There is so much to be written about Felicia Undine Giuseppi that one just does not know where to start. What I do know is that it was with a certain degree of apprehension that I set out for Tumpuna Square to interview this lady whose English is impeccable, fully aware that there would be not even marginal room for error either with my spelling, grammar, or sentence construction.
After all this is the lady whose very headline "DO YOU KNOW" for her Sunday Newsday columns on English Language, could cause the hearts of those who know more about journalism than I will ever know, to beat furiously, should Mrs Giuseppi's critique deal directly with one of their errors.
Undine Giuseppi was one of the very few to receive a National Award at last month's Independence Day Awards Ceremony at President's House. And very proud she is of the beautiful Humming Bird Medal (Gold) For Loyal and Devoted Service, which she showed me. The latest, but most certainly not the last, achievement in the life of this eighty-four year old woman who is in the midst of producing her publication "Act of God", a sequel to her 1973 publication "Backfire" - a collection of Caribbean Short Stories.
Undine Giuseppi, educator, writer, publisher, editor, public speaker, musician, wife to the late Neville Giuseppi for 57 years, mother of Diana (Flax), a retired teacher and Neil, a Public Relations and Media Consultant, and grandmother of four, was born in Barbados on July 15, 1917, came to this country 59 years ago, but has never lost her 'Bajan' accent.
From age eight, she began writing and has been involved with the "Word" whether written or spoken to the present time, as this prolific writer spends her entire day up to midnight, writing. The amazing thing is that Undine writes everything in "longhand" although she is a proficient typist. With a chuckle, she admits to the fact "I buy computers but I have no use for them." I could only hang my head in shame when she showed me her completed handwritten copy for Newsday to the end of the month, as my copy is done on a computer as my deadline is due.
At age eleven, when her peers were leaving primary school at around 14, the principal said "there is no point your coming back here, there is nothing for you to learn." Undine went home, her father hired tutors so that she could sit the Senior Cambridge examination since her parents were not about to agree to the two choices available to their young daughter at secondary level "to travel by bus, we did not travel by bus or to board in the city as there was no way my parents would allow their 11 year old daughter to stay away from home." Also at age 11, Undine found herself tutoring the children of those who wished them to enter Codrington College "which I did while doing my secondary education. I was two years older than people I was teaching to get into Codrington and Lodge."
Having passed both her Senior Cambridge and Advanced Level Examinations "on my own", Undine went to teach at the St John's Girls' Primary School in 1935, and in 1936 obtained the teachers' Full Certificate of the Board of Education in Barbados.
Without physically meeting Neville Giuseppi, through the written word which has always been so important in her life, Undine made up her mind "this was the man I was going to marry." By September 1938, Neville and his friend, George Thomson through whom the couple's correspondence had started, were on their way to St Vincent on a vacation. "I stood on the shore waiting to meet them, saw this handsome man, and said if only he knows his goose is cooked. I am a person I know what I want and I will get it" said this determined woman "I hooked him on September 7, 1938 and landed him on December 15, 1942. He was a gentle soul and the haul in had to be gentle too."
On arrival in Trinidad on December 30, 1942, the Giuseppi's lived in San Fernando, where Neville worked with the then Department of Works and Hydraulics, while Undine taught at St Joseph's Convent, San Fernando from 1943-1945.
The Caura Dam was being built and the Giuseppi's moved to Arima in 1945, and this very brave woman found time to have her two children, and open the Minerva High School which went right through from primary to secondary with a little commercial here and there. "Instead of $45 per month my salary went to $90. I was a rich woman. Some found I was expensive at $3.50 per month, after all everybody was charging $2.00 and $2.50" says this very witty woman.
Having obtained a Diploma in General Authorship from the London College of Authorship in 1934 by correspondence, Undine was more than ready to publish the first of her 22 publications in 1944 - "These Things Are Life" which took two months salary to publish 500 copies "that was a lot of money. I sold them at sixty cents per piece, but they were sold off the press because I let people know with no shame at all." Other publications include cricketing stories, "Sir Frank Worrell" (A biography) and "A Look at Learie Constantine" (A Biography), "Nelson's New West Indian Readers" 1,2 and 4 replacing those written by Cutteridge throughout the Caribbean, and a book which she recommends for every writer "Caught in the Slips" (Common Mistakes in Speech and Writing).
In 1950, Minerva High closed, but after a few months Undine could stay away no longer from the lure of the classroom, and was one of the first teachers, along with Sybil Somaru (now Ratan), to be hired by Miss Beattie, the principal of the soon to be opened St Augustine Girls' High School. Never unoccupied, Undine had been studying externally for a Bachelor of Arts Degree when her principal decided that the final year must be done in a university environment and so at age forty-one Undine went off to the University of Western Ontario, Canada, for one year graduating in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree with a major in English and a minor in Psychology. During her stay in Canada, she was Assistant Dean at Alma College in St Thomas, Ontario.
In 1965, Undine obtained a Diploma in Education from the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, specialising in the teaching of English and Latin at Secondary level. "I used to be very fond of Latin, the first foreigh language I learned from Victor Southwell, a master at Harrison College." In 1972, Undine retired as Vice Principal of SAGHS, which we now know was one of many retirements as one year later, The University School needed a principal so Undine agreed to hold on for two years in January 1973, only to continue for ten years, minus a term, when she again retired in July 1982. "This time I finished teaching in a school."
Undine is still Governing Director of The Giussepi Preparatory School at 18 Tumpuna Square, Arima, which she founded in 1982; and also of The Nellie Bailey Preparatory School in St Joseph, a school founded in 1982 by her sister, Nellie, who lives in England.
And while Undine may have retired from teaching school, she has continued to educate those who teach, and is a conductor of English Language Training Courses for various companies, some of which through the years include Roytec Trinidad Broadcasting Company, TTT, TV6, Trinidad Publishing Company, Power Gen and BWIA.