BY INGRID BROWN Associate editor — special assignment browni@jamaicaobserver.com Monday, June 23, 2014
WHEN teen mother Angelita Kelly was left to raise her month-old son by herself after his father abandoned them for another woman, the then 17-year-old said she knew she had to do whatever it took to give her child a better life than the one she had.
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Angelita Kelly said it was never easy as a single mother
to raise her son, but is proud that her hard work paid off. |
From her first job as a waitress, to working as a domestic helper, a shopkeeper and a chicken farmer, Kelly did it all to ensure her son, Peter Nelson, would receive the education she was denied by her father, who preferred to spend his money in bars.
Today, her hard work has paid off as her son has exceeded even her own expectations, having become one of the youngest persons, if not the youngest, at the University of the West Indies (UWI) to receive a doctorate in chemistry by age 25.
Dr Nelson, who is also the first to complete both an MPhil and a PhD in three-and-a-half years, also beat out 275 worldwide applicants to claim one of the five doctoral fellowships at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, beginning this August.
The St Thomas Technical High past student has also been published in seven international journals, including Journal of Molecular Structure, Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics, Dalton Transactions and International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
In August 2010, he presented a paper on the Phase Behaviours of Zinc Carboxylates at a IUPAC-sponsored MAM 10 conference and, in August 2012, he gave a presentation on the Molecular and Lattice Structures of Sodium(I) Carboxylates at the American Chemical Society Conference in Philadelphia.
His doctoral thesis, awarded on October 25, 2013, titled The Molecular Packing, Lattice Structures and Thermotropic Phase Behaviours of the Homologous Series of Silver, Sodium and Potassium n-Alkanoates, examines compounds used to make bathing soaps and detergents, which form liquid crystals with the application of heat and are also applicable in liquid crystal display (LCD) devices.
“I am really very proud of him,” Kelly told the Jamaica Observer North East from her St Maarten home, where she has lived for the past seven years.
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Dr Peter Nelson shortly after graduating from the University
of the West Indies with his PhD. |
“Everyday ah thank God fi how Him help mi son and had a plan for him, because not even me did dream my son could come out so good,” a grateful Kelly said.
The 43-year-old Kelly said she always drilled into Nelson’s head that an education was the only way out of the impoverished life they lived in the tough St Thomas community in which he grew up.
According to Kelly, her teachers had always pointed to her academic abilities, but she never got the chance to realise her full potential as her father preferred to drink and get drunk instead of ensuring that she had the tools for going to school.
“When I was growing up my father used to drink out the money and mi had to go school without breakfast or any lunch money or books, and so life was very hard,” she recalled. more
