As students at KC in the glory days of the seventies, we reckoned that we came across two categories of teachers. In the first category were those whose names we would not remember one year after leaving school, while in the second were those teachers whose names we would remember all our lives. Frances Coke fell in the second category.
As youngsters we used to say that Mrs. Coke , or Miss Phillips as she was then, was "grounds." To our minds, that was considered a wonderful accolade to bestow to on teacher. It meant that she was rooted in reality, was readily approachable, understood teenager boys and thus had our utmost respect.
Miss Phillips came to KC in 1970 and first taught me English in form 3A in 1972. We immediately realized that this was a special lady. She was elegant, always smiling, witty, exceedingly intelligent, confident and a brilliant teacher. We in 3A felt that we were indeed fortunate to have her as one of our teachers. Although we had no great love for some of the English literature books we had to study, we did not make a great fuss about it mainly because she made it such fun. While most of us hated a "Passage to India ," we loved "Romeo and Juliet " probably because we felt that we could woo and impress girls by regularly quoting from it!
At that time, as Miss Phillips was obviously single, we often teased another English teacher, Peter Maxwell , who was also single, by asking him if he realized that Miss Phillips was unmarried. "What's your point?" he would ask of us. "Aren't you going to invite her out?" we replied. (We only stopped bugging Mr. Maxwell about it when she got married to Dickie Coke in 1975).
In 1974 after four years of the competition, KC had not yet won the Schools Challenge Trophy. However, that was to change when Miss Phillips assumed the responsibility as coach. She was the first full time coach the team had and Michael Fitz-Henley , Ian Jackson , Audley Jones and Orett Campbell under her guidance set about to bring the trophy to North Street for the first time. Under her brilliant guidance they swept all before them and won the competition for KC that year.
However, that was not enough. We had to successfully defend it. After all, this was KC and these were the '70s. So in 1975 her team of Orett Campbell , Ivor Nugent , Donovan 'Pip' Shaw and Barry Salmon won the trophy again for KC as we became the first school to successfully defend the title. By then Miss Phillips had become a living legend at KC and we had renamed her " Miss Quiz ."
The following year however, the team of Barry Salmon , Patrick Dallas , Michael Hewitt and Steve Vasciannie could not hold off the challenge of Manchester High in the quarter finals and Mrs. Coke , who by then was married to KC old boy Dickie Coke, was to experience her first loss at Schools Challenge in three years. How we mourned. However, that mourning did not last long as the 1977 team of Steve Vasciannie, Charlton Collie, Maurice Haynes and Maurice Bailey made sure that the trophy returned to KC for the third time in four years; truly a remarkable achievement for Mrs. Coke and KC.
Although I was not a member of any of those teams, I seldom missed a match at JBC between 1974 and 1976 and there was always a steady group of us who went to every training session in the science lab. Near the end of each training session, usually around 5 pm , Mrs. Coke would say, "OK, let's have a match, KC vs the Rest!" I can't recall if the Rest ever beat the Team but it was always great fun. For my part, although I knew the valence of copper, the oxidation number of sulphur in sodium sulphate and the scientific name of the bull frog, for the life of me I could never remember that the 100 Year War did not last a hundred years, neither could I recall which of the wives of Henry the VIII lost her head!
In 1979, Mrs. Coke was appointed Guidance Councillor at North Street and gave up her position as coach of the Schools Challenge team. It was already well known that the job of guidance councillor was one of the most difficult jobs at KC as one had to deal with a plethora of problems on a daily basis. Problems such as homelessness, boys who had no parents or family members to support them, drug abuse, accidents, fights, conflict resolution etc. From all indications, Mrs. Coke was a very good Guidance Councillor who gave her new job one hundred percent and assisted many boys who needed help and guidance. In 1982 after twelve wonderful years at KC, in which she achieved tremendous success, Mrs. Coke departed for the Women's Center and in 1995 she moved to the Mona School of Business at the UWI.
During her twelve years at KC, she touched the lives of hundreds of boys and was a role model to many of us. She was a daily inspiration, a marvellous teacher and a brilliant coach to the Schools Challenge teams. She helped us to live the KC dream, to strive for excellence and to be the best that we could be.
After I left sixth form I taught Biology for a year to third form students and one day Mrs. Coke approached me and said," Lazarus , I heard that you are planning to do Veterinary Medicine so you need to read this." She then gave me a copy of the Gleaner and turned my attention to an advertisement put out by the Ministry of Public Service inviting applicants for two scholarships to study veterinary medicine in Hungary . I applied the very next day and later I was informed that I was successful. Before I left Jamaica that September I went to Mrs. Coke and said "Thank you." The thank you was not only for showing me the scholarship advertisement, it was for all that she had done for me and for the entire KC family.
In 2004, the graduating class of 1974 held a reunion dinner in New Kingston at which we honoured those teachers who meant the most to us at KC and those whose names we would never forget. The organizing committee, of which I was chairman, had somewhat of a hard time coming up with the eight most influential teachers in our lives, but one of the first teachers on our list was Frances Coke . (The others were Keith Bryan , Helen Douglas , Buelah Reid , Irene Morck , Beryl Urquhart, Peter Maxwell and Opal Branche.)
We all felt that in twelve years at KC Mrs. Frances Coke had achieved more that one could possibly imagine. Indeed, it was the feeling of the graduating class of '74 that she had become one of us, and, a true Fortis.
