William A. Francis can best be described as both a gentleman and a scholar.

He served as a pioneer and trendsetter in the host of professions in which he engaged during his long and established career.

“Will”, as he is commonly known to family and friends, has a rather temperate and reserved personality underpinned with a steely and resolute determination. Whatever he put his mind to, he mustered both the courage and faith to achieve it.

Francis is the eldest of three children from parents Ronald Francis, a carpenter and building contractor by trade, and his mother Eunice Francis, a teacher. He was born on March 2, 1932, at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

It was approximately 85 years ago and he was born in an era in which the social and racial dynamics in Bermuda were drastically different compared to what they are today.

Prior to desegregation in the late 1950s, the majority of black Bermudians were either born at the former Cottage Hospital in Pembroke; the former Parish Rest Homes; or at home. It was somewhat unprecedented for Ronald and Eunice Francis, as their family physician, the late Dr Leon Williams, was one of the few black physicians who had hospital privileges at the KEMH in the mid-1930s.

Francis’s father Ronald built their first family home at Wellington, St George’s. The Francis family subsequently relocated to Cottage Hill, Hamilton Parish, where Will currently resides.

Francis commenced his formal education at the former Temperance School and subsequently transferred at the age of 11 to the Central School (now known as the Victor Scott School), where his mother formally taught under the principalship of the late Victor Scott.

His attendance at Victor Scott was somewhat fortuitous, as the family had subsequently moved to a new family residence located on Parsons Road Pembroke, a stones-throw away from the school.

Upon successfully matriculating at the Berkeley Institute, Francis was subsequently awarded a Bermuda Government Teachers Scholarship and attended Ontario Teachers College in Canada, where he studied for a period of one year, and later transferred to Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he graduated in 1957, with BA (Honours) Degree in psychology with minor in biology.

Upon returning to Bermuda in the mid-1950s, Francis taught for two years at St George’s Secondary School under the late principal, senator Albert Jackson.

It was indeed a pivotal moment for Francis in 1959 when he was hired as the first black reporter for the Mid-Ocean News, Bermuda’s only daily afternoon newspaper that was subsequently purchased by the Bermuda Press Ltd and later transformed into a weekly publication.

Francis’s tenure as a reporter for this publication and the former Mid-Ocean News coincided with his clandestine membership in the rather highly secretive Progressive Group. It was one of the social action groups that comprised of a host of black educated professionals in the 1950s that was instrumental in orchestrating the dismantling of racial segregation. The status of this was further augmented and catapulted by social activist Kingsley Tweed, which culminated in the historic Theatre Boycott in 1959.

Will Francis was invited by Dr Erskine Simmons to join the group to engage in covert operations, which included the publication and distribution of pamphlets and placards to be distributed through out the island, informing their constituents and residents of their activist protocols and procedures.

If the conduct of his covert activities had ever been exposed to his former employer, or to any member of the political and economic establishment of the day, Will Francis and the coterie of activists would have been marginalised by loss of their jobs inclusive of social and financial ruin.

In progressing further down the corridor of life and upon the procurement of a Bermuda Government Bursary and subsequent admission and attendance at the Inns of Court, Middle Temple in London, it was indeed a seminal moment when in 1972 Francis passed the English Bar.

Actually, Francis was rather brilliant in that regard, as he was listed ninth among the all candidates that passed the English Bar that year.

He was subsequently Called to the Bar at the Supreme Court to practice as a barrister and attorney in Bermuda. He had a rather storied career as an attorney for three decades in which he engaged as a Crown counsel in the Attorney-General’s Chambers; a former partner of Richards, Francis & Francis Barristers & Attorneys; and his subsequent appointment as senior magistrate of the Magistrates’ Court in which he served for 16 years from 1989 to 2005.

In having interviewed Mr William Francis this week, he confirmed that above all one of his greatest achievements was to serve for several decades as Elder of the former Shiloh Gospel Chapel, a Brethren Congregation formerly located at Church Street in Hamilton.

The Church, which had a very small membership of 35 worshippers, was subsequently taken over by Pastor Gary Simons and subsequently transformed into the Cornerstone Bible Fellowship, which is a non-denominational congregation that has an active multi-ethnic congregation.