LISA's STORY: Who is this Lisa Hanna that we should be mindful of? The mischievous twinkle behind those bewitching eyes, the broad, fleeting, if enchanting smile and the enduring beauty...

BY DESMOND ALLEN Executive Editor - Special Assignment allend@jamaicaobserver.com  Monday, July 13, 2015    

Lisa Hanna

THE Lisa Hanna story, only now for the first time to flow from this uncertain pen, does not promise to be easy to script or to unravel for the casual onlooker. The mischievous twinkle behind those bewitching eyes, the broad, fleeting, if enchanting smile and the enduring beauty that she swears is a blessing but still not yet a curse, belie her stupendous rise from St Mary girl to beauty queen of the world.

But then the precipitous descent into the dark place of divorce and trauma, a painful, public child custody battle and a mystery that might never be solved, before the final triumph of a woman Jamaicans love to love.

Lisa Hanna in a seido exercise with
 instructor Errol Lyn

Do you ask, dear reader, who is this Lisa Hanna that we should be mindful of? Ask if you will but be prepared never to find a truly satisfying answer. For this Lisa Rene Hanna gives so little hint of the child who was rejected by the elder Hanna clan because she was born to a Black-Chinese mother. And if her personality reflects the steady, unruffled, focused flow of the river, it is only because she grew up by a St Mary river that witnessed the early innocence and might better reveal her true nature if only it had tongues to tell.

On the cusp of 40-years-old - when life is just only supposed to begin for a woman - Lisa Hanna can share life-changing experiences that many much older members of her gender might never be able to fathom. Most of all, she learnt about her Jamaican people and it is a knowledge that has kept her balanced and sure-footed, even amidst the raging political and other storms that she would traverse because fate had somehow commanded it.

Queen’s School students and Principal
Yvonne Keane-Dawes (centre) eagerly seek
autographs from Lisa Hanna on a visit to
 her alma mater.

Not for the faint-hearted

"The Miss Jamaica World stage was at times a harrowing experience. It was then that I understood that Jamaican people like you or they don't like you. And they will tell you whether or not you are fit to be in a situation," Hanna recalls about one of the momentous events that would shape her public persona forever. "There were the Miss Jamaica connoisseurs. The elimination shows were not for the faint-hearted. You had to have a lot of courage to walk that stage..." more