl in the ring’ and I would dance. So I use to dance from then to now,” Phillips said.

Sitting next to Rector of St George Parish Church Senator John Rogers, Phillips who is still an active member of that church, encouraged young people to obey God’s commandments, walk in his footsteps, live in peace, and read the Bible and pray every day, if they wanted to celebrate their 100^th birthday.

“And always come to church and listen to Father Rogers when he is in the pulpit,” Phillips urged.

While some centenarians often speak about consuming a small amount of strong alcoholic beverage occasionally, the former primary school teacher and employee at the British Tobacco Company, said in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle she stayed away from “rum”.

“I taste it, but I say I ain’t drinking no rum or nothing so,” she said.

Phillips’ granddaughter Cathy-Ann Brathwaite said her grandmother who has four children, ten grandchildren, and eleven great-grands, always knew what she wanted in life and worked towards achieving her goals.

Brathwaite said her grandmother was an active member of the St George Parish Church’s mother’s union, choir, and church army.

“My grandmother, Golda, has always been full of insight, advice and humour, warranted and unwarranted. She would provide me with financial and relationship advice, some I listened to and some I didn’t, but it was always on point.

“Golda is a fount of historical facts and could tell you about…when the riots of 1937 happened and all our family history about her aunt, her mum and her dad,” Brathwaite said. (AH)