Retirement isn’t something 84-year-old Edwena Smith has ever considered.

She was a teacher at the Berkeley Institute for 25 years and then worked in insurance.

For the past 18 years she’s run a business teaching English as a second language, out of her home.

She’s looking for new students as numbers have dropped off lately.

“I like doing things,” she said.

Many of her former pupils have gone on to achieve great things with their newly acquired skills; one is now studying law.

“I do form a close relationship with most of my students,” she said. “If they stay with me for a long period of time, that becomes inevitable.”

She grew up on Princess and Elliott Streets in Hamilton and attended the Central School under principal Victor Scott.

The school drilled grammar into its students, and she feels this prepared her for her later studies.

“When I went to the Berkeley Institute it seemed as though my head was ready to accept this strange language called Latin,” she said. “It was my best subject throughout high school. I enjoyed it.”

Nobody spoke a foreign language at home. Her mother Adelaide was a homemaker; her father, Hosay Smith, worked in the canteen for the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes.

“I think he worked for them at Prospect and Warwick Camp,” said Mrs Smith.

Her father later bought a building on Angle Street and opened a grocery store. The family lived upstairs.

“My father was from Turks Island,” said Mrs Smith. “I had one brother who was 13 years older than me, Donald Smith. He ran Donald Smith Travel Agency.”

She was one of the first four students at the Central School to win a government scholarship to attend the Berkeley Institute.

“I don’t remember my first day at Berkeley, but I remember my interview with the principal, Frederick Shirley Furbert,” she said. “He asked me what books I read. I said I read the Bobbsey Twins. He asked who the author was and I said ‘Laura Lee Hope’.”

She also remembers prize-givings at the school.

“We watched our teachers walk in dressed in cap and gown,” she said. “The gap and gown meant you had been to a university. I said to myself, ‘Whatever happens, I will have a cap and gown’. I remember thinking that. That was an ambition I had from early days.”

Mrs Smith got her teacher’s training certificate from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. She then studied French, Latin and English at the University College of the Southwest of England.

After university she taught Latin at Berkeley for 25 years, using her summers to earn a master’s degree.

Then she had a career change. She joined insurance company Sun Life of Canada, and worked there for many years.

“That was my second career,” she said. “It was wonderful.”

She taught English as a second language at the Bermuda College for a year before leaving to run her own tutoring business.

“Some of the students I had at the college came with me,” she said.

She thinks one of the reasons she has never wanted to retire is that no job has ever worn her out. Today, she stays busy with the Berkeley Educational Society, the parent body of the school. Through the committee she stays abreast of school doings and helps plan events such as a luncheon for the graduating class.

“I love my alma mater,” she said. “I really do. It was only because I met pleasant people there.”

Mrs Smith is also a trustee of St Paul AME. She loves the music there in particular.

“I am also the secretary of the trust,” she said. “I love my church. I have found good friends there and music has always been very special to me.”

She married late in life. She and William Albert Smith were married for 26 years and never had children.

“We were friends for a long time and shared an interest in politics,” she said.

She was involved with the Committee for Universal Adult Suffrage and her husband was one of the founders of the Progressive Labour Party. Mr Smith died in 2007.

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