When Selena DeCosta starts Primary 6 in September, her class will be the last to graduate from Gilbert Institute.

The closure is part of a restructuring plan for the public school system, that involves phasing out middle schools, introducing signature schools at the senior level and creating parish primary schools.

The school on St Michael’s Road in Paget is special to Selena’s family because her great-grandmother, Joyce Jacome, was one of its first students.

Mrs Jacome was 8 when Gilbert Institute officially opened on May 29, 1933, primarily as a school for Portuguese children. It was the idea of Maria Porter Smith, headmistress of the Dudley Hill School in Paget. She wanted the school to be the best in Bermuda. Her partner in the project was Director of Education Charles G.G. Gilbert, for whom the school was named.

During Gilbert’s opening ceremony, school guests witnessed a ribbon cutting, had tea and then watched 20 students present an adaptation of The Masque of Camus by John Milton.

The students were 6 to 13 years old and some of them had been speaking English for only a year or two and yet got through it admirably.

At the end of the programme, Mr Gilbert said that every child who attended the school was fortunate.

Mrs Jacome always agreed.

Her granddaughter, Shannon DeCosta, said: “My grandmother was very proud that she was in the very first year of Gilbert. She really did love Gilbert Institute and was very happy to be a part of the school family.”

Mrs Jacome was the daughter of Manuel and Isabel Moniz, and had one younger sister, Mildred McIntosh. Mr Moniz was a farmer and planted many gardens.

As a young child, Mrs Jacome helped him by ordering the seeds for the next planting season.

At school, she excelled at mathematics.

“Her parents were very supportive and dreamt of sending her to college,” her daughter, Donna Mello, said.

She went on to Mount Saint Agnes Academy, but when the time grew near to go away to school, her sister, Mildred, developed tuberculosis.

“Her father did quite well as a farmer, but they decided to send Mildred to a sanatorium in Massachusetts to recover,” Ms Mello said.

That took up all the family’s financial resources and they could not afford to send Mrs Jacome to college.

“I remember hearing that my grandmother went to a bookkeeping school on the island,” Ms DeCosta said.

In the 1940s, Mrs Jacome became the secretary and treasurer at Gilbert Institute.

Ms DeCosta recently found her resignation letter from the school in November 1951.

In response, Mr Gilbert, still the Director of Education at that time, wrote: “I should like on behalf of the Board of Education to express my regret at your resignation and to thank you for the efficient manner in which you have performed your duties.”

She went on to work for the American military in St David’s and then the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

For 27 years, she was the Bermuda Institute’s accountant, treasurer and business manager. When she retired in 1995, the Bermuda Atlantic Union Conference commissioned a drawing of her, as a gift. It still hangs in Ms Mello’s house.

Ms Mello said her mother was always the go-to person for help with mathematics homework for both her grandchildren and great grandchildren.

“My children, Shannon and Justin, actually went to Bermuda Institute because she was working there at the time,” Ms Mello said. “However, when they had children, we were living in Paget, so she said, oh great, they can go to Gilbert Institute.”

Mrs Jacome was heavily involved in the life of her great-grandchildren Selena and Shadyn. She would go with Ms Mello or Ms DeCosta to pick them up from school every day and went to any school function from sports days and school lunches to open houses.

“She was really nice,” said Selena, 9. “She liked to be with us, not by herself.”

After meeting in church, Mrs Jacome married Arthur Jacome.

“I am not sure which church,” Ms Mello said. “After they got married they helped to form the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Hamilton. She said, at first, it wasn’t even a church building the congregation met in.”

Mr Jacome had a much harder childhood than his wife.

“He was born in Massachusetts to Portuguese parents,” Ms Mello said. “His family came here when he was 8. Instead of sending him to school, they put him to work. He did not have any education.”

When the family’s horses suddenly caught an illness and died, his father tied him to the plough and made him pull it.

As an adult, he did a lot of gardening and was a mechanic.

“He had a great reputation and was always fixing someone’s car,” Ms Mello said. “He also drove a taxi for years.”

The Jacomes were deeply spiritual.

“My mother liked that at Gilbert they had different scriptures up in the assembly hall,” Ms Mello said. “In the morning they would pray with the students. Not all schools do that any more.”

Her great-grandson Shadyn, 14, remembered that whenever they were out with her when they were little, they had to pull the car over at sundown, so that everyone could pray.

Mrs Jacome and her husband spent their life together committed to church work. She worked with the children in the Cradle Roll of the Hamilton and Warwick churches. Towards the end of their lives they were charter members of the Warwick Seventh-day Adventist Church.

She was particularly proud that her grandson, Justin Mello, became a preacher.

Today, Selena believes her great-grandmother or “Mimi” would be horrified to hear the school was closing.

She and her mother took part in rallies asking the Government to keep it open.

“I feel sorry for the younger children in the school,” she said. “At least my children had the chance to go all the way through the school but the children in the younger grades there, right now, will not.”

Mrs Jacome died on March 29, 2023, aged 98. Her sister, Mildred, followed her six months later.