Black icon of TT cremated

Marshall-Beard who died last Sunday at a private nursing home was cremated yesterday following the funeral service.

“Our young girls today are confident and have much to thank her for and perhaps there ought to be a Pearl Marshall beauty award for all those girls who like Pearl were too black to be beautiful,” Bishop said.

Saying that back in 1957, when Marshall-Beard became the first black flight attendant to land on US soil, black girls did not have role models who were beautiful in a physical sense although they knew of the strong black women of character.

Bishop said the ideal female image of beauty portrayed in the media decades ago “meant that black could not be beautiful and it was Pearl who turned that entire mythology back on its face.”

Bishop publicly apologised to Marshall-Beard for all those times she could have looked better, behaved better and carried herself better because she (Marshall-Beard) showed what could happen. Bishop said it was a defining moment when Marshall-Beard stepped off the plane (at Kennedy Airport) as the first black stewardess to land in the US.

She and her sister Gillian regarded Marshall-Beard as a “defining icon and a bench mark of attainment for girls growing up in Trinidad.”

Referring to the Jaycees Carnival Queen competition in 1950 in which Marshall-Beard placed second, Bishop said there are people who today believe Marshall should have come first.

“But Pearl was a beauty wrought out from within, upon the flesh.” Bishop said in the many years she knew Marshall-Beard she never said a negative thing about anyone and in the social circles in which she moved, this was exceptional.

Bishop remembered Marshall-Beard dancing with Beryl McBurnie and wearing her head tie in new and glamorous ways. After leaving BWIA and going into Public Relations, Bishop said she maintained her “dignified poise.” Bishop said she never knew anyone less vain than Pearl Marshall-Beard. She described her as a startling beauty, a beauty which grew as she aged.

Marshall-Beard leaves to mourn her daughter Lisa and son Michael. After the service her body was taken to the St James Crematorium.

In the homily, Fr Leo Donovon described Marshall-Beard as a “trailblazer” who must have had many hurdles to face in her days as a stewardess.