ROSA Ruth Linton, who celebrated her 100th birthday on July 7, was 72 years old when she had her first job — that of opening a basic school with nine children in the community of Brown Hill, St James on April 14, 1986.

Today, the Summer Hill Basic School is still going strong with a population of 105 children.

“Well I began by hearing the voice of the Lord say I want you to open a school and take the children who are wandering up and down off the streets and teach them,” the centenarian told the Jamaica Observer from her Summer Hill home in St James on Thursday.

“Well, the Lord and I had a long conversation – how must that be done, because I do not have money put aside to say I am going to build a school,” Linton recalled.

Linton said that when she told one of her son’s he questioned whether or not she was ready to die because he felt she could not manage the task at her age.

“But I obeyed the voice of the Lord and we had a little prayer house in the area of Brown Hill, so that was where I set up the school. I opened up the school and I never asked a parent to send a child, but parents starting asking me if they could send their children and so I opened with nine and it grew from there,” she said.

However, two years later Hurricane Gilbert destroyed the structure that was made of zinc, leaving the children with nowhere to go.

“So I took the children who were about to go to the primary school and told them they could come to my home on my veranda and so they did,” Linton recalled.

She started out with three children there but shortly after her small veranda could not accommodate the number of children enrolled in the school.

“I didn’t have space to put children. This little place was packed out,” Linton said.

Along with the assistance of parents, Linton erected a structure at the side of her home to facilitate the children.

“It was a concrete base with bamboo and zinc roof,” she explained. “So that’s how it was until it became unbearable, the dust from the bamboo and the heat from the zinc.”

By now the school had grown to 60 students. But she was told by the Ministry of Education upon a request for a building that it was the community which would be responsible for erecting one.

“But the community wasn’t with me,” Linton recalled. “The community people begin to mock me because they said I had money since I was building school. So they never co-operated, but through it all the school is here and I have to praise God because the school is going on very good right now. I’m quite happy and proud that the principal is doing what she can. The school is excelling,” Linton added.

In 1995 when Linton was 81 years old she handed over leadership of the school to the present principal, Angela Dixon.

Dixon said that Linton has left her mark on the community.

“She has left a legacy and we want to see it continue,” Dixon said. “Right now no other school has the number of children that we have.”

But she said that the school does not have much support from the community.

“It is helping the community, but the community is not supporting the school as they should,” Dixon stated.

Ordine Carey, who was among the first set of students in the school, and who was the first head girl, suggested that Linton is her best teacher.

“She is always encouraging. If you are not going to church she wants to know why and she will tell you if you have a boyfriend – get married and go to church,” Carey said on Thursday. “It was three of us who started out on the veranda when we left Brown Hill after the Hurricane,” Carey went on.

Linton was born in Hampton, St James. She had five sisters and one brother and attended the Buckingham Elementary School and Mount Horeb Elementary.

“After I left school I was a young lady in my parents’ house. I was not employed anywhere, we were right there in the home. My mother was a seamstress who sewed men’s clothes to include wedding suits and wedding dresses for ladies,” she explained.

Her father was a carpenter, a farmer and an employee of the parochial board as a foreman.

“I never worked from I was born anywhere except in the home. When I was 24 I got married and came in this community – Summer Hill. I met my husband at my elder sister’s wedding,” Linton said.

The union produced eight children.

Linton said that her adventures as a child were varied and many, describing herself as tricky and adventurous, and loved to swing.

Linton also spoke of being 12 years old and going to the river to swim with older girls, but one day nearly met her death.

“We would be in the river swimming until we feel it was time to get out of the water. We all got out of the water and got dressed, but I looked back in the water and decided to go back for one last round,” she recalled. “So I was there fighting the [heavy water] to go across and I felt when I went down losing balance because I was tired. I went down the first time, I go down the second time, the third time when I was going down one of the bigger girls saw me and jump in and caught me and took me to shore. That was an adventure,” Linton said.

But Linton, who would ride donkeys and horses around the community, had two other near death experiences.

“When I was a child about 12 to 14 years old I would ride the donkey in the pasture. I remember one day I mounted a donkey without rope or anything and all the donkey simply did was bow her head and I went over her head on the ground,” she said.

Later she would ride horses around the community. But she came close to death one day and noted that it was the mercy of God that saved her.

“I have to give God thanks because He wasn’t ready for me,” the centenarian said.

She recounted the incident which saw both herself and her sister in law ending up in the hospital for two weeks after being thrown from their horses in a terrible accident while travelling in the community.

Linton said that she was raised in a religious home where they could not miss Sunday school. When she was 16 years old she took up membership as a Christian in the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

While Linton does not see well nor walks well on her own, her memory is sharp and her hearing good.

Marlon Nesbeth, Linton’s granddaughter visiting from overseas said her grandmother is a woman of God.

“She is above everything else a woman of God,” Nesbeth said. “We know our grandmother to be a woman of prayer, always praying for her community, children, her grandchildren, her great grand and still calling all of them by name. So we grew up recognising her faith and her connection to her church and that is the legacy she has passed on to us – the examples that we have seen of her diligence and her commitment to her community,” she said.

“What I admire about her also is that she takes interest in each of us specifically. She wants to know what is going on in our lives even at this stage, and very interested in what we are doing. She is also very encouraging,” Nesbeth added.

Nesbeth said that four scholarships were this year awarded in honour of Linton to four former students of the Summer Hill Basic School who will be moving on from primary to high school.

“We recognise their connection to the basic school and we will be assisting them with their first year of high school and so they were given the Ruth Linton awards,” Nesbeth stated.

Linton herself has received a number of awards from her church and community along with a national honour from the Governor General in 2002 for her contribution to the community.