“If you’re Bermudian, you look out for one another — because you’re proud to be Bermudian,” is a credo for addiction counsellor Sandy Butterfield.

The head of the drug treatment service Focus fondly traces her ethos back to the Girl Guides, the Sea Rangers, and a formative career on the Island’s bustling entertainment circuit.

With April set aside as Hospitality Month, Ms Butterfield is among the residents singled out by the community group Imagine Bermuda as a “hero of hospitality”.

“Bermuda was booming,” she recalled of the high times of the entertainment scene fuelled by hotels packed with tourists from the 1950s through the 1970s.

“All the hotels had bands and shows, every night of the week. You had the Talbot Brothers, the Esso Steel Band, Gene and Pinky Steede — there were a ton of bands,” she said.

“My husband had the Bryan Butterfield limbo show and I had the privilege of being in it and entertaining for several years.

“In our high point, that was Bermuda at its best. We’d work 14 shows a week and enjoy every single one. We had a great time because there was so much camaraderie between all the bands.”

With a background at the Bermuda News Bureau, the precursor of the Department of Tourism, as well as modelling experience, Ms Butterfield came with a head start in hospitality.

What remained of Bermuda’s dwindling tourism industry was being eclipsed by international business as the Focus charity came into being in 1993. However, Ms Butterfield attributed the familial and welcoming scene of her limbo days to the traditional values of a small community.

“We all worked together, grew up together and were a family together. We interacted with the tourists, many of whom become lifelong friends, who would come back to the Island and stay at our houses. Sometimes we’d travel to them. We weren’t making a whole lot of money but it was hot.

“I’m glad that I had the opportunity to experience those days in Bermuda. There wasn’t all this bickering going on.”

Families knew each other in their communities and looked after each other’s children. Ms Butterfield had six siblings: “Half the time there were ten of us at the house,” she recalled. “Everybody came to dinner and slept over. It was how my mother brought us up — to look out for each other.

“That’s what we learned in the Girl Guides and Sea Rangers. My mother made us go out and do things for people and that was instilled in us from young. It wasn’t unique to my mother; it was unique to the community. We went to the store for our neighbours and took in laundry without expecting anything in return.”

A similar philosophy prevails at Focus, Ms Butterfield said, where many of her clients are familiar to her through their families or her own children.

“The parents of some of them were musicians and entertainers,” she added.

Focus isn’t her only contribution to the community: Ms Butterfield serves on the Hamilton Parish Council and in education. Focus stands as the hub for a variety of treatment programmes and residences, and much of its strength comes from basic communal values.

“We came from a close-knit community where we looked out for each other,” she said. “We are our brother’s keeper. That’s what I call Bermudian.”