Margaret-Anne Faria January 26,1951 - July 24,2002 There is only one way to describe the late Margaret-Anne Faria: An intensely private person.
Last Tuesday morning, listening to Alan Bierzynski pay tribute to this relatively young woman during a Eucharist to celebrate the gift of her life at All Saints Anglican Church, it dawned on me how many details I had missed in the life of someone I had known for about thirty years.
Carl and Lucille Turton, their three daughters, Margaret, Heather, who died about five years ago, and Kathryn, and son Eamon, who now lives in the United States, had always been communicants at All Saints so that it never occurred to me that Margaret would have had a Roman Catholic education. First at Providence Girls Intermediate School and then St Joseph's Convent, Port of Spain, where she became not only the first non-Catholic Head Girl of the School, but to be named La Rosierre (the girl with the highest morals in the Convent). Further, on completion of her A Levels, Margaret began her working career as a teacher at Maria Regina, the Convent's Junior School.
It was when she joined BWIA as a staff member in the Provident Funds and Pensions Department somewhere in the 70's that we really met. She was one of the few people who visited me when I lived in Singapore in 1980. Yet it came as news to me that at one stage Margaret had left the airline and gone to Mt Ida Junior College in Boston to further her education. There she excelled and topped the academic standings but for economic reasons transferred to the University of Windsor, Canada, where she continued her academic excellence. On completion of her degree, she rejoined BWIA and gave over 25 years of dedicated service.
It was at her funeral service that I learned that Margaret had met her husband, Derek Lee Faria, from school days, and although he had duly informed a mutual friend, Usha Maraj, that one day he would marry her, it was not until September 4, 1982 that Margaret-Anne married Derek. The marriage produced two sons, Jarrod Randall (17) and Kienan Ryan (14) both students at Queen's Royal College, although their father had attended St Mary's College.
Margaret, said Bierzynski, "was known by everyone for her loud, healthy laugh, her broad smile and her loving and helping personality." Says her beloved co-worker, Barbara Bayne, besides whom Margaret had worked throughout her stay at BWIA, along with the late Irwin Borel: "when Irwin died some years ago, I remember Margaret insisting that we had to go to the cemetery in spite of the broiling sun, because we had to send him off properly."
But that was Margaret Anne Turton-Faria, who never complained about herself during three years of illness. And "sick or no sick" attended all QRC football games, in full regalia QRC jersey and flag waving and cheering them on. After all her father, Carl, had been a first-class footballer and now son, Jarrod, was a budding football star on the College's first eleven.
The Queen's Royal College Scout Band, the troop to which her two sons belong, sent Margaret on her way to the St Margaret's Anglican Cemetery where she was laid to rest, in grand style playing the Football Anthem as her casket was borne out of All Saints. May she rest in peace.