Keva Marie Eldon was born on 18th August, 1935, the second of two children and the only daughter of Sidney and Rowena Eldon of Delancy Street, Nassau. The family was counted among what Gail Saunders has dubbed the “coloured middle class” of the Bahamas, and as a result, some opportunities were available to her that were not open to many others.
Keva’s father was a senior civil servant in the colonial government, and her mother worked in a Bay Street establishment. Nevertheless, they were circumscribed by the segregated nature of Bahamian society of the time. Both Eldons, determined that their children would not be similarly limited by the circumstances into which they had been born, invested all their energy in ensuring that they received the very best schooling possible.
The family were committed Anglicans. They attended the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, but were also active in All Saints, Chippingham, and Christ Church Cathedral. The children went to mass at St. Mary’s with their father and attended Sunday School at the Cathedral. Moreover, Keva, who was blessed with a fine soprano singing voice, sang in the Cathedral choirs throughout her youth.
Like her brother before her, Keva was sent to Queen’s College, where she graduated with honours in 1950, having earned the prestigious Parkinson Prize for Progress. Like her brother, too, she planned to go to university, and so remained for another year at Queen’s College to study Latin, a subject still required for matriculation to universities in the UK and Canada, but not normally taught at QC. In 1951, her Latin studies completed, Keva went to work at Barclay’s Bank, then a relatively new institution, to begin saving money for her university studies. An encounter with Dean Peggs, the then Headmaster of the Government High School, convinced her mother that Keva should be enrolled in a sixth form college for girls, as Cambridge had only two women’s colleges, and competition for places was fierce.
As a result, in 1953, Rowena and Keva left Nassau on the HMS Queen Elizabeth with a view to finding the right institution in Britain. The gamble paid off. By September 1953, Keva was enrolled in Kirby Lodge, Little Shelford, a school specialising in preparing young women to enter Cambridge. There, Keva continued her studies in modern languages, specialising in French and Spanish. She also continued her musical training, which she had begun with Mrs. Cumberbatch in Nassau. She signed up for private voice lessons and auditioned before Boris Ord, Director of Music at King’s College, for entry into the Cambridge University Music Society. She impressed him with her high soprano, and was admitted to CUMS during her first term at Kirby Lodge. Two years later, A Level examinations completed, Keva received offers from both Oxford’s Lady Margaret Hall and Cambridge’s Girton College to study Modern Languages.
By then, her heart was in Cambridge, and she entered Girton. She returned to Nassau in 1959 to take up a position teaching Modern Languages at the Government High School. There, she counted among her students and many of the nation-builders of the modern Bahamas; they in their turn were inspired by her scholarship, her discipline and her personal integrity. In 1966, she was appointed Head of Modern Languages, followed by a further appointment to Deputy Headmistress in 1972.
The 1960s were a decade not only of professional development, but of profound personal satisfaction as well. At the end of 1961, her former music teacher, the redoubtable Meta Davis Cumberbatch, set about conscripting the brightest of her former pupils to help her establish the Festival of Arts and Crafts, later to become part of the National Arts Festival. One of those pupils was E. Clement Bethel, fresh from his training at the Royal Academy of Music. He and Keva had known one another as children, but at that time their age difference stood in the way of any close friendship; Keva, two and a half years older than Clement, was friendlier with his sister Eunice. Now, though, those two and a half years were no impediment to their beginning a whirlwind courtship. They met again just before Christmas, began dating during the holidays, and were married on Easter Monday (23rd April) 1962; by 1965, the union had produced two children, Nicolette and Edward.
In 1975, Keva accepted a transfer from GHS to the fledgling College of The Bahamas, where she began a new trajectory in her career. From 1975-1977 she served as Chair of Humanities; from 1977 to the end of 1978, she served as Academic Dean; and in January 1979 she was appointed Vice-Principal of the College. By that time, her talents and dedication were apparent to all but perhaps herself. Both of the Principals with whom she served, Dr. Kazim Bacchus and Dr. Jacob Bynoe, lost no time in recommending her as their successor, and in this recommendation they were joined by the Hon. Livingstone Coakley, then Minister of Education. As Vice-Principal, she was sent abroad to conduct doctoral studies in Educational Administration, which she pursued at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
Two scant years later, she returned to The Bahamas with her doctorate, and in January 1982 was appointed Acting Principal of the College of The Bahamas, a position that was confirmed that July. She served as Principal of the College of The Bahamas from July 1982 to June 1995, when the amendment of the College of The Bahamas Act made the College an independent institution. At that point, at the age of 60, Dr. Bethel became the institution’s first President, having presided over the growth of the College from a two-year community institution to an organisation whose degrees were not only recognised throughout the world, but were also respected as widely, and whose students and alumni were excelling in countless fields.
In 1995, Dr. Bethel had attained the official age of retirement, but agreed to serve as President for three more years to set the institution on the right path towards university status. She retired for good in 1998, two months after the death of her own mother, who had lived to see both of her children retire at the top of their careers. Retirement, however, was not to be a leisurely affair for Keva, complete with Alaskan cruises and prize gardening.
The reputation she had earned at the College — a reputation for excellence, scholarship, integrity, temperance, and good sense— made her a valuable national asset. Immediately she found herself being called upon to serve on numerous boards and committees, and, committed as she was to national development and community service, she readily agreed. Even at the time of her death she was involved in countless civic and social activities, never refusing to serve when called upon. Keva Bethel was raised with a respect for people, a love for her country, a commitment to service, and a deep appreciation of and reverence for life itself.
During her life, these qualities were severely tested by personal adversity. In 1987, when her husband was critically ill, she took leave from her demanding job to accompany him to Halifax for medical attention, and remained there until his death in August. When his sister, Eunice, also fell ill not long after and relocated her life to Cambridge, England, to seek treatment there, Keva made regular trips to visit her, and did so until Eunice’s return to Nassau prior to her death in 1994.
In 2005, when her brother Michael slipped into a coma as the result of complications arising from pneumonia, Keva chose to maintain him on a ventilator, and visited him almost every day, reading and talking to him, supporting him when his insurance ran out; it was only her own illness that stopped her from visiting him. Finally, even when it was evident that her disease was terminal, she maintained her respect for life; when it was explained to her that she would have to be placed on a ventilator if she wanted to continue breathing, her answer was “Press on.”
A committed Christian, Keva recognised life as a great gift from her Creator, and did everything she could to preserve it. Keva Bethel was married for some 25 years to the late E. Clement Bethel (1938-1987), former Director of Culture for The Bahamas, who predeceased her, and was the younger sister of Michael H. Eldon (1931-2011), first Bahamian Bishop of the Diocese of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, who predeceased her by 8 days.
She is survived by two children, Nicolette Bethel Burrows and Edward Bethel; their spouses, Philip Burrows and Tasha Bethel; one grandson, Jaxon Bethel; nephews Richard Bethel and Timothy Bethel and his wife Mizpah; nieces Jane-Michele Bethel, Margot Bethel, Jill Redgrave and her husband Mark, and Tanya Lester; grand-nephews Mark Bethel, Paul Redgrave, Benjamin Redgrave, Ty Bethel and Logan Bethel; grand-nieces Christi Lester, Natalie Lester, and Anna Redgrave; cousins John and Sonja Lunn, Adrian Lunn and family, Mark Lunn, Toby Lunn, David and Muriel Lunn, Duane and Sakina Sands and family, Peter Lunn, Mabel Eldon and family, Sylvia and Harold Wilkinson, Suzanne and Robert Farquharson, Rusty and Gillian Scates and family, Deborah and Manuel Lopez and family, Dianne Scates, Carol and Nicole Gates, Dorothy Lloyd, Albert Lloyd III and family, Eve and Bruce Lowe and family, Valerie Castera and family, Donna and Chris Jennings and family, Judy and Norman Reiach and family, Anne and Colin Higgs and family, Brian Wilkinson and family, Cathy Neff and family, Donna Wilkinson, Jill and Peter Furzer, Scott Deal and family, Nanette and Peter Hale and family, Timothy Deal, John Zane Deal and family, and numerous other relatives and friends including Cyprianna and Fred Fleischer and family, Cecil and Earla Bethel and family, Peter and Jeannette Bethel and family, Pamela and Tony Granger and family, Michelle Patterson, John and Daphne Delaney, and Gail Saunders.
Some of her activities at the time of her death include: membership on the boards of Cable Bahamas, the Lyford Cay Foundation, Doctors Hospital, and Queen’s College Board of Governors; involvement in numerous committees and civic organisations including the International Women’s Forum, the Governor-General’s Youth Award, the Girl Guides, the Primary Student of the Year Association, the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the Blue Ribbon Panel of the Cacique Awards, and the All Bahamas Merit Scholarships.
Keva Bethel died on 15th February, 2011, having lived a life of integrity, love, scholarship and, above all, service to others. Indeed, her early years teaching at the Government High School equipped her with principles that she carried with her throughout her life. These may be found in the school hymn, “I Vow to Thee, My Country”, and are made explicit in the words of the Prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the school prayer: Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest;
To give, and not to count the cost,
to fight, and not to heed the wounds,
to toil, and not to seek for rest,
to labour, and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do thy will.
