by his son Robert Zuill. Mr. Zuill, 68, was the owner of the Bermuda book Store and a long time trustee of the Whitney Institute. He died last Friday.

To understand my father you have to understand the way he thought. I cannot say I ever really did understand his mind. He was a unique thinker. But I do know that he was a man who held firm beliefs.

My father, James Vaughan Zuill, was highly educated and blessed with a powerful intellect. You could say, that from the day he was born he read too many books. At Harvard University they only encouraged him to read even more.

After he graduated with honours, he continued educating himself throughout his entire life. All that education gave him an often exasperating tendency to completely ignore the small, sometimes meaningless things in life and concentrate on the big picture. He liked learning about other people and respected honesty and politeness. He wore simple clothes and loved spending time with his family.

Like many of his generation who lived through World War II, he was a great admirer of Winston Churchill: his shrewd, common sense approach, his strength ...and his open minded view of the world.

My father believed in Bermuda. And he wanted only the best for our island.

Psalm 133 opens by saying, "How pleasant it is to see brethren who dwell together in unity.'' For my father, the only way forwards, for us all, together in Bermuda, was through unity. For him, the fundamental building block of a solid economy and a stable democracy...unity... was to give all Bermudian children a top quality education.

This, he knew, could not happen overnight. For many years he served as the Secretary Treasurer of the Whitney Institute and later as the Secretary of the Whitney Institute Educational Trust.

It was a fitting place. Young people always seemed to like him. And he liked them...they would listen to his endless stories.

His stories came from a life spent as a student of history. The history of the world, and of Bermuda. To his mind, if you did not understand your past, or if you allowed your past to be destroyed, you could never understand yourself, your place in the universe, or your future.

Of paramount importance to my father, was preserving the Godgiven beauty of this island, our heritage and the grace that God gave us as a people. So he left large areas green that he could have developed. He fought to preserve other green areas. He struggled to keep what remains of old Bermuda and her history alive. My father was so emotionally tied to Bermuda that in many ways what he was preserving was himself.

Still preservation was not enough for him. He was constantly exploring new things. He studied Portuguese and the Portuguese community in Bermuda. One of his most fun trips was to Portugal and San Miguel in the Azores. He studied wood carving. He taught himself classical guitar...with somewhat mixed results. I know, I had to listen to a lot of it. He had a large music library which he tended to play too loud on Sundays.

Many said my father was an eccentric. But I prefer to say he had plenty of character. Bermuda's history is full of such characters and by being with us, he helped, in his way, to keep some of old Bermuda, of ourselves, alive.

Like many Bermudian characters, my father, had a riotous sense of humour and an easy going manner. He reveled in doing those harmless things which society deemed he was not supposed to do.

The people who visited him at his cash desk will remember a man who enjoyed -- as he put it -- terrorising people. What this really meant was that he behind the cash register and his friends in front of it would engage in daily battles of wit and friendly jibes. He was well known for this and a large number of people have called saying that they will miss seeing him around Hamilton and passing the time of day with him. For this kind support and these shared feelings we thank you.

Yet despite his amiable personality, he shunned social occasions. I have never understood why. Nonetheless, like many true Bermudians, he was hard to forget.

He seemed to reach people. In Britain, Canada, and the United States, I have met people who said they remembered the man with a beard...down in Bermuda... in that book store near where the Policeman stands in the middle of the road.

That he touched many Bermudians as well is demonstrated by how many of us are here today. Speaking for myself and his entire family, we thank you all deeply. For this is one of the hardest times of our entire lives. My father knew perhaps far more than many of us. My father put things in perspective for us. Now he is gone we have lost his counsel... we have lost a great friend. We can never go canoeing with him again. We can never, ever go swimming with him again.

So what can we take from this life? This life that has now been taken from us.

Well, as I stare at his trail of footprints that now disappears in the sand, I can only tell you what he taught me by his example...be gentle, be kind, be free...live your own life... above all else be yourself.

RELIGION REL