COMMENTARY: BY OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., February 14, 2020 — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Nassau posted a photo on its Facebook page on February 14, 2020, with the following caption: “Congratulations to our seminarian Devereaux King. He was among the twenty-one Seminarians from Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology, St. Meinrad, IN, who received the ministry of lector on February 13, in the Seminary’s St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel. Archbishop Charles Thompson, of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, installed the lectors. The ministry of lector is conferred upon those who prepare and proclaim readings from Scripture at Mass and other liturgical celebrations. A lector also may recite psalms between the readings and present the intentions for the general intercessions. Please continue to keep Devereaux in your prayers!”
Devereaux King is a very close relative, and the fact that he has chosen to become a Roman Catholic Priest is inherently related to the fact that members of my family historically have been committed Roman Catholics even before I was born when my grandfather, Benjamin Elliott, became deeply involved in establishing a strong foundation for the Roman Catholic Church in Stanyard Creek, Andros, as the catechist in St. Rita’s Roman Catholic Church.
Devereaux is the grandson of my first cousin, the late Sylvia Elliott Ross, the eldest of the seven grandchildren who grew up with our grandparents, Ben and Mabel Elliott, at Stanyard Creek. Although she was my first cousin, I grew up referring to her as Aunt Sylvia because she was one of two women who were very instrumental in steering my life in the right direction during those formative years when young minds are so impressionable and vulnerable to inculcating life-long bad habits.
Aunt Sylvia father was my uncle Clarence Elliott, the oldest of Ben and Mabel Elliott’s eight children; my mother Violet Elliott Brown was the oldest of the four daughters. But Cousin Sylvia and Papa and Mama’s youngest daughter, my late Aunt Maria Elliott Forbes, were around the same age and they grew up like sisters. Consequently, all of the other grandchildren who were left in the care of Papa and Mama while our parents were on “The Contract” in the United States or working somewhere else in The Bahamas grew up calling her Aunt Sylvia.
In addition to myself, the five other grandchildren were cousins Agnes, Beryl and John, children of Uncle Lee; my late sister Elthreada Brown McPhee; and my cousin Alphonso “Boogaloo” Elliott, a son of my late Uncle Audley.
The grandchildren of Ben and Mabel Elliott were fortunate to have two very gifted and imaginative persons like “Aunt” Sylvia and Aunt Maria as mentors and guiding lights growing up on the Western Ridge of Stanyard Creek, Andros, in the 1940s and early 1950s. Both were “monitors” at Stanyard Creek All-Age School, which meant that the younger grandchildren had the benefit of two “teachers” living in the same house with us. They both ended up choosing teaching as their life-long careers, and there are unquestionably many students in New Providence who can vouch, as I certainly can, for the fact that Maria Forbes and Sylvia Ross were two excellent teachers.
Both were also staunch disciplinarians, a trait they no doubt picked up from Papa, a no-nonsense deeply religious man whose influence in the community was probably not matched by any other individual in Stanyard Creek. Papa owned the “major” grocery store, small though it was, on the Western Ridge and our family compound also consisted of a “big” and “small” house as well as a separate structure that was used as a kitchen. Papa had a very liberal policy with regard to regular customers of the grocery store. They could “trust” things they needed if they didn’t have the money at the time and pay whenever they got it.
Whatever influence Papa had as a grocer paled in comparison to when he donned his cassock as a catechist at Stanyard Creek’s St. Rita’s Roman Catholic Church. The priest assigned to Andros generally made his rounds of the various settlements once a month, so Papa was responsible for conducting Mass most of the time. So we all grew up as very devout and committed Roman Catholics. Indeed, attending church three times on Sundays—morning Mass, Sunday School and Evening Mass—was the norm for the Elliott household.
Devereaux is the son of “Aunt” Sylvia’s daughter, Leonardette Ross-King, and her husband Danny King of Cat Island, where Devereaux actually spent most of his boyhood years before moving to Nassau to attend the College of The Bahamas, from were h graduated with a degree in Culinary Arts, supposedly with his mind set on being a chef, a lucrative profession in a country that is one of the world’s leading tourist destinations and consequently has a number of top-rate hotels.
But at some point after he graduated from the College of The Bahamas, Devereaux made up his mind that he would follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, Benjamin Elliott, and dedicate his life to Catholicism as a Roman Catholic Priest.
