A record-breaking master of the traditional Bermudian kite crafted the red-white-and-blue kites sent aloft by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and US president George Bush when they met in Bermuda in April 1990 to discuss the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Vincent Tuzo Sr’s career, which he traced back to childhood, won him the title of Kite King — and provided him with a business that he began to wind up 20 years ago as his eyesight declined.

Mr Tuzo’s discipline and dedication, which came with passing on the folk art to countless others, earned him a Queen’s Badge of Honour in 1996 and a place in the 2008 Bermuda Arts Council’s Lifetime Achievement Awards.

“I learnt how to make a kite when I was 5,” Mr Tuzo told the Mid-Ocean News, recalling how he hoped to join his brothers in the long-established Bermudian pastime particularly associated with Easter.

“So my mother taught me. She showed me how to do it, and told me not to come out of the room until I had finished. And she warned me not to race, to do it properly — and that is what I have been doing ever since. And it is a gift.”

Kites in those days were improvised. Mr Tuzo started out using brown paper, fennel sticks and his mother’s wool. He foraged Pembroke marsh for “pond sticks” to build kites, which he started selling for three pence apiece.

He was meticulous in his work, as his mother had instructed. By the time he turned the craft into a full-fledged operation, he was fashioning all varieties of kites, some highly elaborate — all sought after for their reputation for flying well.

Mr Tuzo grew up in a large working-class family where his mother occasionally resorted to using flour sacks for clothing material.

He left school at 13 and apprenticed to be a house painter, but took on various other jobs to support himself.

He worked much of his life operating heavy machinery at the Pembroke Dump.

References to Mr Tuzo’s long career of selling kites and sending his creations skyward invariably returned to his time showing Mr Bush and Mrs Thatcher the ropes as they joined schoolchildren flying kites outside Government House.

Mrs Thatcher, in particular, was “delighted”, he recalled.

“In fact, she was pulling the kite in faster than the children of Bermuda.”

He also set a new world kite-flying record on April 24, 1972 — holding a kite aloft for 49 hours and 40 minutes.

Mr Tuzo broke his own record the next year, keeping a kite flying for 61 hours and 25 minutes.

He took a spiritual view of kite-making, calling it a gift from God that helped to bring people together.

When his name appeared among the ten Bermudians on the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List, Mr Tuzo told a reporter: “About two years ago, God told me through a dream that an award from the Queen would be passed to the Governor and given to me. And although I am very pleased to be honoured, I am not going to go overboard about it — but I thank her very much.”

• Vincent Basden Tuzo Sr, a keeper of tradition with the crafting of Bermudian kites, was born on April 28, 1934. He died in January 2026, aged 91