Redmond resident and Bahamas native Leona Coakley-Spring is a woman of many talents with a sole mission: To help people living with AIDS in her homeland.
She’s a gospel singer, actor, painter and cosmetologist and her passion is giving back to people who cannot help themselves.
“There is no welfare there, just the kindness of strangers,” said Coakley-Spring, who experienced many hard, hungry days growing up in a remote area of Andros Island before finding her calling here in the Northwest.
The 61-year-old, known as the Bahama Mama to her family and friends, will be giving a benefit concert Saturday, Dec. 3 at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Bellevue at 5 p.m. Coakley-Spring will sing gospel music with a Caribbean flare, something she calls “Gospiration” — a mix between gospel and inspirational music.
The proceeds from the concert will go to the All Saints HIV/AIDS Shelter in Nassau, where she was born. For the last 13 years, Coakley-Spring has performed benefit concerts, generating more than $25,000 for the shelter.
In addition, her acrylic-gouache paintings that depict her memories of her upbringing will also be on sale at the concert with those proceeds going to the shelter.
There are about 80 residents at the shelter, a run-down facility located in a remote part of the jungle. Coakley-Spring said most of the residents are women and children with a large percentage of the women being bed-ridden, Coakley-Spring said.
“The women love it when you just come in and talk,” she said. “They love someone to talk to because they are so secluded.”
“This is my mission,” she added.
Coakley-Spring is the middle of 10 siblings and when her mother died when Coakley-Spring was 11, she took on the burden of raising her younger siblings. At a young age, she learned to care for family, which included cooking, cleaning, sewing and farming, in a very primitive setting.
She said the area in Andros where she grew up looked like a “deserted island.”
“There was no electricity, no running water,” she said. “We had to bathe in the pond and wash our clothes in the pond.”
Life was definitely hard for Coakley-Spring in the Bahamas. At the age of 22, she illegally moved to Chicago, along with her two children and four Bahamian pennies with the dream of becoming an actor.
She was well on her way after she joined The Organic Theater company and the Chicago Black Ensemble, with whom she starred as the Red Hot Fairy God-Mama in a musical titled, “The Other Cinderella.”
But things turned for the worse when she said she was deported, but was later granted a green card so she could care for her daughter, who was in the hospital recovering from a head injury. In the mid 1980s, Coakley-Spring moved back to the Bahamas, where she ran a hair salon. Coakley-Spring, always guided by a strong Christian faith, said she got a calling from God to go to Seattle in 1986. She came to the area, despite not knowing exactly where it was on the map.
While teaching at a beauty school in Seattle, she befriended another teacher who had AIDS. She became his sole visitor at the hospital before he passed away in 1992. That’s when she decided to help victims of the disease — specifically those in her native Bahamas.
“Her life is one that comes out of struggle,” said St. Luke’s pastor Tom Kidd. “She has a great love for the people out of that home context. Her faith has led her to become a strong advocate for a segment of people who are vulnerable.”
“She’s proved to be enormously generous,” he added.
In 1992, Coakley-Spring set up the Bahama Mama Hair Salon in Seattle before moving to Bellevue and then Redmond, where she now houses her salon in her home off of Avondale Road. Her home is also her personal art gallery as her colorful paintings fill every inch of the walls. She also has a stand-up microphone in her living room where she rehearses her gospel singing.
She met her husband, Terry, in 1999 while she was singing at the church he attended at the time. She continues to sing gospel and work on her paintings as a way to help and inspire others.
She doesn’t do hair full-time these days — only servicing her closest clients — after developing fibromyalgia about eight years ago. But her passion to help others through art and singing continues to burn bright.
“She is a person of courage,” Kidd said. “She has significant health issues herself, but none of that dissuades her.”
MORE INFORMATION
What: Benefit concert for All Saints HIV/AIDS Shelter
When: Saturday, Dec. 3 at 5 p.m.
Where: St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Bellevue, 3030 Bellevue Way N.E.
Tickets: Call (425)-822-7907 or visit www.slukes.org.
Who: Redmond resident Leona Coakley-Spring will be performing gospel music with a Caribbean flare
Did you know?: Coakley-Spring’s brothers, Theophilus, known as “T,” and Kirk Coakley are the founders of the Bahamas’ first break-out group, T-Connection in the late 1970s featuring disco funk. They both still make their living in Southern California as musicians. In addition, Coakley-Spring’s daughter, Brettina Robinson, is a Bahamian jazz singer-songwriter and also lives in the Los Angeles area.
