For almost a decade Lloyd Telford Sr. has stayed in the background while the Telford Electric Mile has grown to become one of the Island's top junior races, attracting close to 1,000 runners from all talent levels.

In his own words he likes to "initiate things and then step back". His company has sponsored the event since its inception in 1994, formed on the basis that all children can be winners whether they place in the top three or not.

Mr. Telford actually began a race under his company's banner called the Telford 5K Road Race in 1992 which then became the Telford 10K a year later. He wanted to do something for the Somerset community and help the youth at the same time.

"Somerset needed to be regenerated, we needed to do something for the youth and I thought I could kill two birds with one stone," said the founder of one of the Island's oldest black-owned businesses.

"I tried to get businesses involved but the only business that got involved was Metro who supplied water. The main idea was to encourage the children to participate. My feeling was everybody who participated would be a winner."

The race was transformed in 1994 when Lloyd Telford Jr. spoke to Cal Simons of the Bermuda Pacers Track Club. The result was a series of mile races at the National Stadium that started with about 250 runners and has steadily grown each year.

Two years ago just over 1,000 youngsters signed up for the race, but on the day 987 took part.

"This year is the first time I have been to the National Stadium to see the races," said Mr. Telford who is taking it easy these days because of health challenges. He still serves as a consultant for his company.

"I took my wife (the former Constance Bean of St. George's) to drop her off and I was going back home to relax. But I was able to drive right through the gate and they found a chair for me.

"I enjoyed it, I didn't know it was at such a high standard. The Pacers need to be congratulated because of the professionalism I saw."

Mr. Simons had praise for the company, too: "It's tremendous what they're doing in support of the club," he said.

"We're holding one of the biggest races outside Race Weekend."

Lloyd Telford Sr. sees in those same children the same things adult members of his family saw in him when he was a small boy growing up in Somerset...the potential to succeed.

"A mother said to me that her oldest son always won the prizes in races, and she said that when her second son ran in the Telford Mile he came home with his tee-shirt and it made him feel good.

"It made her feel good because she had a chance to see her second son not always put down by the older boy. That made me feel good.

"That's how it is with the Telford Mile, you participate and you finish...I don't care if you finish ten years from now! At least they are trying and when you see somebody trying, they just need encouragement."

Certainly it helped that when he was growing up in Somerset he was surrounded by people running their own businesses, many black owned businesses in fact.

His parents, George and Sarah Genevieve Telford, always encouraged him to do his best, even at a time when racism was widespread in Bermuda. "I had a mother and a father, but I had everybody else in the neighbourhood as a mother and a father," he said.

"And they came from different nationalities. I remember in the early 1930s sitting on my grandfather's (James Dewey Smith) knee - he was a farmer and a fisherman - and feeling his strength. He came from St. David's, he was a strong man and what I got from him was his strength.

Mr. Telford became more determined to succeed when stumbling blocks were placed in his path. In fact the bigger the obstacle, the more determined he became.

"You came up against racism at an early age and you learned how to deal with it," he stated. He is proud to say that he is born in the same year (1934) as Hank Aaron, one of baseball's all time greats and a man who also overcame tremendous odds to succeed.

"When you gave me a challenge you did me a favour because it made me more determined. The best advice I had from my mother was 'what's your name?'. Whatever name you called me, other than Lloyd Telford, I didn't see you, I didn't hear you. You ignored people who didn't call you by your right name.

"Going through life you will meet up against people who belittle you, try to discourage you but fortunately I had positive parents."

Young Lloyd was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug at a young age and remembers going to Cup Match at the Royal Naval Field in the early 1940s when he was around ten years old and discovering his sales talent.

"I saw this gentleman I knew, a Mr. Burrows from Warwick, who had a truckload of watermelons and I saw a chance to hustle," he recalled.

"I asked him for a job and he gave me a job selling watermelons. I suggested to him to let me bring a tray the next day and go around selling slices of watermelon and he agreed. The second day we sold a truckload of watermelons. It was a boom.

"If I'm doing something I always look at ways of improving on it. My father probably got between four and six pounds in a week's wages from the Dockyard and I'm quite sure I got close to that from the watermelon gentleman."

Lloyd never saw the money, however, as he turned it over to his parents.

"When I sold thyme and parsley I came home and gave the money to my momma. You didn't learn to be selfish, and this is what is happening to our environment today, people have become selfish...me first, me second, me always."

The young Lloyd entered the Royal Naval Dockyard as a 16-year-old apprentice in 1950, following his father there.

"My daddy was a smart man, he made arrangements with Eugene Cox, the same Finance Minister, who was a fifth year apprentice to give me some extra lessons in math (in 1948)," he recalled.

"I'm grateful to Eugene Cox for that. It enabled me to be in the top group of apprentices to pass. In the top group I had a choice of what I wanted to do.

"I wanted to be a shipwright but my father told me to take the electrical trade. In those days you took insults, too. People would say 'I didn't know George Telford had a son bright enough to pass the Dockyard exam'.

"Through me passing the Dockyard exam, it encouraged other chaps later on to try for it. People discouraged you in those days, but I had two strong-willed parents."

Mr. Telford remains a strong advocate for reading, remembering 'when I 'used to get licks for reading and not doing my chores'. He estimates he read every book in the small library at West End school!

"I used to get a prize for doing the most reading," he says proudly. "I remember asking a maid if the family she worked for had any books they were throwing away to please bring them to me. I used to read under the covers with a flashlight. Reading opens the world to you, it whets your appetite. A house should be full of books."

Mr. Telford also thinks Spanish lessons should be compulsory in Bermuda's schools. "If we want to do business overseas it is essential," he believes.

From the group of 49 apprentices who sailed to Portsmouth, England on September 9, 1950, Mr. Telford would go on to become, in the estimation of one of the other 48, "one of the most successful of all of us".

He came back to Bermuda in 1954, worked at Belco and then at the Naval Annex in Dockyard, and then started Telford Electric in 1959. That business is still going strong today and is now run by two of his three children, Heather and Timmy, and four years ago opened a second outlet at Wellbottom.

The building in Somerset which houses Telford Depot is owned by the Telford Industries which employs 25.

"When I came back to Bermuda - and which happens to a lot of chaps who go abroad - there were no doors open. You have to open your own doors. I got more experience before I opened my own business.

"I took a chance, I was young, and decided to go in business for myself."

Telford Electric almost did not happen, he revealed.

"My mother asked me to make her two promises; one, to write her every week and that when I finished my training that I would come back and see her before I did anything else," said Mr. Telford who, in his early 20s, fulfilled that promise. It was his plan to take off and see the world after that.

"When I came back my intention was to work, save some money and get a round-trip ticket out of Bermuda. I was going to travel and get some experiences in other parts of the world.

"But it seemed like other people had other plans for me. I have no regrets. Going into business for yourself, there is a good side and a bad side.

"The bad side are those people who go out of their way to make sure you don't succeed in business."

He has managed to survive against the odds, and provide opportunities for others in the process.

"One thing that was important in Bermuda is we had a lot of black contractors and those contractors would pick up people sitting on the wall and give them work and straighten them out," he says.

One man whom he gave a job to, with no promise there would be work the following week, is still with the company more than 40 years later. He was one such young man sitting on the wall.

"The guy has been with us 40-odd years," he says. "I passed him two or three times sitting on the wall and asked him if he wanted a job. He is still with us. We have a very good relationship.

"Those who were responsible for eliminating many black contractors in this country by not giving them work created a lot of problems. Black businesses are not promoted in Bermuda but play a vital part in this country.

"I believe in sharing knowledge. I used to have guys who worked for other contractors asking me how to do something and I would sit them down and show them how to do it. Those who have knowledge should share in freely.

"My uncles, when they had their carpenter's shop, shared. That's how it was with the contractors then, they taught the youth."

Some of the best tradesmen in the Island were not necessarily the best students in class.

"A person can have all the academic qualifications in the world, but give them a plan to put together and they can't do it, because everything they do is from memory, whereas the other guy learned it from experience," said Mr. Telford.

"I know a chap who can't read or write but he can put a roof on a house and outshine people, because he can visualise."

It took Mr. Telford 11-and-a-half years to build the Telford Building in Somerset.

"By determination," he stressed.

It is at that building that Telford Industries have added another dimension to the business.

"Every business at one time or another needs a cash flow," he says.

"That building has (rental) units up top which enabled me to have a cash flow. If you import goods you need a good supplier and a good credit rating."

Mr. Telford says he learned some very important lessons at a young age, long before he went into business for himself.

"One of the things I learned was to respect all people," he revealed.

"In the course of business I have had people tell me to my face 'I can't give you that job, you're too young', or tell me point blank 'you're not Lloyd Telford'.

"Somebody had told them who I was and what I could do, but they did not associate that with a black person. I had a guy tell me to my face that he had to give the job to a white company.

"Some tell you point blank, some just string you along. I grew up with more black businesses around me than white businesses.

"We need a development bank in this country where, if you have a sound proposition you can go to them and they will say yes or no. Not a bank that has people who will say no to you because you are in competition with their friend down the street."

He added: "I don't like the term small business because in Bermuda, as far as I'm concerned, there is no difference between small business and big business. You still have the overhead, rent, staff to pay, insurance and that takes a big toll on businesses."