A nice love story about two people coming to this country in the 1950s from the same small country and meeting and marrying in CT. DP
By M.A.C. LYNCH | Special to The Courant
courant.com: Euna Jervis' became the first female in British Guiana to earn a perfect score in math and a scholarship to Hunter College in New York City. Her father, however, would not hear of his 18-year-old daughter's leaving.
"I was determined," Euna said, and in 1956, at age 21, she boarded a plane to the United States to study medicine. "It was my first trip from my home. I never even slept one night away from home."
Clarence Coleridge, 19, came to the U.S. with similar ambitions in 1950.
"It was very hard to come over," said Clarence, the oldest of 16 children in his family in British Guiana (now independent Guyana). "We made a decision. It was agreed by all of us."
He worked to put himself through Howard University, but "my ability in the sciences was so minuscule." A chaplain suggested Clarence apply his speaking skills to the ministry, and he enrolled at Drew Seminary, switched from the Congregationalist to Episcopalian church, and at age 30 was working as a curate in St. George's Parish in Brooklyn.
"I've got to go home and get a wife," he told a minister from Guiana. But the minister's wife said, "You don't need to go back to find a wife. I know a woman for you."
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.
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