When “brain drain” was the catch phrase in the Virgin Islands and populist politicians were wringing their hands about bright young Virgin Islanders lost to stateside careers, Gwen-Marie Moolenaar was a perfect example.
But she’s also the ideal of the returning hero, a woman contributing to the V.I. community in a full-color spectrum of causes and organizations, from political watchdog to church music coordinator.
Born into a prominent St. Thomas family to parents Lucien and Ruth Moolenaar, she says she didn’t have far to look for role models. Her mother is the pioneering educator who literally wrote the book on cultural education and curriculum for the V.I. schools and whose text, “Profiles of Virgin Islanders” is still revered.
Her aunt was Ulla Mueller, an educated activist whom Moolenaar describes as “one of the suffragettes for the Virgin Islands … She served as a model for all of her nieces and nephews.”
Moolenaar grew up on St. Thomas and attended Sts. Peter and Paul High School, where she was fascinated by a biology course. She credits the teacher, Sister Anita Agnes, with inspiring her to enter the field of science.
She received her bachelor’s degree from the College of St. Elizabeth in New Jersey and her master’s degree from Long Island University. She went on to Indiana University in Bloomington, where she became the first black woman to receive a doctorate, in neurophysiology. After that, it was post doctoral studies in neuro-anatomy and neuro-pharmacology at Cornell University Medical School in New York City.
In 1972, she joined the faculty at Howard University School of Medicine. She taught medical and dental and doctoral students. She had her own lab, studying how the brain controls blood pressure, a process she said researchers are painstakingly unraveling.
Describing the world of research, Moolenaar said, “Science evolves step by step by step, and it’s rare when anything startling happens.”
In the mid-1980s, she spent a year as a visiting senior scientist back home at the University of the Virgin Islands. When an opportunity arose a couple years later to return full-time, she faced what she said was a hard choice.
She was tenured at Howard, and UVI couldn’t match either the salary or the prestige she enjoyed there.
“All of my friends thought I was crazy or stupid” even to consider moving back. “It was a different lifestyle.”
In the end, it was her daughter who was the deciding factor.
Not yet four, Ashley was growing up in the atmosphere of the nation’s best known historically black university, surrounded by students and academics of color. But one day, as she looked at a TV program, she appeared puzzled.
“She asked me, ‘Mommy, where are the brown people?’ and I was absolutely shocked when she asked me that question,” Moolenaar said.
The shock was the realization of the racial divide. Her stateside home seemed to be either black or white. In contrast, when she was growing up on St. Thomas, Moolenaar said she didn’t think of herself as any particular color.
“We never identified ourselves in racial terms,” she said. “It was just as town people, or country people.”
She wanted the same experience for her daughter. And she believes it worked.
“That was what made it worthwhile,” Moolenaar said. “Ashley would have been a different person” if she hadn’t returned to the islands.
The move, which she made in 1989, also gave Moolenaar the opportunity to be close with family and to build a successful career at UVI and beyond.
She ran the pre-med programs at UVI and was in charge of the Boston Medical program.
“Essentially, I did a lot of the bio-medical programs at UVI.”
She also edged into administration.
Under former university president Dr. Orville Kean, she was made vice president of advancement. Later she became provost. Then she became the point person for the institution’s fundraising arm. Along the way, she established the office of sponsored programs, helped write contracts with two-year colleges in other parts of the Caribbean, and established the UVI Magazine.
She says she missed the science, but found stimulating challenges in administration. “I wasn’t bored at UVI.”
When she decided to take early retirement, she found herself with another challenge. Bishop George Murry, then head of the Catholic diocese of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, asked her to work at her high school alma mater. She worked at Sts. Peter and Paul in administration, development and planning and served as an informal liaison with the community at large.
“I stayed there for five years, which was four years more than I intended,” she said.
One thing she learned was the difference between teaching highly motivated college and graduate students and teaching young children who must be coaxed to learn.
“That experience made me tip my hat to K-through-12 teachers,” she said. “They are the heroes of education.”
Allegedly really retired now, Moolenaar still keeps a busy schedule. She’s on the board of the V.I. Humanities Council and the board of the Inner Wheel Club, and is active in both.
She is a reader at the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and responsible for choosing the music for the weekly liturgies. She sings and occasionally fills in if the regular organist is not available, but says she isn’t comfortable in that role.
“I play the piano; I don’t play the organ.”
Currently she is probably best known in her position as president of the League of Women Voters of the Virgin Islands. The organization has a long history of ecological and political activism. Somewhat quieter in recent years, it is enjoying a revival under new leadership.
The group weighed in on two recent controversies, the gubernatorial pardon for Sen. Alicia Hansen and the Veterans Drive landfill proposal. In recent weeks, it has hosted televised candidate forums for the upcoming elections.
“That was quite an intensive period,” she said.
League members devised and honed questions for the candidates, worked with WTJX to schedule all the candidates, and then taped separate programs for district legislative offices, four or five candidates a time, for the at-large legislative office, the delegate to Congress race, the governor’s race, and lieutenant governor.
If she had no community involvement, Moolenaar could still keep busy. She describes herself as a member of the sandwich generation – taking care of her mother while keeping up with her grandchildren – Ashley and James Bernier’s fast-growing brood, Eleni, 8; James III, 5; Jonah, 3; and Ethan, 9 months, all of whom live now in North Carolina. Meanwhile she’s also spending some time as a caretaker to her sister, who recently suffered a stroke.
Moolenaar describes her life as “congested,” but she isn’t complaining. “I’m not bored,” she said in a tone suggesting boredom is one thing she will never endure.
