THE only consolation we have after contending with the eructions, (and I mean eructions and not eruptions) on the local political scene since the July 24 general election is that, going forward, we believe both the ruling Bermuda Progressive Labour Party and the Country are in safe and strong hands. With William Alexander Scott at the helm as Premier and Dr. the Hon. Ewart Brown as Deputy Premier we have about as odd a couple as could be found, yet a most interesting coalition. Deep down, they are equally concerned about enhancing the welfare of the common man in Bermuda and they have a genuine concern about inculcating a national consciousness and fostering national unity, leading inevitably to independence.

If there are any differences, they may lay in the fact that Dr. Brown has an undisguised reputation for operating on the fast track in getting things done; and Premier Scott, while ordinarily displaying a facade of conservatism, is no slouch. He has the capability of holding his after-burners in reserve and releasing them with devastating effect when he chooses, most especially if one ruffles his feathers the wrong way. I sense that the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues in the United Bermuda Party before too many months pass, may well be wishing they had the Smith Administration to contend with instead of the Scott-Brown coalition, and not spent the millions of dollars it must have cost them in their futile attempt to oust her. I thought that while the dust is settling on 'the way forward,' I would do a little reminiscing about the relationships I have had with Premier Scott and Ministers Brown and K. Randolph Horton in particular, that lead me to predict we have some interesting times ahead. Dr. Brown for years used to delight in introducing me to his friends as 'his boss,' and he was not exaggerating. When he was home from his college studies in Jamaica, I gave him the most exciting job he ever had, in the News Room of Capital Broadcasting Company's ZFB Radio and Television Stations. Of course I was the Station Manager and News Director. He developed into an excellent newsman and on-air presenter. A couple years later, when he began impacting on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., I received a letter from one of the managing editors of The Washington Post Newspaper stating Mr. Brown had submitted my name in his application for a job there. I need only say at this point that he got the job and as expected he excelled there.

To amplify my belief that Dr. Brown is a trail blazer who gets things done, I am forced to the following excerpt from the very first issue of the now defunct Bermuda Times Newspaper, dated March 4, 1987, and an article over my byline, headed a New Era Begins: The date was Saturday, November 15, 1986 at the Fabulous Marriott Hotel in Inglewood, California where Dr. Ewart Brown invited my wife and me to lunch. He wanted to break to me the news that he and a group of young Bermudians were going to establish The Bermuda Times as Bermuda was in dire need of a newspaper that was in touch with the masses of the country.

Without hesitation I extended my hand in congratulations to the doctor and told him his timing was most propitious. He did not know it but I informed him that at that very moment last rites were being held in Hamilton for Alfred Brownlow Place who had died four days earlier at age 94. Mr. Place was the last black Bermudian in this (20th) Century to launch a newspaper, The Bermuda Recorder. That was more that sixty years ago (1925 to be exact). And while his passing marked the end of an era, I could not help remarking to Dr. Brown that with the determination he had evinced, he was certainly in my view ushering in another era..." So Much for Minister Brown. It was in the early 1980 when Alex Scott, then chairman of the PLP, was struggling to keep the Party off the rocks caused by the abortive Gilbert Darrell-led challenges to the leadership of Mrs. Lois Browne Evans. Alex called my home early one morning saying he was resigning and would I be prepared to be nominated for the chairmanship. After some hesitation, I was persuaded. L. Frederick Wade became Party Leader, I was elected chairman and Scott was appointed to the Senate. During the next six years as a team we succeeded in providing the leadership that rebuilt the PLP and set it on course for its sensational successes leading up to 1998. In the meantime I had the honour and distinction of serving a four-year term in the Senate. I have always contended that its more difficult and nigh impossible to get the nod to be an Opposition Senator than to become an elected MP (as many in the ranks of the United Bermuda Party are now experiencing).

As for Minister Horton, some twenty-five or more years ago when he went to the altar in a church in the wildwoods of Baltimore-Maryland to take an attractive young American girl to be his wedded wife, we were there as witnesses. In fact, my wife was the soloist during the ceremony. When I say the church was in the wildwoods, I mean it, as some of the American guests got lost trying to find it, quite unlike Randy and his Bermudian compatriots.

In any case, "we owed Randy one." During the 1976 General Election Randy was my campaign manager when Eugene Cox and I challenged "Flip" Galloway and "Kit" Astwood in what was definitely the UBP stronghold of Sandys North. We didn't win, but thanks in large measure to the energy of Randy Horton and others, we managed to turn that stronghold into a marginal and subsequently a Cox-Lister safe seat.

Those reminisces flooded my mind because while digging through my archives in connection with a speech I'm scheduled to deliver at the next meeting of the Hamilton Rotary Club, I accidentally found in my Bermuda Recorder files, some photographs of a bushy-headed Dr. Brown, a hairy Randy Horton, and of a bright-eyed kid named Kelly Zuill. I thought those pictures were too revealing not to republish.