The Tribune

THERE’S a tree-lined street in the historic neighbourhood of Fox Hill that is much like many tree-lined streets in Nassau. Tall sapodilla trees with outstretched limbs nestle kids who climb them to pick the sweet, brown-skinned fruit. Youngsters who scramble up the tree know if they do not get to the season’s offerings first, the limbs will unburden themselves of the heavy load and once a dilly falls from high up it will splat on the ground, spilling the sticky filling and dark seeds.

The dilly trees are special but there are pond apple trees and guineppe and lime, just about any kind of fruit and while it changes by the months, there’s always something to eat as close as a neighbour’s yard.

There’s something else that grows on that tree-lined street called Romer Street. Along that road of seemingly ordinary, even humble Bahamian houses, success stories blossomed.

Amazing success stories like those of Philip Simon, Youlanda Deveaux and Samantha Rolle, all powerhouses from the same road where sense of community knitted the fabric of self-worth and a strong work ethic.

Look at them - Philip Simon, president of Royal Beach Club and general manager of Royal Caribbean International business in The Bahamas, Youlanda Deveaux, regional vice president, One World Spas whose flagship spa, Mandara at Atlantis just took top spa honours for a second consecutive year, Samantha Rolle, executive director of the Small Business Development Centre that, among other achievements, helped steer dozens of businesses through COVID-19 to come out the other side with doors still open. Rolle, Simon and Deveaux all grew up on Romer Street. There may be more Bahamian success stories from this one side street off Fox Hill Road. But we need only look at these three and ask ourselves ‘How did one little road in an historic village produce three such powerful and successful Bahamians?’ We ask them ‘What was it like growing up there, not far from the big St Mark’s Church on the corner or the park or the massive silk cotton tree?’

We ask and they tell us the story of their childhood and we understand. It was not the size of the house, nor the money in the bank, but the sense of community that enveloped them, the love and respect in their upbringing and the childhood innocence and freedom before social media. Family, community, all rolled into one even though things weren’t always perfect and the 80s and 90s when they were young and climbing dilly trees were also the drug days of The Bahamas.

“It’s like a rubber band,” says Simon. “Once you have family and community, no matter how far it is stretched, it bounces back into place if you have those two things going on.”

Deveaux compares how she grew up right here on the corner of Butler’s Lane and Romer Street to how kids grow up today.

“We played marbles, hopscotch, jacks,” she recalls. “There was always something to do, some activity, something going on.” When games needed parts, players improvised. “For hopscotch, we used a glass bottle for our marker. We didn’t grow up hooked to our phones and glued to social media. We connected. We were social, not on social media. And when I wasn’t outside, I was wedged between my parents in a household filled with love and noise and laughter. My father was hysterical, and he used to love to make my mother laugh and there I was wedged between them because there was no place I would rather be.”

The community was so close that dinner or Sunday lunch could be at just about any house. And if a child misbehaved, any adult on the street who witnessed it had the right to set them straight. “My parents knew if we got punished it meant we did something wrong and they wanted us to do the right thing,” said Deveaux whose doing the right thing then led to community involvement later including the presidency of Zonta and professionally as a global spa consultant in addition to her full-time work and fitness routines. It would be hard to pack more success into any one individual. And then there is Simon, who grew up, says Deveaux, in her house playing with her brother and now one of the major success stories of corporate Bahamas as well as long-time chairman of Junior Achievement.

Says Simon, “My granny, aunts, uncles, everybody was close. You just went back and forth and between the streets and bush road from one house to another, we were one big connected family. My godmother was right there. Childhood was fun. We were shooting marbles, skating, had those buckets on wheels things (precursor to karting). When we got older, we played basketball in Fox Hill Park, shot birds, probably shot too many birds, but we didn’t know back then.”

If childhood was innocent, it was not without chores. “Nothing would happen, no TV, no play until your chores were done, washing dishes, taking out the garbage, raking leaves, there were always so many leaves because there were so many tall trees,” he said. Now married and the father of three, he insists that his kids make their beds before even thinking about breakfast.

Maybe it is partly the history of Fox Hill that accounts for the success stories that emanated from it. Not a year passes without Fox Hillians pouring out en masse to celebrate the emancipation of slaves, a party that has been going on annually for more than 150 years without ever a single printed invitation to attend.

Maybe, too, it is the soul and spirit of that heritage of freed slaves from The Bahamas and America in the late 1800s who cleared bush to plant and grow things, folks who knew that to survive they had to depend on one another.

Maybe their own sense of community fueled the sense of worth and confidence that it took for each of the three in this little piece to become what they are today. They have much in common. Every one of them has a college degree and a Master’s. Simon started out at COB, graduated from Texas Tech and became one of the first two Bahamian students to qualify for graduate work at the then Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland where he earned his graduate degree.

Deveaux, who manages nearly 200 staff members in various locations, earned her undergrad degree at Mt St Vincent, Halifax and her MBA with honours from Nova Southeastern. Samantha Rolle earned her undergrad degree from St Benedict’s in Minnesota and her Master’s at Barry University. None of them was afraid to leave home to study.

And to this day, each returns to Romer Street, a road of modest houses, tall, fruit-bearing trees and yards where innocent children could connect, not with a device, but with each other and grow up to be examples for all of us to admire.

They shrug it off with a smile and a simple reply. Once a Fox Hillian, always a Fox Hillian, they say. Romer Street Proud.