A while ago I indicated that periodically I would dig out of my files one or another of the stories I have written over the decades to see if it had relevance to current events.

Such an event occurred when four nurses had a happy reunion at the Sylvia Richardson Care Facility in St. George's that is named in honour of one of their colleagues, the late Nurse Sylvia Richardson. So, I delved into my personal old Bermuda Recorder newspaper files for the article over my by-line published on Saturday, August 26, 1961 (see inset).

Headed Nurse Who Had to Run The Ropes a 2nd Time Is Back Again, the feature specifically is about Nurse Iris Davis, but it personifies the experiences of each of the veteran nurses at the reunion, Nurse Gladys Simmons Barney, Edna Steede Paynter, Iris Davis and Muriel Baisden.

The 41-year-old feature read: THE AWFUL amount of wastage in human resources and the extent to which useful talents have been retarded, if not fully underveloped because of the iniquitous dual school system of Bermuda, perhaps may never be fully assessed.

However, it should not be difficult for anyone to imagine the intensity of the frustration and disappointment experienced by locally "trained" coloured nurses who after years of preparation and actual service to the profession they wanted so much to be a part of, had to face the hard facts that they had to be retrained if they did not want to be regarded as nothing more than make-believe nurses by the world outside Bermuda.

A fortnight ago, the first from a group, who went to the United Kingdom to start all over again, returned to the colony fully accredited, and with one or two distinctions she picked up along the way. That nurse was Miss Iris Davis, who is a state registered nurse and state certified midwife.

Miss Davis' nursing career began when she graduated several years ago form Sandys Secondary School and entered the Cottage Hospital Nursing Home in Pembroke. She spent three years exploiting to the fullest the nurses' training facilities there. She graduated and as was then the custom was sent to the Lincoln Hospital Nursing School in the Bronx, New York, for a year's finishing study.

Returning to Bermuda, she worked on the nursing home staff, later going into private practice. Subsequently, she became the second Negro to the employed in the Public Health Department's Nursing Service.

In 1956 the Cottage Hospital Nursing Home closed its doors after more than 50 years' service. It was then that its displaced nurses found that their diplomas were not recognisable, not even by Bermuda's own Government hospital, the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

Miss Davis left here in December 1956 for St. Giles Hospital in London. There they would only give her credit for the few months' training she had received in New York. However, after becoming a student all over again, she wrote the State Board of Examination in two and a half years. In February 1960 she began Midwifery, Part 1 at St. Giles and later Part 11 at North Herts Hospital in Hitchin, Hertfordshire.

Significantly, Miss Davis won the prize for the best Second Year Nurse at St. Giles and in the final examinations won the prize for medicine. The former award she received from the hands of Lady Macmillan, wife of the Prime Minister. After completing her midwifery, Nurse Davis returned to St. Giles for three months, during which time she took an extensive family planning course for overseas students. Now, she is back at her old job on the general staff of the Health Department and at the moment is doing women's and baby clinic work.

Looking back, the inevitable question to be asked is why things had to develop in this way in the first instance. The answer is simple. Iris Davis, like hundreds of other girls over the years, wanted to be a nurse and the only recognised nursing school in Bermuda was the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital which at that time did not accept Negro students.

The foregoing was the meat of the article I wrote 41 years ago. There's more to it as I highlight in my books Freedom Fighters, from Monk to Mazumbo and Heroines in the Nursing Field of Bermuda. Miss Davis returned to Bermuda a fully-charged dynamo and began an outstanding career as senior nurse or supervisor of all public health nursing staff as well as social workers from 1964. Her outstanding work merited her award of an MBE from the Queen in 1971. Meanwhile, the other former Cottage Hospital nurses who went to London with her replicated her brilliant retraining exploits.

However, Nurse Gladys Simmons Barney chose to return to Lincoln Hospital for further training and a highly successful nursing career at institutions in New York. She married, becoming Mrs. Barney. It was during one of her frequent visits to her homeland and family at Cox's Hill, Pembroke, that led to the reunion with her old colleagues.

Photos show: Happy reunion (top) at the facility named after one of the old nursing colleagues, from left, nurses Gladys Simmons Barney, Edna Steede Paynter, Iris Davis and Muriel Baisden. Above, the story culled from the old Bermuda Recorder 41 years ago and, below, Nurse Davis at Buckingham Palace with the MBE she received from the Queen in 1974 for her outstanding service to nursing in Bermuda. With her is her adoring niece, then a Southampton Glebe School student, Cherylle Swan Simons, now the wife of Derrick Simons of Warwick and mother of eight-year-old twin sons.