Ivy Phillip celebrated her 94th birthday on Wednesday with her children Daphne, Elvira, Learie, Hugh, Barry and grandchildren including Dexter Parsons also known in the calypso world as “Stinger” at her North Eastern Settlement, Sangre Grande, home with non-alcoholic drinks, cake and country-style fish and provisions.
Her progeny includes eight children, 41 grandchildren, 59 great-grandchildren and 25 great-great grandchildren.
Phillip, who supported her children and built her house with the money she made from being a seamstress, can still thread a needle in brilliant sunshine without her reading glasses.
She said she stopped sewing three years ago because her children wanted her to “take it easy” and also after a recent fall in which she injured some ligaments in her hand, but the spry nonagenarian finds it difficult to slow down.
Aside from some pain in her knees, Phillip is healthy and free from chronic diseases and conditions such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and arthritis.
Phillip likes coffee, biscuit and cheese, fish, provision and rice, she has reduced eating chicken or meat two years ago claiming the chicken nowadays was different to when her mother used to mind “common fowl” or “yard chicken” nesting in calabash trees and roaming freely, and which her father used to clean, boil and cook.
She was born in Valencia on July 19, 1923, the second of eight children—four boys and four girls—to Virginia and Venezuelan-born Cipriani Garcia. The family moved to Sangre Grande when she was three to Foster Road and later to Ramoutar Village, Rousseau Street.
She attended Guaico Canadian Mission School and worked at Tang Yuk’s store sewing bonnets and children’s christening clothes.
When Phillip was 19 years old she married Edmund Vincent Phillip on August 19, 1942.
With her eyes aglow, Phillip said “They say better days are coming but they can’t compare to what we passed through.
“I learned ‘fancy work’ or embroidery doing pillowcases, table cloths and bed sheets from a Chinese woman, Ahing from Manzanilla and she put me on to Ms Nora Yard where I apprenticed learning how to make bridal dresses and wreaths.
“Sometimes four or five boys used to run by me in the morning with a parcel of cloth they buy and say they want a shirt jac make in time for the 4 o’ clock matinee that day or ladies want a dress made for the same night.
“When I walked down the street in a dress I make, women used to admire the dress and want me to make the exact red and beige dress for them.”
She said she charged $1.50 a dress, 20 cents for a skirt, and $1 to $2 for a man’s top according to the material.
Phillip said her daughters Daphne and Elvira sat by her side and learned to sew by letting them hem and make buttonholes while the boys were outside pitching marbles.
Reminiscing about the old days
She reminisced about the three-wheel bicycles, trains and tramcars in Port-of-Spain where her mother and father carried them on rides around the Savannah and through Belmont in the 1930.
Phillip said Port-of-Spain, Sangre Grande and Arima had a fragrant smell emanating from the cocoa and tonka bean merchants’ shops.
She laughed when asked how she first met her future husband, Edmund, who was seven years older than her.
Phillip said she was 17, he was a foreman at the forerunner to WASA on a work crew repairing a leak at a standpipe on Foster Road, where she had to tote water to her father’s house.
She said Edmund told his crew to repair the leak for the lady so that she can take her water because she looked very serious.
On hearing that, Phillip said, she became more serious and told him she would fill her buckets for herself and did not return to the pipe.
When her father asked her if she was bringing more water, Phillip told him that people were repairing the standpipe and she will fill the barrel tomorrow.
As she went about preparing to cook later, rain began to fall and Edmund bypassed several nearby houses and stopped at her home. He was pretending to shelter from the rain in a bid to see her.
Phillip said Edmund even went to church to be near her and he was bold enough to tell her father, who was very strict, that he “really needed to get married to her”.
They began the formal courtship after Edmund sent letters to her father seeking his permission.
Phillip and Edmund lived together for many years. He died on July 16, 2000, three days short of her birthday.
Phillip, who has been blessed with beautiful children and family, said she lived a long and fulfilling life and has no regrets. Her secret to long life, she said, is “Don’t stress...leave it in God’s hands.”