Your Excellency the Governor, Premier the Honorable Andre Ebanks, Honourable Speaker of Parliament, D. Ezzard Miller, other Members of Parliament, distinguished guests, members of the clergy, members of the Jackson family, friends — my fellow Caymanians.
We gather today not only to mourn, but to give thanks — for a life that spanned nearly a century of these islands’ story, so woven into the fabric of Cayman that to speak of Francine Jackson is to speak of who we are as a people.
I knew Ms. Francine for fifty-three years. For forty-seven of them, she was my neighbour. I first knew her as a young man, when we worked together at British American Insurance — and whatever I knew about diligence and dealing fairly with people, I learned a good portion of it watching Francine Jackson.
From those days until her last, she was a friend, a counsellor, and one of my staunchest supporters through every season of my public life. The honours came later. The character came first.
Ms Francine was born on the thirteenth of August, 1928, in Bodden Town, where she lived with her mother Elva Carter and her aunt Pearl Carter. When the great storm of 1932 swept over these islands, it destroyed the family home. In the aftermath, she was legally adopted by a childless couple in West Bay, Caleb and Maybelle Powell — while remaining close, all her life, to her birth family, especially brother Karl Carter and sister, Gloria Ebanks.
She was not hardened by hardship but shaped by it — into someone who understood that a child’s life can turn on a single act of love, that family is bigger than blood, and that when the winds come, we hold on to one another.
She became a teacher — first at Cayman Prep, then at West Bay Primary. It was at West Bay Primary, among the ordinary families of the district, that her heart found its lifelong cause: the children on the edges — the underprivileged, the overlooked, the ones at risk of being left behind. Those were the children she fought for, all her life.
And the children loved her back — to the very end. Just months ago, she was visiting schools with her daughter Joy, as Joy read to the children from her book, Slice of Home. Everywhere they went, the children came running to Ms. Francine with hugs and kisses. Cayman’s children still knew — the way children always know — that here was someone who loved them. Those days, her family will tell you, she was in her element.
But Ms. Francine did not only teach citizenship. She lived it. In 1957, when the women of these islands petitioned for the right to vote, Ms. Francine put her name to that cause. I want the young people to understand what that took. In a small community, speaking up carried a cost; silence was the safe thing. Francine, a young mother with everything to lose, signed her name anyway — because the daughters of Cayman deserved a voice equal to its sons.
Every woman who has since cast a ballot, held office, or led in these islands walks through a door that Ms. Francine helped open. We do not have to imagine what courage looks like. We saw it. It lived next door to me for forty-seven years. It was fitting that she should be honoured to lie in state in the Parliament, where the vision she and others worked for has been fulfilled.
And Ms. Francine never forgot the child she had been — the little girl whose life was remade by adoption. She served for many years on the Adoption Board, standing up for children who, like her, needed someone in their corner.
There were children in those days whom Cayman did not talk about — children afflicted by what people called “the Cayman Disease,” hidden away, locked away, as though they were something to be ashamed of. Ms. Francine would not accept that.
She and her dear friend Mary Gray, wife of the Reverend John Gray and other ladies from the district started caring for and teaching some of these children in the Bosun Bay Church Hall next to the lighthouse. These women raised their voices for those children at every opportunity — welcome or not, fashionable or not — insisting that every Caymanian child, whatever their condition, was a child of God, deserving of dignity, of education, of light. Ms. Francine would tell you that one of the happiest days of her long life was the day the Lighthouse School for Special Education opened its doors — a place of light for children who had been kept in the dark. When you speak of her legacy, speak of children who were hidden, and are hidden no more.
Then there is a legacy measured not in laws or titles, but in love. As a marriage officer, Ms. Francine presided over some four thousand weddings before her retirement in 2023. Thousands of couples who began their life together with her blessing — families across these islands, and around the world, whose stories begin with her voice. And at those ceremonies, again and again, she loved to read from the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. We will return to those words.
Her faith was the root of it all, and her spiritual home, for most of her life, was the John Gray Memorial Church in West Bay. Ms. Francine loved to tell it herself: she attended that church as a child. She was married at that church — to Vernon Lionel Jackson, her beloved husband of sixty-five years. She baptized her younger children at its sister church, Webster Memorial which was a big part of her life when the family lived in Bodden Town. From John Gray Memorial her children were married and from that same church, in 2016, she buried Mr. Vernon.
One church, one faith, one long and faithful life. Just days ago, her family and her church family said their own farewell in that sanctuary — for though today belongs to Cayman, John Gray Memorial belongs to Ms. Francine, and she to it. Her faith was not just evident on Sundays, it was her foundation — the source of the courage, the kindness, the steadiness that made people trust her with the biggest moments of their lives. She read her Bible not to be seen reading it, but to live it. And live it she did.
I can speak from long, happy experience about Sunday Tea. Kerry and I were blessed to sit at Ms. Francine’s table many times over the years — and she at ours. That table was more than a meal. In a world moving ever faster, Ms. Francine kept the older, better rhythm: family and friends gathered, stories told, no one rushed, everyone fed — in body and in spirit. Cayman at its best looked like Sunday afternoon at Ms. Francine’s table. I know. I was there.
And then there was the Birthday Book. This was given to her by her daughter, Jennifer, to keep her collection of names and birthdays of everyone she knew, and when your day came, the phone rang, and it was Ms. Francine, wishing you happy birthday. She never missed. Not once, not anyone, year after year. Every morning after her coffee and before the day got going she would make the calls. “Hello, this is Francine, I’m calling to wish you Happy Birthday … and ended the conversation with “I love you, and God loves you too.” Once, when asked why it was so important to make these calls she answered, “Some of these people don’t have anybody to wish them Happy Birthday, or to care about them. So I do. You never know how much that small thing might mean to someone.”
There it is — Francine Jackson, whole and entire, in one sentence. Imagine the Cayman we would have if we all lived like that.
When this nation named Francine Jackson a National Hero, we were not giving her something — we were recognising something her community had known all along. A hero is a teacher who cares for children. A woman who signs her name to justice when silence would be safer. A neighbour who opens her door. A voice on the telephone, reaching out to the lonely on their birthday. Heroism is not beyond our reach. Ms. Francine’s whole life was about reaching out to others.
She was also — first and last — a mother. Her children have told me what she was to them, and I give you their words: their guide, their confidant, their counsellor — the constant they could turn to on any occasion, celebrating, grieving, laughing and crying with them — always fair, never judgmental, never showing favoritism. She was, they say, the glue that held their family together — truly their matriarch. A role model, her children say, in love and in life.
And beside her always was Mr. Vernon — their marriage lasted 65 years, until his death in 2016. Ms Francine liked to tell her family their stories: the romance, the big wedding, the sorrow they bore together in the loss of their first son, Spencer. The family joked that their next child, their son Andre, was consequently spoiled, but what a loving and devoted son he was to both his parents.
Even from loss, Ms. Francine made a gift. Her son Spencer was what they called a “blue baby”; he lived just fourteen days. Francine carried the rare blood that could save such children, and she resolved that other mothers would not lose what she had lost. For decades she was a blood donor. Her children remember the nights the telephone would ring, and Vernon would drive her to the George Town hospital, where a newborn’s life hung in the balance. How many Caymanians are alive today because of those nights, God alone knows. And when, in her seventies, she was told she could give no more — her family will tell you she was quite cross about it.
To Joy and Sam, to Jennifer and Leonard, to Andre and Maria, she was Mummy. To everyone who came after — and truly, half of Cayman besides, — she was Gammie. A proud grandmother to Dax, Brett, Samantha and Jesse; to Rita and Juliette; to Kristen and Adam — and Gammie to fourteen great-grandchildren: Zoe, Kiran and Kaz; Sophia, Emma and Lila; Kaia, Ella and Bodhi; Elizabeth, Alexander, Lionel — Vernon’s namesake — and Eli; and Kaitlynn. Every one of them she made feel they were her favourite, because to her, every one of them was. Her love reached wider still — to Kathy, who remained close and dear to this family through the years; to her grand-nephew Glenn Ebanks, who shared her home in these last years; to her grand-nieces Hannah Carter and Pamela Ebanks and their children and grandchildren; to anyone who ever found a place at her table. Francine did not draw tight circles around her love. The nation knew Francine Jackson, GMM, National Hero. The family knew Mummy. Cayman’s children knew Gamie. No title meant more to her than those.
To the family: your mother belonged to this country, but she belonged first to you. We thank you for sharing her with us. And we promise you today that Cayman will not forget her. Her name is written now alongside the few we call Heroes — but more than that, it is written in us: in how we teach our children, how we treat our neighbours, how we stand up when standing up is hard.
For fifty-three years I called Francine Jackson my friend. For forty-seven years I called her my neighbour. Today, with all of Cayman, I call her what she always was: a hero.
Ms. Francine had a favourite verse of Scripture — one she read at wedding after wedding, four thousand times over. Today, we read her own words back to her, as she completes her life:
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” — First Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verse thirteen.
Faith — she kept it, from the pews of Webster Memorial and John Gray Memorial as a little girl to her last day. Hope — she gave it, to schoolchildren, to hidden children, to every couple who stood before her. And love — love was her whole life’s work. No one in these islands lived it more fully than Francine Jackson.
In these last years, Ms. Francine told many of us she was not afraid. She had outlived nearly all her contemporaries, and she had buried her beloved Vernon nearly ten years ago. She looked forward — she said so often, with that smile of hers — to joining him. So I will say it plainly, because it is what she believed and what her family believes: Ms. Francine has gone to be with Mr. Vernon. She has gone to her friends. And knowing how she kept that table, we can only conclude that somewhere beyond our sight, the biggest and best Celestial Tea Party is now underway. And Gamie is pouring.
Rest well, dear friend. Rest well, National Hero. We will hold the faith, the hope, and the love — until tea time comes for us all.