Ever since they could re­mem­ber, the Wilt­shire sis­ters had al­ways thrived as a group. As chil­dren and teens, they of­ten strolled across their school­yards—proud, hap­py, con­fi­dent, and safe.

“Wher­ev­er we went, we were ‘the Wilt­shire girls’ or ‘those four Wilt­shire sis­ters’—whether at Scar­bor­ough RC, Bel­mont Girls’ RC or Holy Name Con­vent. My ear­ly iden­ti­ty was tight­ly wrapped up in be­ing one of four sis­ters,” Dr Joanne Brice, the sec­ond el­dest re­called in a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view re­cent­ly.

On De­cem­ber 11, 2020, how­ev­er, their cir­cle of four was per­ma­nent­ly bro­ken. Their el­dest sis­ter, Wendy Ann, 58, lost her bat­tle with can­cer in the Unit­ed States.

Af­ter her pass­ing, the re­main­ing sib­lings, Joanne, Di­ane and Rox­anne had the choice to be in­con­solable or brave and do some­thing mean­ing­ful as Wendy Ann had sug­gest­ed in her fi­nal chats with them. They would end up cre­at­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­pact their lives, and the lives of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and ho­n­our the wish­es of their de­part­ed sis­ter by es­tab­lish­ing The Wilt­shire Foun­da­tion the fol­low­ing year.

The char­i­ta­ble and phil­an­thropic or­gan­i­sa­tion seeks to re­duce in­jus­tice and un­fair­ness by us­ing lit­er­a­cy to ed­u­cate dis­ad­van­taged groups about the aca­d­e­m­ic, en­vi­ron­men­tal, fi­nan­cial, health, ju­di­cial and so­cial is­sues that keep them in need.

As one of its ma­jor ini­tia­tives to light­en the eco­nom­ic bur­den of uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, the Foun­da­tion in­tro­duces the Wendy Ann Wilt­shire Schol­ar­ship for Dar­ing, Tenac­i­ty and Dis­cov­ery, in mem­o­ry of Ms Wendy Ann Wilt­shire.

As Brice, the foun­da­tion’s sec­re­tary in­formed, the schol­ar­ship is meant to ho­n­our and cel­e­brate Wendy Ann’s qual­i­ties and val­ues, en­sur­ing that her lega­cy lives on.

Brice re­called her sis­ter as an em­pa­thet­ic, con­fi­dent and pas­sion­ate woman who em­braced life, had a keen sense of ad­ven­ture, and who even in her fi­nal stages, en­cour­aged her sis­ters and her chil­dren to live with pur­pose and joy.

“Wendy was vi­va­cious, charm­ing and eas­i­ly drew you in­to her lat­est plan, which usu­al­ly in­volved some sort of trip—whether that was to the mall, a cruise or a sa­fari—each of those was fair game. She lived life ful­ly,” Brice said.

While work­ing as an op­er­a­tions an­a­lyst at the World Bank, Wendy Ann com­plet­ed her de­gree in Eco­nom­ics and Busi­ness, and al­so im­mersed her­self in event plan­ning. She saw her­self as “a cit­i­zen of the world”, as trav­el­ling was one of her pas­sions.

From left to right, Joanne Brice, Roxanne Wiltshire, Wendy Ann Wiltshire and Diane Wiltshire.

Photos courtesy Diane Wiltshire Photos courtesy Diane Wiltshire

She found­ed an in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el com­pa­ny called Dare2Dis­cov­er, ded­i­cat­ing her­self to or­gan­is­ing mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ences for oth­ers.

Ever one to pro­mote the cul­ture of her home­land abroad, she launched Caribbean Mas Fee­va in 2011 pulling off car­ni­vals in South Africa in 2012 and 2013. Years ear­li­er, she led a con­tin­gent with clients from Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Unit­ed States and Cana­da on an African sa­fari through Cape Town and Sowe­to.

Wendy Ann was a phil­an­thropist, giv­ing gen­er­ous­ly to oth­ers. Her re­source­ful­ness and abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with all lev­els al­lowed her to get her­self out of the most dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions even if alone in a for­eign coun­try on one of her ad­ven­tures.

“There was no prob­lem she could not re­solve with a de­tailed spread­sheet and a glob­al net­work of con­tacts, all of whom seemed in­ca­pable of ut­ter­ing the word ‘no’”, Brice re­called.

She was al­so a part­ner, moth­er and new grand­moth­er.

The sis­ters want to re­mem­ber Wendy Ann by recog­nis­ing stu­dents who dis­play sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics and at­ti­tudes to her.

Ap­pli­cants who re­flect Wendy’s en­er­gy will be giv­en pref­er­ence.

For the three sib­lings, help­ing oth­ers is al­so a way to come to terms with Wendy Ann’s pass­ing.

“For many months af­ter Wendy’s death, the grief, the anger and sense of fu­til­i­ty as to why this in­cred­i­ble hu­man be­ing was the one tak­en was over­whelm­ing. As the months wore on though, it be­came clear that Wendy’s lega­cy and gifts to this world could con­tin­ue for years to come; her name could live on and sup­port peo­ple who, though they would nev­er meet her, would know her and ben­e­fit from her be­ing,” the foun­da­tion’s Pres­i­dent Rox­anne Wilt­shire a Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Law grad­u­ate said.

Hav­ing found her voice ear­ly in life to speak up for her­self and every­one else, Rox­anne stressed that the birth of her daugh­ters had made her need to in­flu­ence the world around them more ur­gent.

“I am de­ter­mined to pass on the lega­cy I was giv­en of self-worth, loy­al­ty and the knowl­edge that they are de­serv­ing of every ben­e­fit and op­por­tu­ni­ty. This world is ter­ri­fy­ing for our black and brown chil­dren. I am de­ter­mined to make it less so, by equip­ping young peo­ple with the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion and knowl­edge.

“Wendy’s bat­tle—which I be­lieved al­most un­til the very end that our war­rior sis­ter would win— dev­as­tat­ed me. How­ev­er, it al­so re­mind­ed me and us all of the gifts our moth­er shared—strength, per­se­ver­ance and in­cred­i­ble grace un­der pres­sure,” she said.

Brice, who is a doc­tor spe­cial­is­ing in in­ter­nal med­i­cine, said she had ben­e­fit­ed from a sol­id pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion in T&T and was em­bold­ened by her sis­ter’s pass­ing to seek ways to help oth­ers.

“I was nev­er out­go­ing and ad­ven­tur­ous like my old­est sis­ter Wendy, or fierce like my younger sis­ter Di­ane or bold like my youngest sis­ter Rox­anne. In­stead, I lived those char­ac­ter­is­tics vic­ar­i­ous­ly through my sib­lings,” Brice said.

“Los­ing Wendy has been like los­ing an arm or a leg. For months I asked my­self why I was a doc­tor if I could not even save my own sis­ter. These last sev­er­al months work­ing to bring to­geth­er the Wilt­shire Foun­da­tion have giv­en my fam­i­ly and me a re­newed sense of pur­pose—maybe I was not meant to save her but in­stead to be­come bold­er, fiercer, more ad­ven­tur­ous, and use my train­ing for a dif­fer­ent pur­pose or per­haps a dif­fer­ent au­di­ence.”

She hopes that, through the foun­da­tion, she can ease the fears and con­fu­sion of those seek­ing health­care.

Ad­mit­ting that los­ing her sis­ter had been the most dev­as­tat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of her life, Di­ane Wilt­shire, the foun­da­tion’s trea­sur­er, ob­served:

“When much of one’s iden­ti­ty is housed in a sense of sim­i­lar­i­ty, fa­mil­iar­i­ty and be­long­ing when that is tak­en away, it can be fright­en­ing.”

The own­er of a dress shoppe in Newark and a do­mes­tic abuse sur­vivor, she is no stranger to giv­ing to and serv­ing oth­ers. She formed the non-prof­it re­Dressed two years ago to pro­vide cloth­ing to women who have ex­pe­ri­enced do­mes­tic abuse as a means of help­ing to re­build their self-es­teem.

The Wilt­shires said their name has come to be as­so­ci­at­ed with pride, a deep sense of kin­ship and forg­ing lega­cies. They feel that like those that went be­fore them, they have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to build on the foun­da­tion of re­silience and de­ter­mi­na­tion that their an­ces­tors have laid and hope that this will in­spire oth­ers to fol­low suit.

To ap­ply

The dead­line for ap­pli­ca­tions for the Wendy Ann Wilt­shire Schol­ar­ship for Dar­ing, Tenac­i­ty and Dis­cov­ery this year is May 15, 2022.

Ap­pli­ca­tions will be ac­cept­ed from grad­u­at­ing se­niors who meet the res­i­den­cy re­quire­ment and at­tend any of the fol­low­ing uni­ver­si­ties: CUNY Hunter Col­lege, Delaware State Uni­ver­si­ty, Lin­coln Uni­ver­si­ty and Mor­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Caribbean an­ces­try and fe­male grad­u­at­ing se­niors are en­cour­aged to ap­ply.

Each suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cant will be award­ed a min­i­mum of $1,000.

Vis­it @thewil­t­shire­foun­da­tion on In­sta­gram and Face­book: www.face­book.com/thewil­t­shire­foun­da­tion/ for more in­for­ma­tion.