It can be said, with a fair amount of justice that the way to get a really good obituary is to die in the prime of life.

then, memories of achievement are still fresh and there are plenty of still-living contemporaries around to pay tributes.

Sir John Plowman, who died yesterday at the age of 93, may at first glance be the exception to that rule.

But the truth is that he actually remained in the prime of his life and active in the community until just a few months ago, decades after most of his contemporaries had eased into retirement or passed on.

Sir John epitomised the ideal of public service. Never elected to a single office in Bermuda, the "workhorse of the government" was seemingly always prepared to sacrifice time and effort to the public good.

Details of Sir John's contributions to Bermuda are listed in detail elsewhere in today's newspaper in detail.

Something of a radical in the racially divided and stultifyingly conservative Bermuda of the mid-20th Century, Sir John would probably be considered a conservative in recent years.

But he was without doubt a compassionate conservative, with a passion for the well being of the ordinary man, regardless of race or creed.

More importantly, he was a founder of the United Bermuda Party, a Cabinet Minister for a decade and a half, a widely-respected Government Senate Leader.

The structure of the Civil Service and the Government stand on the foundations he built as Minister of Organisation while much of the Island's air and marine infrastructure exist because of his time as holder of that portfolio.

As a businessman, Sir John helped to build Holmes Williams & Purvey into a leading business, selling everything from lawnmowers to clothes washers to cars.

For most people, that would have been a full life, but after Sir John's retirement from active business and politics, he remained as active as ever.

Indeed, Sir John transformed himself from partisan politician into a universally respected spokesman for the elderly, chairing a commission on ageing and working tirelessly on behalf of those, many of them younger than him, who could not longer speak for themselves.

In the last year, he was president of the Association for Due Process and the Constitution, without whose efforts much of the public debate and scrutiny of Government's planned changes to the constituency boundaries would not have occurred.

Sir John also claims a place in Bermuda's history as an "immigrant". Although born in Bermuda, he returned to the UK with his British parents as a child. He later came back to our shores to serve his adopted home with a passion and dedication few could match.

In that sense, he joins a pantheon of other "immigrants" like Dr. E.F. Gordon and Sir Edward Richards who "chose" Bermuda and left it a better place than they found it.