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| Rubye Gayle |
Mrs. Ruby Gayle, nee Perry was the first of nine children born to Cassandra and Bryant
Perry in Clarksonville, near Cave Valley, St. Ann. Her parents named her Ruth and
registered her name as such. However,
because persons kept mispronouncing her name as Root, her mother called her
Ruby. When she discovered that she was
registered as Ruth, she had her name changed officially from Ruth to Rubye Perry.
Rubye grew up in a Christian home where her parents enjoyed a close relationship with her pastor and his large family and assumed several positions in the life of the church. They brought up their children in the fear of the Lord and through the operation of a small grocery store, they took care of the material needs of their family
During her childhood, she received spiritual formation in the Clarksonville Baptist Church, which had been formed under the leadership of Rev John Clarke, then pastor of the Brown’s Town Baptist Church. Her pastor was Rev. John Knight a Canadian national.
She attended the Elementary School in Clarksonville where, because her uncle was the headmaster, she felt pressured to perform well. She was successful in the Jamaica Local Examination at all three levels, sitting the third level thrice in an attempt to secure an exhibition scholarship that would enable her to do further studies. When this did not happen, she went to teach at the Elementary School in Keith, St. Ann, as a probationary teacher. She taught there for three years and then gained admission to Shortwood Teacher’s College in Kingston, where she pursued a specialization in Home Economics. While at Shortwood, she did courses at Kingston Technical High School to enhance her specialization. During these years she continued her active church life.
During her years at Shortwood, she met Clement Gayle, who was then serving as pastor of the Zion Hill Circuit of Baptist Churches in St. Andrew. They got married on July 20, 1957, and they remained committed partners until she passed on in 2004. The union produced no biological children, but the Gayles were parents and mentors to several nieces and nephews. A few weeks after the marriage, Clement went off to pursue further studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York, USA. Rubye remained and continued worshipping at the East Queen Street Baptist Church.
Mrs. Gayle became an active layperson who gave outstanding service through the church. One church organization which benefited from her committed service was the Jamaica Baptist Women’s Federation (JBWF). Her first involvement in JBWF was at Zion Hill Baptist Church in St Andrew. The women of the Federation recognized her gifts and over the years she served the national organization in several capacities – first, as treasurer, 1961-1964; as president for three terms – 1965-67, 1967-70, 1971-73; and as secretary, 1976-79.
During her time as JBWF President, Mrs. Gayle and Miss Doris Morant, a Home Economics specialist, education officer of the Ministry of Education, and member of East Queen Street Baptist Church, started and directed a home economic training centre at Nutshell, Duncans, Trelawny, the JBU Camp site. She also urged the restructuring of JBWF to include parish representatives in the life of JBWF.
Gayle extended her work among women to the wider Caribbean and became president of the Women’s Department of the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship. She was a primary force behind the CBF Women’s Department severing their ties to the North American Baptist Women’s Union (NABWU) and becoming a separate continental fellowship within the women’s department of the Baptist World Alliance and takin g their place on the global stage. This was a multi-year effort in which other significant Caribbean Baptist Women participated – such persons as Dr Doris Channer-Watson (Jamaica) and Miss Beryl Sanders (Trinidad).
A BWA General Council meeting in Buenos Aires decided that Caribbean Baptist women should be in joint fellowship with the Baptist women of Central America – a position supported by June Totten, president of the BWA Women’s Department. The BWA General Council meeting in Berlin in 1984 affirmed the BWA Women’s Department proposed structuring of the worldwide Baptist Women’s movement.
It was in 1961, six years after the BWA Golden Jubilee Congress in London that the JBWF formally joined NABWU. In 1975, the Baptist women of Bahamas, Barbados and Guyana did the same. Meanwhile, Jamaica’s Doris Channer-Watson and Yvonne Pitter served in the NABWI Executive Committee from 1992-1997 and 1997-2002, respectively. The Caribbean Baptist Women’s Union (CBWU), which included the women’s groups of CBF-related churches, secured recognition as an auxiliary of the CBF in 1980 and soon, sought official recognition by the BWA Women’s Department. The process to secure approval tool 15 years and involved participation by Dr Doris Channer-Watson (Jamaica) and Miss Beryl Sanders (Trinidad). Rubye Gayle provided fierce advocacy for CBWU to stand on its own on the woprld stage. She was elected CBWU Secretary in 1983 and then president in 1989 and she was the Caribbean representative at the conference in Melbourne, Australia, on January 12, 2000, when the BWA WD finally agreed to recommend CBWU as a separate continental union within the BWA WD. Appropriately, Gayle represented women from 13 Caribbean territories, not including Guyana, which had decided to preserve its affiliation with NABWU, when CBWU became the seventh Continental Union of the BWA WD.
An ecumenist at heart, Gayle served in Church Women United (CWU), an ecumenical organisation focused on church unity and united prayer among Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. After becoming president of the Kingston chapter, she was elected president of CWU (Jamaica), 1984-1986. She helped cement ties between that CWU and JBWF. CWU officially recognized Gayle’s outstanding contribution to the organisation on January 7, 1995, when she was honoured for “service as Caribbean representative to the international committee for World Day of Prayer and … continuing contribution to Church Women United (Jamaica).”
On May 25, 1989, Gayle was elected the first woman, and the first non-clergy person to serve as General Secretary of the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC). She had been acting in that position for several months. She completed six fruitful years in the position. She credited her success to the support she got from the many pastors and clergy of the twelve denominations that made up the JCC. By virtue of this office, Gayle’s work extended to the World Council of Churches where she represented JCC. In May 1991, JCC honoured her for “outstanding contribution to the cause of ecumenism.”
When she passed away on March 17, 2004, Rubye Gayle had distinguished herself as a leader among Baptist women locally, nationally, regionally and globally. She had done the same in the ecumenical sphere. Meanwhile, she found time to offer her gifts through the JBU, to which she was deeply committed.
In Rubye Gayle, God provided a versatile, forthright and tireless worker for the kingdom.
Primary sources for this
blog are Dulcie Callam, Mrs. Rubye Gayle, 2007,
unpublished, and Esther Barnes, Coming Together: A History of the Women's
Department (Falls Church, VA: Baptist World Alliance, 2010)
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