By Eric Forbes
Carrie Guyett (Forbes) Mother, First Lady, Painter. Born Mar 12, 1908 in Norton, N.B. Died Oct. 2, 2011 in Fredericton of Congestive Heart Failure, aged 103.
The photo sits before me. Sepia toned, taken when she was forty, it exudes the radiant beauty of Carrie Guyett. Born Bertha Caroline Yerxa to Annie McPhee, a devout Scots Irish Catholic and Ora Yerxa a steam locomotive engineer of Loyalist descent.
Following graduation from Sussex High School in 1927 she was accepted by New York Presbyterian Hospital for nurse’s training, but due to a case of excema on her hands had to forgo those plans. Instead she attended Fredericton Business College. Upon completion she became a legal secretary.
The photo sits before me. Sepia toned, taken when she was forty, it exudes the radiant beauty of Carrie Guyett. Born Bertha Caroline Yerxa to Annie McPhee, a devout Scots Irish Catholic and Ora Yerxa a steam locomotive engineer of Loyalist descent.
Following graduation from Sussex High School in 1927 she was accepted by New York Presbyterian Hospital for nurse’s training, but due to a case of excema on her hands had to forgo those plans. Instead she attended Fredericton Business College. Upon completion she became a legal secretary.
Carrie married Ray Forbes in 1930. From 1931 through 1945 they had five children. Through Ray’s service on Fredericton City Council the couple met King George VI and Queen Elizabeth during the Royal Couple’s first trip abroad in 1939. Ray was elected mayor in 1941 serving until 1949. Carrie loved to recollect how New York’s famous mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia hugged and kissed her at a mayor’s convention held in New York.
She christened the original HMCS Fredericton in 1941. Ray was only 50 when he died in 1956 leaving Carrie a widow at the age of 48. She resumed her office career and hit the golf course and curling rink. She joined the Fredericton Society of Artists and blossomed as a landscape painter. Her works drew praise and out of town buyers as well. Family members still treasure her paintings. In the spring of 1965, former New Brunswick premier John B. McNair, newly named as Lieutenant Governor, asked Carrie to be his protocol secretary. Her poise and graciousness served her well in a return to public life. She continued in that role serving the subsequent Lieutenant Governor Wallace Bird.
During a Cape Cod vacation she met Howard Guyett, an urbane New Yorker. They fell in love and married in 1970. They resided in Florida and travelled extensively. Carrie and Howard extended hospitality to all family members and old friends as well. Always a consistent golfer, Carrie carded a hole-in-one at the age of 84. Howard passed away in 1992. Carrie subsequently returned to Fredericton. Living to 103 will have its quota of heartbreak. She lost a darling 6 year old daughter from leukemia. Besides both husbands, she outlived her three brothers and two more children, Eva and Ray, a grandchild even a great-grandchild.
While outliving peers and contemporaries she gained new friends. Always particular about her appearance she kept up regular hair appointments and dressed attractively. She was kind and considerate. I recall a visit to the outdoor farmer’s market in 1958 and purchasing a Christmas tree priced at two dollars, she handed the vendor a five dollar bill. He hesitated, my mother instantly realized he was illiterate. She then quietly and gently made the calculation for him, relieving the fellow of any embarrassment. Despite her public charm she could be snippy with immediate family members, a matriarch’s prerogative perhaps. Carrie endured the gradual loss of her eyesight to near total blindness due to macular degeneration and the limits imposed by congestive heart failure. She never complained. Caregivers were moved by her stoicism and her sweetness.
She remained beautiful until her dying breath.
As appeared in The Globe and Mail, February 2, 2012
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