By Hayden McKenna
At its most recent Graduation Ceremony, the University of the Southern Caribbean (USC) honoured
Dr. Naomi Modeste with the Spirit of USC Award. This award is bestowed on a bonafide or honourary alumnus of USC (or its ancestral predecessors) who is “exemplary in their spiritual conduct, scholarly activities, service to humanity, and high moral and ethical standards.” (Spirit of USC Award Official Criteria). Dr. Modeste’s character, career and contributions surpass this descriptive billing, making her a most deserving awardee.
Now retired and residing in Georgia in the United States of America, Dr. Modeste’s interest in the field of public health remains undiminished. So too is her affection for the Caribbean and her interest in the key public health issues that confront the region and its people.
Naomi Modeste was born in Tobago and spent her early life in a close-knit Seventh-day Adventist family in the windward Village of Belle Garden. Home-schooled until she was eight years old, Naomi entered the Glamorgan Seventh-day Adventist Primary School, which would later be named after educator and later minister of the gospel, pastor John Roberts, who in 1927 was among the first cohort of students to enroll in the East Caribbean Training School which today is the University of the Southern Caribbean. Pastor Roberts was the first Tobagonian to be ordained to the Gospel Ministry by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Dr. Modeste recalls that her stay in primary school was quite truncated as she was skipped through the standards because her teachers thought she was bright. Within four years she was finished with primary school with no immediate prospects for secondary education. That would change with the arrival of Mr. Charles Mark, an Antiguan educator who brought a secondary school programme to the compound of the Glamorgan Seventh-day Adventist Primary School. He encouraged parents of the villages around to send their teenaged children to secondary School. Naomi Modeste was among them. The experiment was however short-lived and abandoned before young Naomi Modeste could finish secondary school.
It was at CUC that Naomi Modeste completed her secondary education and went on to successfully pursue an Associate of Arts degree in General Studies.
Dr. Modeste recalls having to initially adjust to dormitory life away from the home of her parents. She
also carries cherished memories of the CUC experience and its impact on shaping her life. There were the inspirational teachers and mentors on the campus. Among them she mentions B.G.O French the Fordes and the quiet but influential Mr. Lawrence who she remembers as a Geography teacher, a subject for which she had great affection. Dr. Modeste remembers the white-frocked female attendance to church services on Sabbaths and with the spice of good humour confesses that four years of that peculiar ritual perhaps provided her with enough white-dress-wearing for a lifetime.
Decades before Dr. Colwick Wilson attached the moniker “Miracle Valley” to the USC Main Campus, miracles have been a fixture of campus life. Dr. Modeste recalls the case of a young lady whose terrible episodic headaches would lead to the diagnosis of a brain tumor. She remembers her college mates and the entire campus community making the case a subject of organized round-the-clock prayer sometimes by the riverside. When the young lady’s doctor performed the final scans before her scheduled brain surgery, they found that the tumor had vanished. This subject of campus prayer is most probably still alive today some six decades later without ever having a relapse – Miracle Valley!
After graduating from CUC in 1968, Dr. Modeste returned home to Belle Garden, Tobago. She was determined to further her education although the money was saying otherwise. She applied to three Adventist schools in the United States and prayed that the first institution to revert with an acceptance letter would be the one she would choose. The first acceptance letter she saw came from Union College (UC) in Lincoln, Nebraska. She would later find out that an acceptance letter had arrived earlier from Atlantic Union College. Somehow it was misplaced and the first she saw came from Union College. So off to Union College she went, convinced of God’s leading. There she completed a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Psychology. While at UC, a recruiter visited from Loma Linda University (LLU). The Master’s Degree in Public Health (MPH) was among the programmes the recruiter promoted.
This programme piqued Naomi’s interest. She applied for it, was accepted and was able to complete the MPH programme in one year.
Naomi then returned to Trinidad and Tobago. While exploring potential employment prospects – perhaps the most promising being in one of the Virgin Islands, she had a chance meeting at the Community Hospital with Pastor Slimen Saliba (now Dr. Slimen Saliba) who, elated that she had completed her studies and was back home, insisted that she should come and work at the South Caribbean Conference (SCC) Office, headquartered in Woodbrook, Port of Spain at that time. He talked the matter over with the Conference President Pastor Samuel L. Gadsby and she was invited to join the conference as its Health and Temperance Director in 1972. Responsibility for the local work of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) would later be added to the portfolio. She spent six productive years in the position. She pioneered community health fairs in Trinidad and Tobago.
Apart from organizing health fairs across the country, she also teamed-up with nurses to hold well-baby clinics and collaborated with health educators in the public sector on programmes such as stop smoking campaigns. Practical nutrition education was one of the major areas of focus she prioritized as Health and Temperance Director. It is largely her passion in this area that prompted her to write and publish what was perhaps the first vegetarian cookbook for the Caribbean with more than 100 recipes using locally available ingredients. She recalls as well teaching nutrition and health science classes pro bono at CUC and being encouraged by colleagues there, especially the Dr. and Mrs. Shim to produce this vegetarian cookbook using local foods. When the book (Modeste, Naomi N. 1981. Your Vegetarian Cookbook for Healthful Cooking With Over 100 Recipes Port of Spain: College Press) was finally published, its author had been elevated to the position to Health and Temperance and ADRA Director of the Caribbean Union Conference of Seventh day Adventists (CARU).
In 1978, Naomi Modeste was elected to serve as Health and Temperance and ADRA Director of the CARU a few short weeks after being re-elected in the same post at the SCC. The opportunity to extend her work to the other Adventist fields of the Caribbean – which she had already been doing when invited to – now presented itself substantively. She took up this opportunity and served from CARU from 1978 to 1987. She remembers leading and being involved in several health promotion projects and disaster relief efforts across the CARU territories.
It was during her tenure at CARU that Naomi Modeste found a way to further her education to the terminal level. To do this she developed a proposal that persuaded Elder Eric John Murray and the CARU Administration that she could carry on in office while studying at Loma Linda University in California, USA for the Doctor of Public Health degree. She would work remotely even before working remotely was a thing! Moreover, her proposal opened the way for non-ministerial workers (non-pastors) to receive education assistance from the church in the Caribbean and perhaps elsewhere. Her case therefore contributed to denominational policy formation in this area. After earning her doctorate, Dr. Modeste returned in-person to CARU.
In 1987, the untimely passing of Health Director of the Inter-American Division of Seventh-day Adventists (IAD) saw Dr. Modeste called to fill the vacancy created at the next rung of the world church structure. She had to relocate to Florida, USA to take up duties.
In 1990, Dr. Modeste accepted a call to the faculty of Loma Linda University. She officially joined the faculty in 1991. Her record of academic work and professional service would elevate her to a full professorship at LLU’s School of Public Health. She served at LLU for 25 years and held several positions of leadership and influence including Chair of the Department of Health Promotion and Education and Director of the Master’s and Doctoral Programs in Health Education. Dr. Modeste is well published. She is author of a textbook, several book chapters, more than 90 peer reviewed articles, a cookbook and a memoir among other published work. She has given innumerable presentations in several countries at various conferences, seminars, workshops, symposia and church meetings.
In 2016, Dr. Modeste retired and relocated to Georgia. Her passion for the field that she dedicated most of her adult life to has not abated. She continues to cast a concerned eye on contemporary public health issues, particularly those confronting Caribbean countries. She is concerned about the struggles we are having with the epidemic of chronic non-communicable diseases, our less than positive food, nutrition and lifestyle choices, the penetration of the North American fast-food culture and franchises into the Caribbean, our surrender to stressful lifestyles and how angry we seem to be becoming. The growing incidence of criminal activity in parts of the Caribbean persuades her – like our heads of government and many citizens – that crime has become a public health issue in our region. She argues that families the church, schools, academia and other institutions of socialization have important roles to play in all of this. There is particularly the need for indigenous research to drive progressive policy making and implementation around these issues. In her view, her alma mater USC is well placed to engage in some of this research.
On the matter of receiving the Spirit of USC Award last June, Dr. Modeste expressed her elation. “I felt very happy about it… I was happy and contented and I felt appreciated, I really did… I was thankful.”
Dr. Modeste’s life and work richly exemplifies USC’s Mission “to transform ordinary people into extraordinary servants of God to humanity” and the USCian ethic embedded in the appeal of our motto to go “beyond excellence”!
