Stephen Batchelor - octogenarian still serving his community
Published:Saturday | October 29, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Karen Sudu, Gleaner Writer
SPANISH TOWN, St Catherine:
LIKE MOST little boys who grew up in rural Jamaica, as a child, Stephen Batchelor climbed trees, and even fell off sometimes, picked plums, star apples, and jack fruit, as well as played marbles.
But unlike many children who walked half mile or more to school in the 1930s, Batchelor merely walked across the road to Point Hill Baptist Elementary in St Catherine. However, it wasn't the same, during his high school years at Dinthill Technical High.
"Those days at Dinthill, you had day students and resident students, and the day students got bicycles, and I was a day student," he reminisced. "From my gate to Dinthill was about 12 miles, and I rode 12 miles to school and 12 miles back home," he said, smiling proudly.
all-rounder
He did not do that every day, though. Sometimes he would stay with his friend in Treadways and go back home on weekends. But he would still ride his bicycle - of course.
At Dinthill, the effervescent Batchelor specialised in agriculture and animal husbandry. The avid sports fan also played cricket.
"I represented my house, Wint. I was a kind of all-rounder," the 88-year-old, now the oldest resident of Leiba Gardens in Spanish Town, chuckled.
In 1944, he left Jamaica on the Farm Work Programme for the United States of America.
"The minister for the church (Point Hill Baptist) called me one morning and said, 'Stephen, come here,' and he said, 'I got 40 tickets for America and I want you to pick 40 people that you think are eligible to go to America and bring the list to me,' and I just put down my name on top," he said laughing.
He returned to the island two years later and worked with the Public Works Department in Point Hill, then the Ministry of Agriculture, where he spent three years. However, he left his hometown to live in Kingston in 1955, where he obtained a job with the Department of Statistics, now Statistical Institute of Jamaica, as a surveyor, until 1957. The meticulous octogenarian spent his final working year in Jamaica with a Canadian company before he migrated to England in 1958.
"My sister, who was living in England, sent money to Chin Yee's Travel Service in Spanish Town for them to look about my passport for me to go up to England. So when I went to England, I said to her, 'So wait, why you didn't send the money come give me? Tou sent it to a travel service,' and she said, 'You? Send the money come give you make you drink it out?'" he mocked.
undaunted generosity
Batchelor exchanged wedding vows with his late wife Millicent in 1962. The union produced five children. He had two children prior to his marriage.
But neither his job nor his family life prevented him from giving unstinting service to community development through a number of organisations, among them the Afro Caribbean Resource Centre, which he coordinated from 1982 to 1992. He also served as chairman of the Birmingham Racial Attack Monitoring Movement Unit, the West Midland Fair Housing Action Committee, and the People's National Party's United Kingdom branch.
Batchelor's work didn't go unnoticed as in 1991, one year before he returned to Jamaica, he received the Order of Distinction for services to the Jamaican community in Birmingham, England.
Three years later, he formed the returning residents' association of Spanish Town and is at present the president of the Leiba Gardens Citizens' Association. Secretary Vernon Duncan hails him as a dedicated philanthropist.
"I find him to be a man of his word, very reliable. He is always willing to participate, plays his part, contributes financially, and brought his overseas experience to Leiba Gardens and to other organisations in Jamaica," Duncan told The Gleaner.
The second of six children, Batchelor enjoys tending to his flowers, socialising, and eating all kinds of food.