Hundreds pay last respects to Guyanese community worker Minerva Beaton
Hundreds of Caribbean and other nationals on Oct. 24 flocked the pews of St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church on Hawthorne Street in Brooklyn to pay their last respects to respected Guyanese-born, Brooklyn community worker Minerva Beaton, who died on Oct. 6. She was 66. Nationals and relatives paid tributes in speeches, scriptures, prayers, hymns and songs, as well as on steel pan and drums, during the near two-hour-long service that was presided over by the church’s Jamaican-born rector, the Rev. Canon Donovan Ivanhoe Leys. The Rev. Dr. Andrea Moore-Smith, the Barbadian-American pastor at Bethany United Methodist Church in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, delivered the homily. “She brought wisdom, she brought grace in every space, nurturing us all with her in-sight,” said Neil McGowan in eulogizing his sister. “Minerva was a child of Guyana. She had an innate ability to touch the life of everyone around us. “Her laughter, her love, her unwavering strength – she could lighten the darkest of d...