Dame Carmen to get official funeral

The wife of the country’s first local governor general, Dame Carmen Silvia Jacobs will be accorded an official funeral next Tuesday when she will be laid to rest.
Dame Carmen passed away on March 19, one month shy of her 100th birthday, which would have been on April 25th.
Flora Jacobs told OBSERVER media yesterday that her mother died peacefully from old age at their Hodges Bay home and she left this earth exactly how she lived her life – calm and worry-free.
“She was a very strong woman. She knew a lot of people, she was a great advocate for the Girl Guides, YMCA, [and] she was part and parcel of building the Children’s Ward at Holberton Hospital alongside the first pediatrician,” Jacobs said.
She also noted that Dame Carmen and a woman from the Mill Reef Club were heavily involved with the leprosy colony at Yorks Bay.
Although it was believed that during her time as Lady Jacobs, 1981 to 1993, that leprosy was highly contagious and was an immediate death sentence, Flora said her mother organised to get the patients medicine and met with and congregated with them frequently, until the patients were well enough to leave.
“She felt very empathetic towards them, that’s the kind of woman she was. She was the strength of my father, she had a big heart, but, she was also a strict lady that believed in certain things and she never gave up those beliefs. She was kind and very straight forward, you immediately knew where you stood with her,” Jacobs added.
Dame Carmen was the wife of Sir Wilfred Jacobs who became the island’s first governor general after Antigua and Barbuda gained political independence in 1981. He passed away in 1995 at the age of 86.
The couple’s marriage bore three children Walter (deceased), Flora and Margaret Jacobs. They also have four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, all residing in Scotland.
Dame Carmen will be laid to rest on April 17 following the funeral service at the St. Andrews Anglican Church on Fort Road, starting at 2 p.m.