WESTERN BUREAU – Walking stick in hand, Henry Young, who turned 100 last Friday, sits on his verandah at Drumilly in Trelawny and calmly looks into the distance. His face displays a silent pleasure – the pleasure of having lived a century.

“I feel quite all right. I thank the Almighty for keeping care and the grandchildren them for their support,” he tells the Observer last Friday afternoon. “They have done well. There is nothing to complain about.” His quiet voice rises ever so slightly when he is excited as he tells his life’s story.

At 18 years old, he left the school of United Baptist Church in Drumilly to work with his father, Robert, on their farm. In 1933, he and Christina Scott, whom he would marry in 1938, became parents.

The child, Elfreda, would be joined by two other children, Hubert and Lena, in the succeeding years.

Throughout those years, Young worked hard to ensure their needs were met. In 1944, he went to the United States and worked in the World War II effort of that time.

“I went to America in 1944, go do manpower work ’till I come out,” he says. “I was doing war work, work with industry, pouring iron and all them thing. I travel pon ship. That time we didn’t have plane. Sometime the captain get order that a boat of enemies de so much mile inna sea. So he have to warn that we don’t have no light pon ship. At 6 o’clock they have to draw down the Union Jack and no light on deck ’till a certain time. Wartime was hard.”

After only a year in Wisconsin, he returned to Jamaica because his wife had taken ill. “Mi coulda stay de still, because they did want mi fi stay. They commend mi as a good working guy, but mi wife was sick, so I just have to pack up and come out,” he explains.

“I start back mi field (small farm) and so on and carry on mi family as usual.” At the same time, he had to assume caring for his ageing mother, Mary-Ann. His father had died in 1935 and, according to Young, he would not allow his mother to be taken advantage of by any man. “After mi father dead, mi mother alive and I try to keep her so she don’t have to up and down and haul and pull by man,” he says.

“I made it a business to make sure she was able to live to the mark.”

His mother has long since passed away, as has his wife, who died in 1969 at the age of 63. He recalls the pain of his wife’s passing.

“I feel it, but mi couldn’t do any better,” he says. “We don’t have no control over dead. I do mi best. I carry her to doctor, every doctor weh I know.” His voice raises slightly. “But she did have cancer, so it wouldn’t better.” His voice lowers again.

In the years since his wife’s death, Young has never had another wife. “I don’t consider to marry back,” he explains. “I wouldn’t consider getting a (new) wife. I say I get a good one and probably the second one might need a stick beating so I make one vow and didn’t make another.”

Throughout his younger years, Young was involved in a range of church and community activities even as he served as president of the Hampden Cane Farmers Group Committee and as a member of the Jamaica Agricultural Society. He was also actively involved in the collection of cocoa in the parish.

Today, Young has 16 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren of whom he is extremely proud. Spending time with those children now forms part of his daily routine, as does praying, taking naps and reading the daily newspapers to keep abreast of current happenings.

“I have to give thanks daily for keeping care, and the humility, the work which they have done,” he says of his children. “I congratulate them to the heights. I pray for them daily, that they may live to certain mark and live obedient. Yuh can’t live fi the world alone because nuh care how yuh good, some will hate you and some will love you. But try to do the best yuh can.”

His advice to Jamaica’s young people is to have more respect for themselves and for each other. “My feeling with young people is that they are not respectful. They walk on the street and they use any word they want. First time, mi couldn’t deh grow and see one big somebody deh come and mi go use one word, mi caan do it,” he says.

There is a need, he believes, for the adoption of values like honesty, which were more in evidence in his days. “In the early days we didn’t have such crime. Now and then you hear a fellow thief, but killing and so wasn’t in existence. Now, it (crime) spreading like a disease,” says Young, who has been a Christian since 1927. “There was more Christianity. Some of them wasn’t so educated but they live to certain principles, more than some of those now going to church everyday.”

The old man, who has long been called “Captain”, perhaps because of the air of authority he exudes, is regaled by his only son, Hubert.

“He is a good father. He’s a disciplinarian. You can’t do any wrongs and he support you with it. He don’t hush-hush anything. That’s my father,” he tells the Observer. “I am his only son and I cancel all my travels overseas just to stay with him. I used to go on farm work, and had a 10-year visa and I cancel them just to be with him.”

When asked why, he says simply: “He has no other son, and I had to stay with him. I have two sisters, one depart from this land. The other is still around, but I have to stay with mi father.”

Young considers it his obligation.

“I feel joy. That is his duty,” the centenarian says. “I do that with mi parents, so I expect that while he have the knowledge and experience he will try to do that. I try to keep them. I didn’t let them batter a bush until they mature,” he says.

His granddaughter June Carter, daughter of Young’s first child Elfreda, who died in 1998, says her grandfather has been a positive influence in her life.

“He has taught us discipline. The way we are now is because of him. He left a legacy with his own children and they passed it on to us. I am really very proud,” she says. “When I looked at him this morning and see that he was really 100 and look at other people, I really can’t believe it. But he is the type of person that don’t really worry about anything. He is always content with the situation.”

While she feels she could handle his inevitable death, she hopes it will not come for a long time.

“If it happens, I will be able to cope with it, because God has really blessed him with this age and we couldn’t really complain,” says Carter. “But he would be sadly missed. My own father passed on and he (Young) is now like my own father. I pray that God will continue to keep him and that he will continue to live for God.

He has encouraged a lot of people, and because of that, the respect that people have for papa is tremendous.”

Young, who has outlived his parents, three siblings, wife and his first child, is unmoved by the prospect of death.

“When the time come, you have no control. No one have control over death,” he says.