FORMER teacher and Senate President Albert Jackson MBE, CBE would love to see a Bermuda where racial lines are blurred and children of all races interact more in public school classrooms. But he knows he will never see this dream realised in his life time.

Speaking to the Mid-Ocean News<$> this week about growing up in Bermuda in a time when a dozen horse-drawn carriages and bicycles on Front Street was considered rush hour traffic and radical changes, like those the Second World War ushered in here, were inevitable, Mr. Jackson shared some of his childhood memories and the contributions he made to education.Born in 1919 to William and Sarah Jackson, Mr. Jackson was the youngest of seven children and grew up in a community called Brooklyn, which today lies just beyond St. Theresa’s Cathedral in Hamilton.

He admits that as the youngest he was spoilt rotten by his siblings and adoring parents, who tried to instil the importance of education, music and literature in their children.

“One of the memories that lingers with me today was how we spent the Sabbath. We were a Christian family and never played football or cricket or did anything too boisterous on Sundays. We would read and take walks and sometimes took a carriage ride out of Hamilton,” he recalls with a smile.

In a time when Bermuda’s education system was segregated, the young Mr. Jackson had firsthand experience of the pain this policy inflicted: “One of the lasting features of my early life, which I continue to carry at this late stage of my adult life, is the utter disappointment, heartbreak and frustration which I felt when I had to be told I could not attend what was then the school of my choice ... purely along racial lines.”

Mr. Jackson ended up going to the Berkeley Institute.It was during these formative years that he sometimes attracted the “unwanted” attention of teacher, Edward Richards - later Premier Sir E.T Richards (see photo above) - who had arrived in Bermuda from Guiana to teach at Berkeley.Today the 87-year-old admits with a boyish grin that he fooled around in school and thought tennis, cricket and football were more rewarding that Latin, history or math.

But “disaster” struck at the outcome of a Latin test when Mr. Richards read out the results in class and much to his embarrassment, his name was called out last, with a minus two test score.

“I had reached a low point which I promised I would never return to!” he admits, adding that his older brother Vernon, who was abroad at University, also made sure the youngster never slipped up again.The bond between the brothers was very strong, despite their 12-year-age gap, and over the years Vernon Jackson - who went on to become a policeman, businessman and hotelier - gave his baby brother the necessary support to succeed.The island was a very different place to what it is today, not just with segregation rife in schools and businesses but also with an economy based almost entirely around a tourism industry which at that time drew a relatively small number of extremely wealthy Americans to Bermuda.

Mr. Jackson recalls the island only had a handful of hotels in the pre-World War Two period, including the Bermudiana and the Hamilton Hotel (which stood at the site now occupied by the City Hall Parking Lot) and, of course, Bermuda’s signature hotel, the Princess.

All of this changed, he says, with the outbreak of World War II when the American military bases were developed on the island. And along with military personnel came motorised transportation, refrigeration and, ultimately, civilian air transport. The island changed forever.

It was also a time when the Education Act required children to attend school only until the age of 13 and it was not uncommon for 13-year-olds to leave school and seek employment in the hospitality industry in an effort to help support their families.

In fact when the Government of the day changed the law in 1955, Mr. Jackson was made principal of the very first public secondary school in Bermuda - the St. George’s Secondary School.

However his teaching career started 15 years earlier when he completed his studies at Kingston Technical College in Jamaica.

On his return to Bermuda in 1940, he taught woodwork to primary schools boys at the then-newly opened manual training centre in Somerset.

In the 1950s Mr. Jackson left Bermuda to obtain his Bachelor of Science from Columbia University. He remained in the US where, for the next five years, he worked as a counsellor in some of the poorest parts of New York. There he became involved in community projects aimed at bringing the youth of the city together in social clubs and providing them with alternatives to the gang violence that was prevalent at that time.

It was while living in New York that he crossed paths with Dr. Kenneth Robinson, Bermuda’s first Education Officer, who encouraged the impressionable young Mr. Jackson to return to Bermuda and teach.

However, as Mr. Jackson explains, at that time Bermuda was not attractive to young male teachers. The poor salaries did not appeal to any young man wanting to start a family.

But he decided to give it a shot and returned to Bermuda in 1953 to take up a teaching position at Dr. Robinson’s school, Francis Patton Primary.He was later offered the headmaster position at Harrington Sound before taking over as the first headmaster of St. George’s Secondary. During the next two years, Mr. Jackson also earned a Master of Science (Ed.) from Pennsylvania University, and a Master of Arts (Ed.) from the University of London.

In 1965 Mr. Jackson was appointed Education Officer with the Department of Education and, together with Brian T. Scott, developed an advisory service to offer guidance to students on opportunities for further and higher education abroad. He was also responsible for special services.

“My post in the Department of Education was labelled ‘research and guidance officer’, so the feature of vocational guidance, or the measurement of interests and abilities ... that was introduced in my time. We applied the use of various tests of interests and abilities which went alongside the academic instruction,” he said.

“That was an important feature and to the best of my knowledge is being carried on in the secondary schools today.”

Vocational guidance is an important tool, he explains, in helping students make decisions as to what they want to do in life and finding out if their aims are realistic in terms of their ability.

It was during his term as education officer that schools were finally integrated and yet even today, Mr. Jackson feels a racial divide exists: “I continue to feel disappointment over the absence of substantial mixture of the races in the schools labelled public schools.”

He believes a healthy mingling of the various races in Bermuda is the “healthy and significant” answer to many of the island’s problems.

“And it is very disturbing to me to recognise that we as people are not getting to know and understand and enjoy one another across racial lines,” he adds. “I wish I could see this happening at a greater rate than it is.”

When Mr. Jackson reached retirement age in 1978, he turned down the offer to kick back and relax and instead joined the Bank of Bermuda as a staff training officer.And Mr. Jackson recalls with a broad smile how the then-Governor of Bermuda called him up one day while he was visiting friends and family of his wife, Louise, in Philadelphia.“He telephoned me knowing that I was retired from the public service and asked me if I would consider becoming a member of the Senate,” he explains. “The previous president of the Senate retired and my colleagues, who are the ones who chose the president, elected me to take the chair.

“That would have been in 1987 and I served through until 1998, by which time I was ready for retirement from public service.”

Mr. Jackson loves to travel and spent the next few years seeing the world - literally. He and his wife have circled the globe twice.

“I used to play a lot of tennis and I used to play at golf. I wouldn’t call my performance on the golf course as playing golf, but I played at it,” he adds with a laugh when asked about how he spends his days now.

He grows quiet for a minute and admits that over the years he has slowed down and now spends as much time with his family as he can.

The couple have been married for 53 years and have two daughters, Deborah and Susan.

Mr. Jackson also has a daughter from a previous marriage, CarolAnn, and a total of four grandchildren - two boys and two girls.

“One of the heartbreaks of my life was that my first marriage was not successful, but considering that we’ve seen some 53 years together, my second venture into marriage has been very, very ... well pleasant, for lack of a better term,” he said with a smile.

Mr. Jackson has one piece of advice for today’s youth: “Apply yourself to worthwhile activities like education, music, literature... anything uplifting. This is what I see for our children growing up in this community today.”

It’s good advice, he adds, because it’s advice his father gave him and he has, and never will have, any regrets about following it.