Elsie Greenwood

Elsie Greenwood was a wise, lively and inspiring woman who dedicated more than a century on earth to loving, learning and the Lord. She spent more than a half-century working in education as a beloved - if strict - grade 1 teacher and a principal. She taught her students to write with perfect penmanship and how to properly enunciate their "o's." She took a special pride in teaching her students how to read and watching them achieve as they grew up. A talented organist, she played in Baptist and Anglican churches. Among her favoritesongs to play was "How Great Thou Art," in which singers proclaim the wonders of the works of the Lord. Even more often than she played it on the keys, she proclaimed the Lord's greatness as she went through life. "Jesus is sweet!" she loved to say. She would bring heaps of mangoes for her nieces and nephews to enjoy when she visited. She loved tending to her garden and watching flowers bloom. Over the course of her life, she enjoyed brain games: knitting and crocheting and playing crosswords. When Sodoku became the new puzzling craze, she became an expert. In her late 90s, she even started learning Spanish. Elsie Jane Redway was born January 13, 1915 in Dry Harbour, St. Ann, Jamaica. She was the oldest daughter born to Teresa and Ernest Redway, a cultivator and planter. Her siblings remember her as being playful, precise and an exceptional horse rider. She was a graduate of Bethlehem Teacher's College and, in 1934, was featured in the Daily Gleaner for passing the Pupil Teacher's Test for school management. She worked as a primary school teacher in the parish of St. Andrew when she met a handsome, humorous man fellow teacher named Clifton Greenwood. They fell in love and married in 1939. The couple worked together in schools in St. Andrew, Prospect and Rock River, where students referred to the pair as "Teacher Greenwood" and "Miss G." After retiring, she had teaching stints at Garvey Maceo School, the Beulah All-Age School, Glenmuir Prep School and St. Thomas Moore School - all in Clarendon, Jamaica. The couple had one son, Robert St. Anthony, and one daughter, Winsome Dawn, both of whom survive her. Her husband pre-deceased her in 1986. In 1995, she moved to the United States, settling in with her daughter in upstate New York and then in Ocala, Fla. in 2017. In the United States, her relatives called her many names - "Aunt Jean," "Aunt Elsie," "Auntie Greenwood." They loved listening to her stories about family history and her time in Jamaica. There, she worked as a foster grandparent at Margaretts Elementary School, handing out paperwork and working as a teacher and assistant. She eventually got accustomed to the winter, had a brief addiction to soap operas and became a member of Redeeming Love Christian Center in NY and then the Marion Oaks Assembly of God in Florida. She would celebrate each of her three-digit birthdays with a carrot cake, but it wasn't just the cake that she loved. "Jesus loves me," she liked to say, before instructing people, "Love him". She died peacefully in her home on February 16, 2023, one month after her 108th birthday. In addition to her two children, she is survived by her two grandchildren, Nadine and Stephanie; three great-grandchildren, Sage, Dylan and Skylar; and an affectionate extended family who will miss her dearly.

Elsie Greenwood

January 13, 1915 - February 16, 2023