The Saltburn Profile by Rosemary Nicholls Caroline Domingo “I never tire of looking out of my window at the wonderful view of the Valley Gardens,” says Caroline Domingo, who has made her home very happily in Saltburn. After thirty years living in the flat, landlocked state of Indiana, USA, she enjoys our local features of hills and sea. Caroline's father was in Control Commission in Berlin after the War and she was born in 1949 in Spandau Hospital, next to the prison where Rudolf Hess was being held. Before she was one year old, her mother brought her back to the UK through the Russian sector. She was told later that because she was a cute baby, the Russians waved them through to the front of the queue. Her parents had made many German friends and they kept in touch over the years. The family settled in Sheffield and Caroline learnt German at school; then when she was a teenager, they went back to visit. “It was a very moving reunion,” she remembers. At her state school in Sheffield, she was encouraged to sit an entrance exam for Cambridge University. She was surprised to be offered a place at New Hall, a women's college trying to achieve a more diverse membership and became the first person in her family to go to University. She studied Philosophy and English Literature. “It was an interesting experience,” she says. “There were ten men to every woman in the University and most students were from a higher social class and wealthier families than mine.” She remembers visiting the novelist E.M. Forster, who was nearly ninety at the time, but very keen to meet undergraduates. “I wanted to tell him how much I admired him,” she adds, “but he would have none of it. He kept asking me about myself.” After returning to Sheffield, she met her future husband, a Filipino American and moved to the USA. Her daughter was born there. Caroline worked in publications and became politically active. She joined the national pro-union group Jobs with Justice and local peace and anti-racist movements and demonstrated against the Ku Klux Klan. “The comrades in Indiana were wonderful, serious and humane. They were on the side of oppressed people and I was proud to work with them,” she says. “We also had a lot of fun!” Unfortunately, the marriage didn't last and Caroline considered returning to the UK. However, she had three parttime jobs and decided her best chance was to develop a career in the USA. As a former working single mother, often very short of money, she has great empathy with people who struggle to put food on the table and pay for utilities in the UK today. After some lean years, she eventually secured a fulltime job as a copy editor and later as communications director at the Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, where she worked until retirement in 2009. “I have great respect for the Midwest and Indiana in particular and I'm still in touch with the team at the University,” she says. Her daughter, Antonia, is now working in Pennsylvania as an attorney with the United Steelworkers Union and Caroline is very proud of her. When Caroline retired, Antonia encouraged her to follow her dream of returning to Yorkshire and they visit each other as often as funds allow. “A friend I have had since we were eleven lives in Whitby and she offered to help me buy a home. I knew I
wanted to be by the sea, so she suggested Saltburn, which I had never visited before. I came on a dismal day, but it was love at first sight,” Caroline says. Getting involved with Saltburn life is very important to her. She loves studying Latin and Russian Literature (in translation) with the U3A. She enjoys Saltburn Folk Festival and joined Saltburn Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn became Leader. She is a member of the group of Befrienders of asylum seekers and refugees housed locally and volunteers at their social events. She likes to explore our area and says that Teesside has been a revelation to her. She walks in the woods and on the moors. In 2011, she applied to take on a rescue cat and passed an interview with the RSPCA, leading to the placement of Lux, who is now seven years old. “She is called Lux after the Socialist heroine, Rosa Luxembourg and Lux is also Latin for light,” she explains. Caroline loves music, appreciating the local folk tradition and the visits to the area of many fine musicians. She reads voraciously from the classics to contemporary literature to relaxing with mysteries. But she says: ”There should be more Socialist detective novels.” She continues to work as a freelance copy editor in order to earn money for trips abroad. “Some of the editing is quite routine,” she says. “But some assignments are really challenging. For instance last year I helped a Mexican American scholar craft a petition to the United Nations to urge support for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Mexico.” Caroline travelled to Buenos Aires when Antonia spent a year there and has visited Mexico, Chile and European countries. But despite the lure of travel, there‟s nowhere that she‟d rather be than Saltburn! 47