Retired reverend closing in on 100 years

Approaching 100 years of age on Wednesday, the Reverend William Anthony Edwards is eternally grateful for one thing, that is the ability to walk up and down the staircase of his house.

Unlike scores of other centenarians worldwide, the retired pastor from the Jamaica Baptist Union is grateful to still have some form of independence along with good health and a dedicated wife 20 years younger than him.

“At my age, my senses have gotten to diminish. My sight has deteriorated, but I have a good ophthalmologist. My hearing is now diminishing, but ... I am a very disciplined person and most of all, I still try to exercise. Up to recently I could still touch my toes. I have a regime that I use and I was involved in football at Calabar High School. I also did boxing, so that makes me still exercise,” Edwards told The Gleaner on Sunday during an interview at the Mamby Park Baptist Church in St Andrew.

Another thing he is grateful for is being able to visit and move about independently in the holy city of Jerusalem during a trip when he was in his 80s.

“While I was on this Holy land journey [at 84 years], when the leader of the group heard my age, he said he's not taking me. He had never ever had anyone that old with anyone on his tours ... . The people were surprised to see that I stood up better than many of the other ones, and when others were down with the flu, I was ready to go. I never gave any problems, and I said to myself at the end of the tour, 'Look at my age. Look at what I am enjoying. How many more would like to have this and will never ever have this?'” Edwards said.

It was that trip that inspired him to write his book, Life, What a Journey, so that he could share with those unable to travel the beauty of the world through his experiences, which also led him to his second wife, Fern, his church sister who assisted him with editing the work.

During his interview with The Gleaner, Edwards recalled that his sojourn in the Baptist ministry started when his father, a Baptist minister, Reverend Joseph Augustus Edwards from Ulster Spring, Trelawny, ushered him out of the rural community to attend Calabar High School in the country's capital, Kingston.

“I was not the best-behaving boy. I was a trickster, quite tricky, and growing up in Ulster Spring, you had to attend the elementary school. The last teacher I had [there] believed in using the strap, which was different from the others I had, so I became a nervous student. But I weathered it, and at age 15, my father decided that it's time for me to go somewhere else. I did not win any scholarship, but there was a high school called Calabar High School, which was brought into being for ministers' sons, so I was registered and became a student of Calabar High School. Then, the school was located on Slipe Pen Road on the property of the Jamaica Baptist Theological College, now occupied by the Blood Bank of Jamaica,” Edwards told The Gleaner.

After spending four years of his life at that institution “living a disciplined life”, he joined the civil service and was employed as a temporary clerk, paid in British currency. He then moved on to working at a tax office that was located in Half-Way Tree. Years later, he was transferred to work in Savanna-la-Mar, but “as fortune had it”, he was transferred back to Kingston soon after.

He then married his first wife, Mavis, and balanced his career and church life with family, becoming an evangelist, not having the intention of becoming a reverend but eventually being led by the Holy Spirit to walk in his father's shoes.

“How did I become a preacher? To be honest with you, I remember early in my ministry, I was a freelance evangelist. I was not commissioned by the Baptist to do any preaching. I wasn't commissioned by anybody, but I went to preach in crusades. I was an evangelist, not a preacher. I remember preaching in those days in what was known as the Presbyterian Church and that church had a number of outlets. One was in West Kingston, one was in Kingston Gardens, and so on,” he explained.

Edwards told The Gleaner that becoming a full-fledged pastor was not his choice. He only expressed interest with his now deceased wife in church-development activities and Christian groups at Bethel Baptist Church in Half-Way Tree, and after an American missionary from the Southern Baptist of America left Jamaica decades ago, Edwards was “to call pastor” by youth members of the church who were mainly university students.

“My wife and myself both said we have had no lead of the Lord. To all shock, we heard them, one or the other, saying, 'We feel we should ask you Brother Eddie to be our leader'. I was dumbstruck. Pastoring was not in my vocabulary, but they say the Lord led them, and that kind of report you have to respect, so I said I would give it a try. So I never saw myself at Bethel as a pastor. I only saw myself as a leader of a dedicated group of young people who learned to share their views openly, who are unafraid to put into practice their beliefs and had a vision for bigger things,” he said.

One of the most trying times for him was the death of his first wife, to whom he was married for 49 years of his life.

“That was a young lady who I didn't think I deserved. When we were celebrating our 49th [anniversary], she said to us, 'I will not be here for my 50th'. I could not understand the expression, but she was ailing, but not that much, and I never saw anything like death on the horizon, but she said it more than once, with a smile,” Edwards told The Gleaner.

Mavis was hypertensive and had kidney failure. Her death was sudden for him because it was during her fourth treatment that she “fell asleep” during dialysis, mere minutes after Edwards had driven away.

“The day of her death, getting her ready to go to the centre for dialysis, is the best she had looked for years. My daughter-in-law came and did her hair, and when she left home, she was beautiful, and she even caught my attention by saying, 'I'm not even walking with my cane today',” he said.

Following the death of his wife, Edwards believed he would have walked alone, but in his 80s, he ended up falling in love again with a church sister - Fern -from the Emmanuel Baptist Church.

Edwards and Fern told The Gleaner that they started having telephone calls each morning at 8:00 a.m. in their dating stage over 12 years ago until Edwards started going to Fern's house regularly for visits and dinner, and then they eventually established a relationship and got married after their children approved of the proposed union, when Edwards was 88 years old.

On April 21 they will celebrate their 12th anniversary.

“It's been the most beautiful years of my life. I guess it's about the different phase of life. We are both retired. We have so much in common. We can talk about so many different things. We help each other in our ministries and God has been good to us,” Fern told The Gleaner.

Fern said that in his 90s, Edwards took care of her while she recovered from eye surgery at home and administered injections.

“I don't know how he did it, but not a pain. I never felt a stick. The best injector ever you have is this gentleman. Being married to him has been a blessing twofold, threefold all over,” she said.

On his birthday, Fern will be hosting a brunch celebration for Edwards with their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

Edwards said he is looking forward to the day, God's willing, but he is not an exciting person and will just go along with the flow and “try to be a cool guy”.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com