Scholarship launched in memory of Norma Shirley

Patrina Pink, Gleaner Writer

Late restaurateur and 'queen of Caribbean cuisine', Norma Shirley, will be remembered through a special scholarship fund.

The Norma Shirley Scholarship Fund will help to finance the education of a needy student in the University of Technology, Jamaica's four-year food service management programme.

Donations to the fund were requested at Shirley's memorial on the east lawns at Devon House on Saturday. There, Shirley was lauded for both her humanitarianism and vigorous attempts to bring Jamaican gastronomy into the league of acclaimed cuisine.

A congregation of family, long-time friends and her very wide clientele assembled only a few metres away from Norma's on the Terrace, Shirley's famous restaurant at Devon House. Her inner circle told of her humour, passion and restless feet.

Officiating minister and childhood friend, Celta Kirkland, said Shirley's scholarship fund would be used to honour her efforts at weaning mediocrity out of Jamaica's culinary arts. She prayed that the scholarship would go to a student that would truly understand the need to take Jamaican food to higher heights and would embody Shirley's skills and passions.

Dr Anthony Vendryes, also a long-time friend of Shirley's, said, "Food was to Norma what a model was to a sculptor. ... She poured out her energies and her very soul."

Vendryes said Shirley understood his vegetarian palate in a way few others could, and he remained a faithful client for more than a decade. He also said that for Shirley, it was nearly always about the 'art' of food preparation, and that the one-time nurse was sometimes "badly abused by business associates" but was, however, "never one to complain or compromise".

Shirley had a number of restaurants. In 2000, her Norma's on the Terrace was named by Conde Nast Traveler, an international travel magazine, as one of the 60 best new restaurants in the world. Her foray into the food industry began in the 1960s when she opened The Station Restaurant in the United States town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.