Ruth Baker-Gardner was determined to not only break the cycle of teen pregnancy affecting her siblings but to raise the educational bar having been the only one of her parents’ nine children to attend high school.

But even she was amazed at her ability to overcome an impoverished childhood to single-handedly achieve a doctorate and rise to the top of her profession as lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

She was also the former principal of Bunkers Hill Primary in Clarendon and literacy specialist for the Ministry of Education Region Six.

“Three of my older sisters had children in their teens and I decided this would not happen to me. I knew what I wanted my life to be and so I set out to make it happen,” she said.

Dr Baker-Gardner recalled growing up in Cowley, St Ann, as the sixth of nine children. Her father Steadman, the main breadwinner, was a farmer while her mother Estella Baker stayed home to care of the children. Her father, a Rastatafarian could not read or write and her mother was only functionally literate.

But while the family did not have much to go around, given the many mouths to feed, her father was a good provider and ensured they never went hungry. Not only did he have his children to feed but also a grandchild as one of Baker-Gardner’s older sisters had become a teen mother at age 15.

“At one point we used to cook for 17 people,” she recalled.

Although this sometimes meant a dinner of only boiled yam and salt without any protein, Baker-Gardner said they were happy.

“We were never hungry and so, although we didn’t have electricity and other basic amenities we never felt really poor because everyone in the community was in the same boat,” she recalled.

However, all this changed overnight when Baker-Gardner’s father died suddenly from a heart attack leaving the mother to fend for herself and the children.

With her father having just taken a mortgage on the family farm, Baker-Gardner said her mother was determined not to lose it and set about farming it herself.

“She became the breadwinner and so I only saw her on Sundays and Mondays because she went to farm the land during the week and on Thursdays she went to the market and stayed there until Saturday,” she explained, adding that her older sister then became the main caregiver.

Things became even tighter for the family as Baker-Gardner recalled instances of her sharing a dress with her sister and having to go to school barefooted.

“They would cook the meal and meet us halfway and we would sit under a tree and eat it and run back to school,” she recalled.

With her mother farming cane, Baker-Gardner said some of her older siblings dropped out of school at a very early age as they had to help other cane farmers with their crop so their mother would be able to get help when it was time to reap her plot.

Baker-Gardner has very little memory of the day her life changed. In many regards it was for the better but the then eight year-old could not see the light at the end of the tunnel as she was plucked from her siblings and sent to live in another parish with an aunt she had never met before that day.

“All I remembered of that day was my aunt and uncle arriving in a little blue van and taking me away with them,” she said.

Her aunt Ena Morris, having heard the struggles her sister was going through taking care of all these children on her own, had paid a visit to see what if anything she could do. It was an on the spot decision that the best help she could offer was to take one of the children and Baker-Gardner was selected.

Baker-Gardner, the fourth of six girls, said to this day she does not know why she was selected but is now grateful since she is the only one of her siblings to have received a high school education as a result.

“It was the hand of God, why I was the one selected. I am so grateful that she did what she did for me,” she said.

Moving to the home of her aunt who was a teacher in Manchester meant she now had more than she was used to at home but Baker-Gardner said all that did not compensate for missing her mother and siblings. She however, recalled that her mother would visit laden down with ground produce and would help financially when she could as well.

“It was a far away from home and it was an emotional upheaval,” she said.

Baker-Gardner said she immediately took comfort in books and started reading everything she could lay her hands on including the encyclopaedia.

“This was the defining moment in my life when I started to read everything and even to this day I can block out anything that is happening around me with a book,” she said, pointing to one of the memories of her father sitting with her around a kerosene lamp at age five and teaching her to write her name although he himself could not read.

This new found appetite for learning, while living with her aunt, paid off when she was promoted from Grade Three at Harry Watch All Age School to Grade Six where she sat and passed the Common Entrance Examination for Knox College.

During the summer she would return home to the family in Cowley and would go with her mother to sell at in Coronation Market in downtown Kingston.

“She used to bring a in a lot of things to sell and so we would put cardboard on the floor and sleep in the market from Thursday to Saturday,” she recalled, adding that she sometimes went with her mother to the market up to the point of completing her bachelor’s degree.

Baker-Gardner, who said she got baptised at age 11, involved herself into various activities such as teaching Sunday school and being a youth leader at church and this, she said, helped to give her life some focus.

At the end of high school she graduated with eight Caribbean Examination Council and GCE subjects and immediately returned to live at the family home in Cowley.

She then sought employment as a pre-trained teacher at McNie All Age and was hired to teach Grade Seven children. Two years later at age 20, Baker-Gardner said she got married and although the marriage broke down a few years later it was her husband who initially inspired her to go to college.

“I was just a pre-trained teacher but my students were doing so well and one day my husband said to me ‘yuh know sey yuh bright’ and through the power of words, I started to think I could go to college and university like other people,” she recalled.

Baker-Gardner decided to attend Shortwood Teacher’s College and then began her struggles to finance her studies on her own, having now been separated from her husband.

“I remember one day (boarding) at Shortwood and I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from and so I stayed in my room all day and cried,” she recounted. She recalled having a friend, Veronica, who was in a similar situation and who she used to pool resources with in order to get by.

“Sometimes we would buy a toothpaste and cut it in two. When I didn’t get to go home my mother would send a box of ground produce to Coronation Market and I would go and collect it.”

Despite the hardship she graduated as president of her batch. Shortly after she began a part-time certificate in education in literary studies at UWI before pursuing a bachelors in education, graduating with an upper second class honours.

“There were days, I was at UWI I had only water to drink but what pushed me was my belief that if the Lord has open a door I must pass through it,” she said.

Baker-Gardner credits her then lecturer Dr Cherrell Shelley-Robinson for encouraging her to pursue a master’s degree in library and information studies.

But travelling from Cowley in St Ann to attend classes at UWI Mona while still teaching at McNie All Age was a challenge of its own.

“Sometimes I would beg a ride in a bread van, or on a cane truck or on a bike whatever that could take me into Kingston,” she recalled, adding that she was one of those teachers who had only one pair of shoes and wore it until it was beyond repair.

At the end of the master’s degree, Baker-Gardner was given the Dorothy Collings award for post graduate student with the most outstanding grade.

Baker-Gardner said she knew she wanted a PhD by age 40 and set about working around her teaching schedule while pursuing doctoral studies at Northern Caribbean University. She explained that during the holidays from school she would live in Mandeville in order to attend university.

But even while pursuing her studies Baker-Gardner said she had started conducting a free CXC class for young women in the community.

Baker-Gardner said from those classes came a lot of professionals including her sister who later became a teacher despite only having completed All Age School.

“She left McNie All Age at Grade Nine and she was doing sewing and when that didn’t work out she went to do domestic work. I told my mother to tell her to come home and she started attending the classes,” she said.

On successfully sitting her five CXC subjects Baker-Gardner said her sister was accepted to Church Teachers’ College.

With the sister unable to afford her fees for college, Baker-Gardner who was a year into her PhD studies sacrificed her dreams of completing the doctorate by a certain time and used her tuition to pay for her sister’s education.

“I then left and went to the Cayman Islands to work as a teacher/librarian and used that money to pay my sister’s fee and my fees and to help my mother,” she said, adding that she would still come back to Jamaica every summer to attend classes for her PhD studies.

When her sister completed college and started teaching that was when Baker-Gardner returned home and completed her PhD studies in Education Administration.

Baker-Gardner said she lives by the scripture Jeremiah 29:11. “What God has planned for us sometimes we are not aware but if we leave our lives in his hand he will work it out. She is also a great believer in working hard to achieve and has used her now 82-year-old mother as an example of one who worked tirelessly in her efforts to raise her children.

Baker-Gardner said she hopes to be able to continue to inspire the lives of young people and is currently starting another CXC class in Kingston where she now lives.

Her advice to others is: “If we want it badly enough we will make it come to pass. You have to want to succeed so badly that you never lose sight of the goal in the distance. You have to believe that goal is yours and that God has assigned it to you.”

Do you know anyone who has been able to break the cycle of poverty through education? Let us tell their stories and help to inspire others. Email browni@jamaicaobserver.com or call 876 564-1522