Farewell to PAMELA ANN MABEL TYSON 1932 - 2013

BASSETERRE St. Kitts, March 5th 2013 - She was no ordinary person and the family members, friends, colleagues and protégées who gathered at her Home Going Service all knew it. She had made a major difference in the lives she touched, the organisations she led and the discipline and ambition she engendered among her netballers of which she was their matriarch.

All would agree without hesitation that Pamela Ann Mabel Tyson was extra-ordinary; one of a kind; an angel in human garb.

“She brought out the best in us,” said one member of the Catholic Senior Choir which she led for some forty years, and this was echoed by the netballers whom she led to win regional championships on two occasions.

“Making her my Personal Assistant was one the best decisions I ever made,” said Dr. the Rt. Hon. Sir Kennedy Simmonds, former Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis as he paid tribute to her in superlative terms.

She was described as “One of the most enduring and exemplary exponents in mature leadership in the local and regional sport fraternities”  by Alphonso Bridgewater, Former Netball Coach and President of the National Olympic Committee/SKN.

Goddaughter Alison Hector summed up what everyone felt…”Everything you did – whether it was netball, the choir, your job, or raising us all – was marked by a spirit of excellence and professionalism, along with a very personable nature.”

It was left to her niece-in-law Esther Tyson, after hearing the plethora of tributes meted out to her when she was alive, to mourn “I wish I had known her earlier”.

The gathering at the Co-Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (The Catholic Church) on Wednesday at her Mass of Thanksgiving was warm, sober, respectful and full of admiration as members surveyed the life of this wonderful lady who, through her dedicated and patriotic service, had positively impacted the lives of all with whom she came in contact.

But it is with Netball especially that Pammy’s legacy will live on – not only because the Netball Stadium now bears her name, nor the fact that she was the first President of the St. Kitts Netball Association and the First President of the Caribbean Netball Association, but because of the personal interest she showed enabling her protégées to rise from the ordinary to the extra ordinary.

The gratitude of the Netballers was noticeable at the Service.  They were fervent in their tribute, immaculate in their dress and demonstrative in the manner they held an arch of miniature netball poles under which Pammy’s coffin passed when she made her final exit from the Church.

“She genuinely cared for people,” commented Sir Kennedy in his tribute, and for this all felt that great would be her reward in the higher realms of glory and that the hymn sung at her Thanksgiving Service rang true when it said…

“And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.”

Her mark will be indelible.  May her soul be blessed.