Joyce Delvees

Joyce Henrietta Delvees passed away on Saturday, February 25, 2017 while under the watchful care of her beloved only child Marcia Delvees and her granddaughters, Kareen and Camille Jones. She departed in the manner in which she lived her 93 years-quietly and peacefully. Known as Mrs. Delvees, Teach, Miss Joyce and Miss J., she belonged to a dying breed of Jamaican nation builders who were told by colonial overlords that teaching was all that they were permitted to do. They defiantly made teaching all that it needed to be. There are several hundred past students living today who owe their success to Joyce and her late sister Doris Leslie. In life, they were inseparable and they are together once more. Mrs. Delvees’ work took her from all Saints all Age school in Kingston where she began as a pre-trained teacher. After graduating from Bethlehem Teachers College in St. Elizabeth, she taught at the following schools: Salters Hill All Age School(acting principal); Main Ridge Elementary School (Clarendon);Hastings All Age (Trelawny); Roehampton all Age School (St. James) and Lottery All Age from which she retired in 1984. Her accomplishments are too numerous to list but here is a sample of what this great woman contributed to her students and community: choir mistress and organist, avid and successful fundraiser, Girl Guides lieutenant, member of the Electoral Advisory Committee for West Central St. James (She went door-to-door to register voters), volunteer teacher of adult literacy with the Jamaica Movement for the Advancement of Literacy (JAMAL) and founding member of the Montego Singers. She also worked with Don Wilson of the department of Education University of the West Indies, to develop literature for the grade one curriculum. Teachers from Mrs. Delvees’ time were expected to teach all subjects and to possess all of the skills necessary to create a beautiful home. She was no exception and made delicious wedding and Christmas cakes that she decorated herself. She also made beautiful embroidery and taught her daughter to do the same. When she officially retired from teaching with the Ministry of Education, JAMAICA, Mrs. Delvees opened a government-sponsored basic school in Montego Bay and kept it going until she migrated from Jamaica in 2001. Her pupils were so well-prepared that most of them were able to skip the first grade and enter Primary/Elementary school at the 2nd grade level. It is difficult to encapsulate what Joyce Delvees meant to the people nearest to her and to her students. In the words of one student, “She invested so much in other people’s children", she was a disciplinarian who rarely resorted to physical punishment “but by the time you got in front of her, you were already chastised.” The truth of it is that she lived for others and among the citations and awards she received are long service awards and certificates of appreciation from the Lottery All Age School as well as the Anglican Diocese of Jamaica for her contribution to the field of education and to the Church respectively. Joyce Delvees who hailed from Manchioneal, Portland, Jamaica, is predeceased by her parents Reuben and Lydia Stephens and her beloved big sister and fellow teacher, Doris Leslie, J.P. She is survived by her daughter, Marcia, grand-daughters Kareen and Camille, brother Samuel Stephens, sister-in-law Carmen, niece and nephew, dear cousin Cynthia and family and numerous past students who regret her passing. She lived a good life and way beyond what was predicted by her physician who gave her but two years to live after a grim diagnosis. She lived for twenty. She is resting in peace and the light of God is upon her. (Composed by Sylvia Dennis-Gilphilin, family friend)

Joyce Delvees

October 8, 1923 - February 25, 2017