jamarchScores of New Yorkers on Sunday evening, April 5, joined family and close associates in an emotional home-going service for Hermie G. Tomlinson, at the Emmaus SDA Church in central Brooklyn, NY.
The 91 years old matriarch of the Tomlinson family made a quiet transition on March 31, after decades of exemplary service to her adopted Brooklyn community she called home since l962.
Born and raised in the then thriving Westmoreland community of Darliston, ‘Miss. Hermie’ won the admiration of notables like Dudley Thompson, Vivian Blake, David Coore, Peter Evans, Percival James Patterson and Norman Washington Manley, for her professional competence as a seamstress and her physical beauty.
She married Beresford Tomlinson and later migrated to the USA in the same year that Jamaica gained its Independence from Great Britain.
After settling in Brooklyn, NY, “Miss Hermie” worked tirelessly to raise a young family and to establishing the Emmaus SDA mission, organizing fundraising events until there was enough money to purchase the present building at 1144 Flatbush Avenue, which was a former bank (branch).
She is survived by all four children – Joan, Cosmo, Constance and Anton Tomlinson, former president of the Union of Jamaican alumni Associations (UJAA), and chairman of the NAACP NYC ACT-SO program, offering academic enrichment opportunities for minority students.
“We will miss our beloved mother but we are comforted to know that she is with the Saints working to help others,” he said, fighting through the obituary remarks.
Hermie Tomlinson’s body was interred at the Plainlawn Cemetery, NY, on Monday morning, April 6, 2009.
Media Writer
