Article By Amber Day // EEW Magazine // Awards & Honors

Former “Empire” star Grace Byers wrote a tributary message to her late grandmother who received the posthumous honor of having a school named after her.

The Bodden Town Primary School in the Cayman Islands was renamed Tuesday, Oct. 15, in honor of Theoline Lillis McCoy, a former school inspector and head teacher of Savannah Primary School.

Theoline Lillis McCoy, a former school inspector and head teacher (Credit: Minister of Education, Youth, Sports, Agriculture & Lands)

McCoy, who would have been 100 this year, spent 34 years working in public education, according to a Cayman Compass report.

“After many years, and many successive governments, this has finally come to fruition,” wrote Christian actress Byers, 35, in an Instagram post celebrating the retitling of an elementary school she and her sister attended in Grand Cayman to Theoline L. McCoy Primary School.

Byers, a New York Times bestseller, who shares her grandmother’s middle name, called the matriarch who died in 2001 at the age of 82, “an educational, cultural and national trailblazer.”

Theoline Lillis McCoy Primary School sign is unveiled (Credit: Minister of Education, Youth, Sports, Agriculture & Lands)

“Gramma dedicated over 30 years of her life to education, taking a failing primary school (Savannah) and in one year transforming it to one of the best primary schools on the island,” wrote the proud granddaughter.

Bodden Town East MLA and Minister for Health Dwayne Seymour saidMcCoy played an instrumental role in saving Savannah from government closure due to its poor academic performance before her arrival. With the help of just one teacher’s assistant, she reformed the institution, catapulting it into first place for academic performance among the islands’ primary schools—a remarkable feat.

“When you can put singlehandedly saving a school from closure on your list of achievements, that undoubtedly makes you a hero,” Seymour said.

While McCoy’s public educational achievements were impressive, Byers said her grandmother’s private fight to educate her deaf daughter—Byers’ mother—was equally impressive, if not more so.

Theoline Lillis McCoy Primary School students (Credit: Minister of Education, Youth, Sports, Agriculture & Lands)

“Even in her personal life she valued education and made the personal, emotional and financial sacrifice to send her firstborn and only daughter (my Mother) to a boarding school for the Deaf to ensure that she obtained the benefits of being educated,” said Byers.

She continued, “This was at a time when children with disabilities in Cayman were not educated and often remained at home. My grandparents suffered scorn and criticism for 'wasting' time, money and effort on educating my mother, but, little did they know, they would be paving the way for special education and inclusion in the Cayman Islands.”

At the renaming ceremony, Faith Gealey, also McCoy’s granddaughter, said, “She came from a generation of Caymanians who saw the opportunity to serve our islands as almost a sacred duty, and any benefits of self-advancement were simply a byproduct of that greater good.”

Gealey added, “Her personal life was consumed by service to the Bodden Town community in various areas, especially connected to her church activities.”

McCoy was an elder, organist, choir member and committee member at Webster United Memorial church. She “served in countless other ways, shaping the children and community of Bodden Town for generations,” said Byers.