A serious, no-nonsense woman with a heart of gold.That is how Barbados’ newest centenarian Vinnie Elmena Maynard was described on Thursday by close friends and others not related by blood but who see her as family.Both in person at her Walkers, St Andrew home, and virtually, many people who learned and benefitted from her over the years expressed joy that she had reached the milestone and listened as she recounted her younger days.“My father had a car, I used to drive it. He had a lorry and I used to take people around for potatoes …. At that time, you could drive anything, you only had to get a licence and that licence you could drive cars or anything. I stopped after my father started keeping a shop…. I had to [work] at the shop,” Maynard, affectionately known as ‘El’, recalled.She added that while her peers and her father wanted her to pursue a career in education she remained adamant that she would chart her own path.“They sent to my father for me to be a teacher. I told him, ‘no, if I suck salt I [still] would be no teacher’, and so said, so done. I came up as a very sharp lady, never used to make sport, not even now,” she asserted.
