‘The Islanders were thrifty … Eat it up, wear it out, make it do, do without. — EA McCallan

A few weeks ago, Elizabeth Musson Kawaley launched the second edition of her book of memories, named for her childhood home, “The Island that Disappeared”.

Hers was Longbird Island, now mostly landfill under the road between the Causeway and the Swing Bridge and forming the foundation for the western end of Kindley Field (now the runway of Bermuda’s only airport), including the passenger terminal.

Part of Longbird Island still survived in 1995, when the US Navy left Bermuda, and that included the Commandant’s home, “Longbird House” (built in 1939 by American millionaire, William Marcus Greve of Empire State Building fame).

Unfortunately, thanks to ‘international regulations’, that lovely house was demolished in the later 1990s, though its presence was perfectly acceptable to the flying protocols of the Navy for over 50 years.

There was only one other island that was inhabited prior to the making of Kindley Field in 1941 and that was Westcott Island on the western side of a bay known as ‘The Sink’, off the south side of St David’s Island.

If one stands today on the lawn of the historic Carter House (which survived the airfield demolitions) and looks towards Castle Island, Westcott is now an island and home under the runway, pushed into The Sink to help to fill it up, for one forgets that significant bodies of water (natural heritage) were also lost in the construction of Kindley Field.

Upon reading of Elizabeth Kawaley’s account of her island, Barbara Higgs Roberts came forward with her memories of St David’s Island and in particular of the home of one set of her grandparents, who lived on Westcott Island.

Those memories and the photographic collection she has assembled in the last few years (as she approaches her 95th year) help to amplify the story of the civilian losses that occurred at Bermuda, when a considerable acreage of land and a number of homes were requisitioned in the national interest due to the military needs of the Second World War.

Barbara, along with her friend Enid Brangman Burnett (96), are the last living former residents of the western side of St David’s Island, most of which was taken over by the American Forces, including the famous Easter Lily farm at Carter House of her aunt and uncle, Mary and Howard Smith (he was the creator of the L. Howardii variety of those lilies, once synonymous with Bermuda and the Spring, (I regret to report to my family that it was a superior variety to the earlier L. Harrisii).

In 1896, 14,000 cases of lilies were exported chiefly to the United States, where its cultivation is a multimillion-dollar industry. Today, the lily farms are gone and we export little but empty containers.

Mrs Roberts is also a relative of the late EA McCallan whose seminal book, “Life on Old St David’s Bermuda”, is a classic anthropological work, unfortunately not repeated for other areas of our remaining islands.

The volume will always be relevant and should be of great value to anyone interested in the lands affected by the building of Fort Bell and Kindley Field, and of Bermuda in general, in the years before the coming of the aeroplane.

Westcott Island was the home of Clarissa and John Fox, parents to Susan, Barbara’s mother, who married a Higgs, another of the main family names of St David’s Island.

The island of five acres was connected to St David’s by a narrow land bridge, except during high tide, when a wooden bridge supplied dry access to the Fox homestead on Westcott, where Barbara Higgs often visited.

Barbara was born in 1920 and her ‘memories go back to my wonderful childhood days when St David’s was a natural, kind and lovely Island … many people today have grown up with hearsay, but I was there and this is how I remember it’.

Mrs Roberts wrote on: “I have seen the Severn Bridge built and demolished. I have seen the Railway built and destroyed. I have seen the south side of St David’s grow and the natural beauty destroyed by the US Base.”

Harking back, Barbara notes: “When The Base came, my immediate family was not dispossessed, but my granny, Clarissa, three aunts and an uncle were.

“They lived on Westcott Island. The only access to this was over a small wooden bridge, homemade with no modern equipment.

“It was about a hundred yards long, surrounded by mangroves and when the tide was high it was almost under water.”

As young children, almost as it were on a ‘deserted island’, the Higgs’ and others ran freely and wild about St David’s.

Mrs Roberts has written: “At a very young age, I was allowed to walk on my own to see my granny. It would take me almost 15 minutes, always taking shortcuts through neighbours’ gardens, but no one complained in those days.

“I would walk down a rocky hill named ‘Scribes and Pharisees’; at the bottom we would come to The Sink — ever so beautiful: untouched.

“All of the pathway wound through buttonwood trees and then I would be at the little bridge and then Westcott Island, where I spent most of my childhood growing up with two aunts, a browbeaten uncle and my granny (also known as “Poor Mama”)’.

Most Bermudians were once a frugal and thrifty people: if you did not ‘eat it up’, you found it on your breakfast plate the next day, but it seems many simply cannot ‘do without’, spoiled folk that some have become, thanks in large measure to the aeroplane, which introduced general wealth to the island on a scale previously unknown.

However, many perhaps think we can do without memories, such as those of Barbara Higgs Roberts and Elizabeth Musson Kawaley, but they are mistaken.

The Past, both in memory and monuments, are what sustain us as Bermudians and we forget and ignore all such legacies at the peril of our identity.

Hopefully, more women like Barbara and Elizabeth (and men) will take the time to record their memories and preserve their memorabilia, which will enhances the lives of the present generations and those of Bermudians yet to come.