BETTY ANN BLAINE A journey of bumps and blessings

WHILE many know Betty Ann Blaine as the voice of the children, the host of a talk show programme, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, and most recently, the convenor of a third political party, New Nation Coalition (NNC), many do not know of her struggles going through failed marriages, being a single mother, having a near death experience and coming face to face with God.

Blaine describes her life as one filled with many bumps and blessings. It’s a life that has led her to speak out for children, particularly those who are poor, and a life that for 28 years has seen her struggling to resist the call to serve her country.

“I remember rolling on the floor out of heartbreak,” she said, recalling an incident in one of her previous marriages when the emotional pain was too much for her to bear. “I rolled and bawled. There was cheating and there was a lot of emotional and mental abuse,” she admitted.

While refusing to give details of the causes of two failed marriages out of respect for her exes, Blaine said she has gone through enough struggles to help other women overcome their emotional hurt.

“I chose to marry three times because I am a strong believer in marriage, I had two girls and I wanted to set an example for them. While some women would go around with 20 partners, I choose not to live like that,” she said. “ I wanted to get married and have a family.”

Her first marriage, which produced two daughters, lasted 12 years.

Within a short period, she was married again. This she said was a mistake the moment it started.

“I knew my second marriage was a mistake from day one,” she admitted. “You see the period when you break up and you are vulnerable? That is the worst time to date someone else,” she warned. “I met someone else whom I thought I loved and wanted to get married to. But that only lasted two years. After that I swore I would never marry again,” she said.

As a result, she was a single mom for many years.

Then one day she bumped into her high school sweetheart and they fell in love all over again.

“He was still married. He had married and started a family. He had got married since he was in high school. In those days, if you got someone pregnant you had to get married. But he was very unhappy,” she explained. “And so he divorced and we got married.”

Then after 18 years of marriage, they started facing struggles. This she said was on account of her becoming saved and her husband not fully understanding what had happened to her.

“My husband never understood it,” she explained. “He never asked about my experience and I couldn’t tell him. When I had my born again experience, no one understood it. I had a soul conversion. I came to know Jesus on the streets of Kingston. I was not saved as a result of preaching, altar call, or anything like that. That was another radical change for me. And so it was hard for anyone to understand it. I don’t think he understands this whole born again thing because he is not a Christian.”

After her conversion, Blaine started a home church at the back of her house, especially facilitating children.

“I know because of my born again experience it has created some strain on my marriage, but we are overcoming them. I am unapologetic about my love for Jesus Christ, and unapologetic about my Christian walk,” she said.

It was eight years ago, soon after the formation of the United People’s Party, that she had her born again experience. And as vice-president of the then third party headed by Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas, Blaine called a press conference announcing her resignation.

She was now ready to give up all to follow God’s calling.

Blaine describes her life as being an interesting one, noting that even the way in which she was conceived was an unlikely occurrence in those days. Her mother was a black country girl from Westmoreland who was selling in Coronation Market in downtown Kingston and her father was a white-skinned Jamaican man from a ‘fairly well-off’ family.

“They met in Coronation Market,” Blaine said. “And because my father dared to marry my mother, his side of family was ashamed of us — literally.”

As a result, they never got a chance to grow in upper St Andrew where her father was from, instead she grew up in a tenement yard on Chisholm Avenue in Kingston.

“My parents didn’t have any money, but we didn’t know we were poor,” she said. “My mother and father taught us the values of education, honesty, respect, hard work, integrity and love.”

But at the age of four, she had a near-death experience and was saved, she said by a direct miracle from God.

“I should have been dead at fouryears-old,” Blaine related to A l l Woman in an interview at the Observer last Friday. “My mother sent me to my aunt next door. She had a lot of dogs and they would allow you to go in the yard but they wouldn’t allow you to come out. I was only four and when I saw the dogs I was so scared, I started to run, I never knew this was something I should not do,” Blaine recalled. “I was little and meagre, but I could run. I could feel the dogs on my heels and I ran! I ran out the yard and straight into the side of a vehicle and hit the ground, boop! Everybody bawl out ‘Ms Beryl daughter dead now!’”

In fact many who saw her lying on the ground thought she was dead and quickly took the news to her mother.

“When I got up I was unscratched. I never knew it then but that was a direct miracle from God,” she smiled.

Blaine attended the St Catherine Primary School, McMillan Heart Sunshine school in Mandeville, spent two years at Manchester High, then completed her high school years at Excelsior.

With no money to get her through university upon leaving high school, Blaine opted to migrate.

Her dream was to be a teacher.

“Ever since I was small my mother said I would be a teacher because I used to beat bush and teach them,” she laughed. “When I was in high school I thought I would teach languages because I was good at Spanish.”

While in the United States, Blaine attended Medgar Evers College where she did an associate’s degree and Hunter College, where she did a bachelor’s degree. Then she got a scholarship to Columbia.

While socialisation for the most part was fun, and despite being on a scholarship, it became a struggle for Blaine.

“It was in a sense a struggle, because I had to work and go to school. While other students were writing cheques I couldn’t find the money even for food,” she said.

After the completion of her master’s and with the intention of moving on to her doctorate, her life, she said, took a radical turn.

“I picked up a West Indies Newspaper and saw where VOUCH (in Jamaica) was to be closed down because they didn’t have the funding to keep it open.”

Something gave inside of her and she was determined in herself that this was not going to happen. She got some friends together and decided to stage a large concert.

But with no money to do so, she went on a personal venture, approaching Inner City Broadcasting Corporation in New York seeking sponsorship. Doors opened and they offered the Apollo Theatre as the venue, while also offering to do the organisational work.

Not sure of the next move to make, Blaine got up the following morning, dressed, and headed into the Air Jamaica Office where she asked for the sponsorship of a ticket to Jamaica with the intention of asking Rita Marley to perform on the show. They gave her a first class ticket.

That venture saw her getting The Melody Makers, Nadine Sutherland and Junior Tucker — free of cost. From that sold-out concert, she earned enough to keep the organisation open.

“That was when I really began to understand the power of God,” Blaine said. “I always had God in my heart and always loved Him, but that was when I had to stand and marvel at the power of God.”

But despite venturing out on many fund-raising events, her passion was African History.

“I still thought I was going to be a professor of History, but after the show, I heard a voice say, ‘it’s time to go home’, I fought against it but eventually I came home.”

Since then she has started a number of groups geared towards helping the youth and children. They include Hear the Children Cry, facilitating aid for the over 150 Jamaican children that go missing monthly; People’s Action for Community Transformation, geared towards the upgrading of inner city youth and Youth Opportunities Unlimited, a mentoring organisation which links caring adults with young people in a supervised programme fostering the provision of care, guidance, positive role models, emotional support and counselling.

“We have the power to change our lives,” Blaine encouraged. “Look at me, my mother was a little, black country woman and here I am today.”