Ellen Kelly’s favourite saying as a teacher was time waits for no man.

She’s often reminded of that when she meets former students.

“Some of them are 50 years old now,” said the 70-year-old.

“I don’t feel old, I feel like Rip Van Winkle. I wonder if I’ve been sleeping under a rock while they’ve all been growing up.”

She retired in 2011, having taught for 39 years. She now works part-time as the after-school co-ordinator at Somersfield Academy.

“I just love children,” Ms Kelly said. “After retiring at 64, I was a long-term substitute at Clearwater Middle School.”

She was inspired to go into education by her sixth grade teacher in Washington DC.

“Her name was Miss Dillard — in those days we didn’t know our teachers’ first names. She was so nice to me and was full of hugs.”

She enrolled at the District of Columbia Teachers’ College after high school.

A few years after graduation, she was working at HeadStart, an early education programme in Boston, when her roommate suggested a Bermuda vacation.

“I’d never even heard of Bermuda, but I was game,” said Ms Kelly.

“It was August 1972, and I was 24. From the moment we stepped off the plane, we were just like, ‘Wow, this is the life’.”

They decided to stay.

Ms Kelly found a job as a waitress at Holiday Inn and her friend went to work at Kindley Air Force Base.

“I didn’t miss teaching at all,” she said, “I was having too much fun.”

For a year, she spent every spare moment playing tennis.

“I’d never played much before coming to Bermuda,” she said. “In Bermuda I did well and started winning tournaments.”

A woman she befriended on the court wondered “why I was wasting my life working at waitressing”, said Ms Kelly.

She took her advice and got a job in the infants department at Gilbert Institute.

In 1973, the Paget school seemed idyllic compared to the ones she’d taught at in the United States.

“The school was out in the open, in nature,” she said. “I loved taking the children outside as opposed to being in a concentrated area.

“I took my students to Grape Bay and we made our own touch pools in the classroom. We did so many things.”

After two years at Gilbert, she left the island for Germany because she wanted to travel. She spent a year there and then went to Florida to hone her teaching skills.

Three years later she was back in Bermuda teaching at Elliot Primary School.

She remembers corporal punishment as being the norm in those days.

“We didn’t call it the strap,” she said. “We had other names for it, like My Friend or The Board of Education.

“The children were always so compliant. I’d say stick out your hand and they would. Then I’d give them three whacks on the hand.”

But she always tried to find ways to avoid the whacks.

“Sometimes I’d say, ‘You need to go outside and cool off if you don’t want the friend to come out,’” she said. “I had corners in the classroom. One side was England and the other was Spain. Sometimes I’d say you need to take a trip to England and cool off. They were only in the corner for a minute.”

She also taught at Dellwood Middle School, Paget Primary School, TN Tatem Middle School, Warwick Secondary School over the years.

In the evenings she taught community education classes, and in the prisons.

“I have taught hundreds over the years,” she said. “I can’t go anywhere without hearing my name called. I don’t know how some of them recognise me after all these years.”

She married in 1979 and had a daughter, Toni Fox. The marriage didn’t last.

“I could have taken my daughter back to the United States, but I wanted to raise her here,” Ms Kelly said. “I wanted her to know her Bermudian heritage.”

Her love of the heritage and culture is part of the reason she started writing children’s books in the 1990s. She focused on local heroes such as cricketer Alma Hunt and entertainer Jean Howes.

“When I first came to Bermuda there were no Bermuda books for children, and especially not black children,” she said.

“These are the unsung heroes that children need to know about.

“There are so many heroes out there. My grandson said the other day, ‘I’m going to be better than Nahki Wells’. I’m was happy to hear that. It shows he has been encouraged by Nahki.”

Knee problems forced her to give up tennis a few years ago. Golf is her new passion.

“I couldn’t say I am a super golfer, but it keeps me in the sports arena,” she said. “I play every week.”

She is also active in the Lions Club, and the May Flower Lodge.

But her favourite times are spent hanging out with her family. Ms Kelly has three grandchildren: Tyree, 8, and 3-year-old twins, Taya and Tia.

•Lifestyle profiles senior citizens in the community every Tuesday. To suggest an outstanding senior contact Jessie Moniz Hardy: 278-0150 or jmhardy@royalgazette.com. Have on hand the senior’s full name, contact details and the reason you are suggesting them