Louise Horne, exemplar

As a committed educator, Ms Horne who is a graduate of both London University and Edinburgh University, sought to motivate her charges.

Although she is better known in Trinidad and Tobago for the high profile nature of her work in the Senate, where she spent 15 years, a lesser known fact is Louise Horne’s contribution as a member of the Coterie of Social Workers of Trinidad and Tobago. As a member of this voluntary organisation which long before the government’s school feeding programme was heard of, provided low cost and free nutritional lunches to generations of poor schoolchildren as well as working adults, Ms Horne played a major role in ensuring that many children who would otherwise have gone hungry were able to access the main meal of the day.

Miss Horne was one of a wide ranging pool of dedicated women, who assisted Coterie of Social Workers’ founder, Audrey Jeffers, in arranging for the provision of balanced meals to pupils across the country. Later, Horne, a qualified food nutritionist, would be involved in the School Feeding Programme through which today tens of thousands of children in preschool, primary and secondary schools are assured of lunches at their schools on a daily basis during the school term.

It has long been accepted that the average child cannot apply him/herself at his/her best in the classroom on an empty stomach. As a result, countless numbers of citizens of an earlier generation were fed and able to develop because of Louise Horne and others like her. Interviewed by a Newsday representative, last week, on her 100th birthday Ms Horne would say with a measure of pride - “most of my life has been trying to help people”, later noting that her “first talk in Parliament had to do with food for the children”.

After graduating from University Louise Horne had been a leading food nutritionist in Trinidad and Tobago and at the time of Independence in 1962 was asked by Dr Eric Williams to plan the food for the men of the newly established TT Regiment and Coast Guard. She had also been in charge of the food provided in the country’s State hospitals.

When the Flora Hurricane disaster hit Tobago in 1963 it was to Louise Horne that Dr Williams again turned to ensure that the people of the stricken island had adequate food. While she worked to ensure balanced meals, she insisted that locally produced food had pride of place in any menu.

Apart from Trinidad and Tobago, she worked in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Spain, and advised many Caribbean states in nutrition matters.

Today, even at her age Ms Horne keeps fairly active tending to her garden of anthurium lilies, and orchids and fruit trees, and would declare proudly that she had 200 anthuriums. She remains active attending every Sunday the 7 am Mass at the Santa Rosa Roman Catholic Church, Arima, where she has lived all her life and in whose affairs she has always taken the greatest active interest. We well remember how she bluntly put Hazel Manning in her place for suggesting that prior to Independence, Arima was “bush”.

What this all adds up to is that Horne, an exemplar, is determined to remain active and involved rather than be a passive onlooker in the proverbial rocking chair, satisfied with her earlier in life achievements.

Of immense interest is that in 2003, when in her 90s, she wrote and published a book, “The Evolution of Modern Trinidad and Tobago”, a work, she pointed out that dealt with “the problems of the country”. The following year, 2004, she would receive from the Pope the title of Dame of the Order of St Gregory.

Mentally alert, she would recall events which had taken place many years earlier in her life. While it can perhaps be argued that Horne’s longevity is partly due to the tremendous advances in medical science which have taken place since the 1940s, what cannot be ignored would be her diet, her lifestyle, exercise and mental attitude. And as she would point out, when asked the secret of her longevity — a good set of body organs inherited from her mother.