BERMUDA'S seniors are a huge asset to the community and they deserve to be seen in a positive light.

That is the view of Fred Hassell, who was this week recognised, chiefly for his work with seniors, with an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent order of the British Empire) in the New Year's Honours List.

Director of the seniors programme at the Admiralty House Community Centre, Mr. Hassell is particularly proud of his Character Builders Programme, which introduces seniors - and their wisdom - to schoolchildren.

Also the rector of the New Apostolic Church in Southampton, about to celebrate its 25th anniversary, the seniors co-ordinator for the Ministry of Community Affairs and Sport, the host of the `Sixty-something' radio show on ZFB and the organiser of investment clubs, 51-year-old Mr. Hassell leads a very full life.

When reporter JONATHAN KENT and photographer ARTHUR BEAN met Mr. Hassell for a chat this week, they found him reacting modestly to his award, which he will receive from the Queen at Buckingham Palace later in the year. The honour left him reflecting on generations past and how the door of opportunity is now open to more people than it used to be.

Q: How did you get to hear that you were to be given the MBE?

A: I got a call from the Governor (Thorold Masefield), before he left. I thought, "Why would the Governor be calling me?" He said: "I'm very proud to inform you that Her Majesty the Queen wants you to have the MBE." I said: "Oh. my golly." And then he said: "I want you to have it, the Premier wants you to have it and the country wants you to have it."

They were bringing three powerful entities onto to me at one time! Keep in mind 100 years ago, my grandparents came here from St. Kitts. If you came from a certain standing in life, if you were from the bottom of the pile, you would stay there.

Today, I've got a son who's got an MBA, a Master of Business Administration. He's home trading stock on the computer when he knocks off. In society people who owned stock used to be aristocratic. But today you can get an education. And look what happened to Mr. Bush. He failed as a young man and became President of the United States. Could that have happened in another time?

Q: When the Governor called, what feelings did you have?

A: It was just a sense of awe and humbleness, a feeling of concern for the generations before.That what they had done, I could benefit from it. They could not have it, but I could benefit. A sense of history and of my ancestors. I wanted to do them proud.

Q: Are you looking forward to meeting the Queen at Buckingham Palace?

A: Yes. I've been thinking what it will be like and what will my behaviour be. I've already started to prepare for that in my heart and in my head. It's going to be an experience.

Q: Do you think you'll be nervous?

A: I'll be apprehensive. But I hear you get some training before you go. But this is a real honour. It's such a prestigious award. Firstly, I have to commend my sponsors. There were obviously people in the community who thought enough about me to sit down and write a couple of paragraphs. I say certainly want to say `thank you' to those people. It's very humbling.

Without having worked with seniors for the past 26 years, this would not have happened. They've been my sweet inspiration. And this is an opportunity to highlight their causes.

Q: What are their causes?

A: Certainly, the biggest one would be insurance. If companies could keep people on their insurance policies after they have finished working, that would be my New Year's wish.

They may have to pay something, but it would just be nice if they could stay on that group policy after they retired. Some companies have the experience and the capital to do that and I would commend them to kep their people on when they retire.

Back in 1999, we celebrated the International Year of Older Persons and we established a local UN committee and we were concerned with self-fulfilment - opportunites for doing all kinds of wonderful things like bungee jumping, getting on e-mail, and all kinds of things. And also caring for them and doing our utmost to dignify their phase of retirement. Bermuda's a wonderful place, it's like ageing in paradise.

By the end of this decade we'll have 7,000 people over 65. That doesn't mean they're old. They can be an inspriation to young people.

Q: Do you older people now are younger at heart than they used to be?

A: Well, I'm 51 and the people I'm involved with are in their late 70s, 80s and 90s. There's not much of a difference. They have greying hair and so do I. They wear modern clothes and I guess I wear clothes of the Nineties. So bone structure and facial features, there's not much of a difference. People are looking good and living into advanced stages of life. And it's so nice that we can promote them as vibrant, healthy people.

The Fairmont Southampton Princess have given us a wonderful Christmas luncheon for the last 19 years. We had maybe 400 seniors there. For a company to do that, they are saying, "We value your presence in the community."

Q: Do you think older people get the respect they deserve in Bermuda?

A: We are living in modernity and there's been a lot of shifting of values and respect. In modernity things have changed ethically and we need to remind people of those basic values and virtues that we came up with. And if trends make them unsure of what to do to respect somebody, we want to remind them of that.

I think in Bermuda, we honour and respect our older persons. In modernity, we have nursing homes and day care services we never had 50 or 60 years ago. Things have changed. People aren't certain any more where the goal-posts are.

We founded a programme - it's been around for a while but we just packaged it differently - called the Character Builders Programme, where our older gentlemen go out into schools and share their life experience with young people. And this links the generations together. I go with them and I feel rejuvenated, so much more youthful and attuned to what's going on.

Q: What do they talk about?

A: We've been doing the programme for two years now and I've heard some amazing conversations. The idea is that young people will see older persons as persons of character, grounded in things like respect, service, volunteerism and honesty. All the virtues that Aristotle talked about, long before Christ.

So young people can hear these heart-warming stories. A man, who's retired now, told us about a TV game show called The Price is Right with Bob Barker. This man won a trip around the world and many other prizes in California. That grabbed the children's attention.

Then we have a huge poster from the Virtues Programme with about 50 virtues on it and virtues simply means striving for excellence as a human being, so the children could then recognise the determination in that experience, the intellect, they could recognise the virtue and see what it looks like. So if we are short at modelling these virtues in society, then certainly we've got the elder in the society who can tell people about them in their stories. One man told a story about when he was nine years old in St. David's. His father was a great ship captain. Before the average person was travelling anywhere, he was missing from school for a couple of weeks when his grandfather used to take him on these barges up to Manhattan and he saw the Statue of Liberty. We're talking about the 1930s. It was like a Moby Dick story.

Q: Do you think younger people could benefit more from the wisdom of older people in their families?

A: Sure. In modernity, the nuclear family is left on its own to struggle. Maybe, there's not a grandfather or grandmother there any more and maybe the younger may not have access to them.

So here's an opportunity to bring that to the schools in that programme and why not make Bermuda a whole island of character?

People have moved into a whole different society. People aren't sure any more what it means to be responsible and to respect other people. The world has changed so much. My golly, I've got an MBE - could my father have got that 100 years ago? I don't think so.

People have moved out of their way of life, because of exposure to education and politics has changed society.

Q: What are the major issues on seniors' minds at the moment?

A: They want to be dignified. They don't want to be seen as pulling on society materially. They've made their contribution. These people have worked all their lives. They live in a time when the concept of retiring has come into being. You worked until you died and people hired you. But today, that has changed.

In Bermuda though, about half the senior population is still working. Doing something, baby-sitting, doing security, being salesmen in companies. But now there's a tendency to be gone when you're 65.

I would like to see people dignified in that. Maybe there could be flexi-time where people could maybe work three days for their last two years.

We don't want to give the impression that ageing means rest homes, insurance, new housing. It's far more than that. To live 30 years after retirement and outlive your money, it's a nice thing to be able to do. They don't want to be perceived as a drain on society. They're not, they're supporting 18 groups, island-wide. They come out to programmes and volunteer to keep the clubs alive.

They've laid the foundations for this society and in some cases have raised huge families and survived a World War. They've made their contributions.