Glowing tributes to departed World War II veteran Evelyn Smith
Glowing tributes were paid to retired Royal Air Forces Association Jamaica member Evelyn May Smith at a thanksgiving service for her life on Tuesday at Garrison Church of the Ascension inside Up Park Camp, the Jamaica Defence Force headquarters in Kingston.
Smith, who died on February 16, 2017 at the age of 102, was a World War II veteran, having joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women’s branch of the British Army, in 1943. She also served until 1949 in the Royal Army Medical Corps which saw her travelling to countries in Europe to tend to injured soldiers.
Known to many people as Matron, Smith was born in Falmouth. She received her education at Gordon Martin Grammar School and Alpha Girls’ School.
Smith, who spent a number of years in New York working at various hospitals and training numerous women, served her community and local churches in various capacities, was secretary for the Jamaica Legion; and was a longtime member of St John’s ambulance Association.
The Royal Air Forces Association Jamaica (580) Branch (RAFA), in its tribute to Smith, noted that in 1947 while she was serving in the ATS, she received an Imperial Government Scholarship which allowed her to study nursing at Crumpall Hospital in Manchester, England.
“She subsequently did post-graduate studies in plastic surgery and radium therapy,” the RAFA said. “On her return to Jamaica, Smith worked at Kingston Public Hospital as nurse in charge of the Radium Clinic and Matron at the then King George V Jubilee Memorial Sanatorium (now the Chest Hospital). After retiring from nursing, she opened Kingsgate Retirement Home, which she ran until she was 94.
“Among her awards are the Defence Medal and the War Medal for her service in World War II, as well as a Certificate of Merit from the Government of Jamaica in appreciation of her outstanding public service in the Kendal railway disaster in 1957.”
The RAFA, in closing, quoted a verse from Robert Laurence Binyon’s poem, ‘For the Fallen’.
They shall grow not old as we who are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
Smith’s body was interred at Briggs Park, the military cemetery inside Up Park Camp.
