Nurse Whittaker eulogised as the ‘queen’ of midwifery in St James

Western Bureau:

Senior Parish Judge Sandria Wong-Small and Montego Bay’s Mayor Homer Davis were among the scores of mourners who attended the thanksgiving service for the late registered midwife Gloria Reid Whittaker at the Mt Carey Baptist Church in St James earlier this week.

Reid Whittaker, who was 72 years old at the time of her death, touched many lives in South St James, where she provided care, counselling for prenatal mothers, delivered hundreds of babies, cared for them and remained in their lives.

Members of the Mt Carey Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church were prominent among the persons who crammed into the Baptist church to pay their last respects to Reid Whittaker, affectionately dubbed the queen of midwifery.

According to Carol Anglin, a senior member of the SDA Church, Reid Whittaker was known to care for the mothers and their babies as if they were her biologically family.

“Nurse Whittaker knew everyone by their name and the community where they are from,” Anglin said in her tribute.

Jennifer Pearson, a senior public health nurse at the St James Public Health Department, said Reid Whittaker was the queen of midwifery in St James, noting that her unassuming manner made her easy to get along with.

While Reid Whittaker has served in east-central and southern St James, she is best known for the 50 years she spent creating her life-changing impact in the Cambridge and Mt Carey communities.

“It was in Cambridge health district and particular in the Mt Carey area that registered midwife Gloria Reid Whittaker was crowned queen. There was not a house she had not visited, nor a mother or baby she had not cared for,” Pearson said.

“She knew the right words to say and the best way to package and present the information to the most sceptic supervisor, or the timid client so in the end, the client would feel happy.”

Pearson went on to state that Reid Whittaker operated like a mobile midwife as she provided midwifery services from Johnson in south-east St James to Stonehenge in the south-west, and along the northern coastal outskirts of Long Bay and Greenwood of East Central St James.