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Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
An aura of nostalgia wafted from the lips of a couple of elderly Tivoli Gardens residents who fondly recalled a bygone era when the community embraced the outside world without suspicion.
Seventy-six-year-old Myrtle Kelly has lived in western Kingston for most of her life.
So has her neighbour, 78-year-old Kathleen Wilson, who resides only metres away.
Memories of a Tivoli Gardens in which people came by and had a drink still lingers.
"I would like to see a Tivoli Gardens where all the badness stops and people don't give us a tough time," Kelly declared.
"In the early days, a lot of people never lived here, only some Indian people," she recalled. "Is me encourage other people to buy houses here. I brought many from the east (Kingston)."
Among first residents
Kelly also recalled how she prepared lunch for construction and railway workers who built Tivoli Gardens.
She had lived with her parents as a child in neighbouring Denham Town and grabbed the opportunity in the 1960s to get hold of the new housing units in Tivoli Gardens.
"I was the first person who came to live in Tivoli Gardens," she boasted. "I was living up on Burnett Lane in the Denham Town area. My father had two places there," she recalled.
"Me come down here and buy a place. It was small, but me work hard and build it up," she said proudly. "Some of the older ones have died."
The expanded unit in which Kelly lives with her son and daughter-in-law serves as eloquent testimony to her hard work.
Kelly worked at the nearby abattoir.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Wilson recalled how Kelly walked through the community and sold meat to build a home for her family in a period when self-dependency was hailed. </span>
'Miss Myrtle', as she is affectionately called, maintained that she would not give up on Tivoli.
"If I did not love it, I would not stay," she declared, her ready smile always near the surface.
In her golden years, Kelly basks in the protective attention that she receives from neighbours.
"As them (neighbours) hear anything, they bawl out, 'What happen to Miss Myrtle'?" she declared.
Family roots
Wilson is a Christian who lives with her husband and daughter, Christine, now in her 40s, and three grandchildren.
Her daughter and grandchildren grew up in Tivoli Gardens.
Mother and daughter harbour memories of a Tivoli Gardens without stigma.
She recalled how she lived in Milk Lane in western Kingston before acquiring a house in Tivoli Gardens.
She even got married, at age 23. Her husband is now in hospital, suffering from diabetes.
The elderly Wilson is particularly proud of her 17-year-old multi-talented grandson, Wade Brown, a student of Wolmer's Boys' School.
She showed off numerous medals he won in a range of sporting and other activities, including football, hockey, track and field, science club and Scouts.
"<span style="font-weight: bold">Good people come out of Tivoli Gardens," she bragged, laughing. </span>
Wilson said she wants to see a return of the Tivoli Gardens of old.
"You know, the days when the police used to walk with baton, when you could be assured that they want to protect people and you feel all right," she said.
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