Although the Royal Air Force accepted his enlistment at Blackpool a few months after his 18th birthday, in 1942 they deferred his induction until September, 1943, when he had to report to London.

The RAF obviously were favourably impressed with Peter’s potential during an initial interview.

Yet, it was not until February, 1944, that they assigned him to elementary flight training at Elmdon Airport in Birmingham.

Appropriately, for a native Londoner, his basic training began in London.

Like millions of those dwelling in the nation’s historic capital, he had grown up there and was proud to be part of its successful defiance since the Battle of Britain began on July 10, 1940.

Peter and his intrepid generation of men, women and children had refused to yield to the largest and most ferocious aerial assault in military history thus far. They were seasoned war veterans even before being called up for military service.

He passed through several air training centres before arriving at the Blackpool Wing of the RAF Air Training Corps. So began his long ambitious journey to become a pilot/navigator.

He went about his training with typical enthusiasm and determination. So much so that, at the conclusion of the course, he was one of the ten most successful trainees to be awarded proficiency stars.

It was his passport to further training abroad. In April, 1944, he was on board the fast, unescorted troopship, Louis Pasteur, bound for Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

His progress was right on track, but by mid-1945, the Second World War ended and Peter’s dream of becoming a RAF pilot ended, too. He returned to England.

There, a brand new RAF career awaited. Selected for training as a meteorologist, as soon as he qualified, he was posted to the RAF Meteorology Station at Membury, Wiltshire.

In a seemingly endless succession of postings, his next stop was to the RAF’s meteorology Office in Bermuda, a development that was to have far-reaching significance in his life.

Arriving in Bermuda in 1946, Peter loved the Islands immediately. The following year he became eligible for discharge from the RAF. He elected to remain in Bermuda. Now an experienced meteorologist, the Bermuda Meteorological Department (known to everyone as ‘The Met Station’) welcomed Peter on their staff. He remained with them for the next 13 years.

The year 1947 was a year of milestones for Peter. As well as concluding his wartime career with the RAF, he met and fell in love with Elsi Rosinsky of New York. They married and, at the time of Peter’s death, had celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary.

Elsi served in the United States Navy in the Second World War. She was a member of the US Naval Reserve (WAVES). From 1944-1947 she was a secretary in the office of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who had become world famous as the first man to fly over both the North and South Poles.

She has been in Bermuda National Trust volunteer for many years.

Since the war, Bermuda, thanks to the pioneering work of two young lawyers, William R. (Bill) Kempe (a Fleet Air Arm pilot in the Royal Navy during the Second World War) of his own firm, Appleby, Spurling & Kempe, and David Graham of Conyers, Dill & Pearman, Bermuda had become an international finance and insurance centre.

Peter was impressed by the prospects of this dynamic new field. Again, he changed careers.

In 1960, he joined Butterfield Executor & Trust Company as a trust officer, and stayed with them until retirement in 1984.

I want to pause here and pass the typewriter (more likely, the word processor) to Peter’s daughter Pamela so she can share with us some of her beautifully worded thoughts in the eulogy she gave at the funeral:

“Many of you”, she said, “know him for the specific interests you shared, and I know he enjoyed those interests — many lasting for decades — most conducted over the phone or on street corners.

“He was not a social person in the conventional sense, but I know he treasured your friendship, whether talking baseball (his favourite team was the Boston Red Sox) or heatedly discussing (the way) a certain hand should have been played at the bridge table”.

In his bridge column in the Mid-Ocean News, David Ezekiel remembered Peter was the first Bermudian to win a major event at the Bermuda Regional tournament.

Occasionally we met at “a street corner”, and carried on a conversation that had begun that morning on the phone, and then continue it at the nearest coffee shop.

We were devoted to the “big bands”, and admired the virtuosi who played in them, like Johnny Hodges, alto saxophone (Duke Ellington’s Orchestra); Bunny Berrigan, trumpet (his own and other top bands); especially Teddy Wilson (Benny Goodman) whose piano playing was beautiful.

The order-of-service for Peter’s funeral featured a photo of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet and the title of one of Louis’s most remembered songs, “What a Wonderful World”.

Peter had an encyclopaedic mind and organised to perfection his more than 6,000 records.

I would sometimes refer to a recording I had not heard for 40 or so years. “Just a minute, Tommy,” he would interject. In a moment he extracted it from the neatly arranged shelves and played it over the phone for me.

Peter was a gifted photographer, specialising in nature subjects, particularly clouds. He won first place in the sunset competition conducted by the first “Moods of Bermuda” book.

He was incredibly generous and would listen intently to the problem of a friend. If he could possibly help, he did so unhesitatingly and quietly.

He was proof of why, in the heyday of the British Empire, the English were superior colonists. They usually made a colony much better than they found it.

Though Bermuda was his home for 60 years, during all that time he left it only twice. The first time, 1954, he visited his family in London. He represented Bermuda in 1964 at the Second World Bridge Olympiad in New York.

We remember his family, his wife Elsi and their children, Pamela and Geoffrey.

I am convinced had his training not been cut short by the termination of the war, Peter would have become an outstanding RAF pilot.

But let us give Pamela the honour of the final word:

“In closing”, she said, “I’d like to say that he loved Bermuda deeply, and as children, he’d take us on regular Sunday drives, pointing out the beauty of the Island. He took many pictures of this church (St. Mark’s) and loved the sounds of the Sunday bells tolling. And here he will rest”.