A lifelong artist as well as a teacher and journalist channelled his love of cinema and classic radio news into a broadcast career, including as a television news anchor, evolving a captivating personal style in the process.

Allison Seymour Sr, widely known as Al, drew on his fascination with radio news for the deep-toned and authoritative delivery of the island’s current affairs for ZFB radio, followed by the television news.

He was additionally a journalist and columnist for The Royal Gazette and illustrated his column for the Bermuda Sun.

Mr Seymour’s drawing skills found their way all over the island: he illustrated for the news station set as well as television programmes, churned out cartoons, designed logos and kept up a prodigious output as a sketch portrait artist as well as pioneering animation.

His flair with film, drawing and a paintbrush brought the island its own comic book hero, the Blue Manta, and the Codfish and Potatoes cartoon strip for The Bermudian magazine.

Mr Seymour’s skills and interests were eclectic, and included a fascination with aviation, influenced by watching planes taking off at the US base during summers spent in St David’s during his childhood.

Decades of practising on flight simulators, starting on the breakthrough Commodore 64 home computer of the early 1980s, culminated in 2010 with his flight, accompanied by an instructor, of a single-engine T-6 Texan aircraft at a Florida aviation school.

Mr Seymour described it as the closest he came to heaven while still alive.

Early in life, his commanding voice caught the attention of the late broadcasting legend Montague Sheppard, founder of the Black-owned Capital Broadcasting, who persevered through roadblocks from the island’s establishment to launch the ZFB-1 radio station in 1962, and hired Mr Seymour as his chief announcer.

Mr Sheppard had an eye for talent, and recruited many broadcasters — including Mr Seymour, who was teaching a class at the Robert Crawford school when a knock came on the door.

His son, Al Seymour Jr, said: “He opened and found Montague Sheppard standing there, who looked at him and said, ‘I’m starting a radio station and I want you to work for me’.

“He went home to my mom and said it was a good opportunity, even though teaching was a steady job and he had a young family. He couldn’t turn it down.”

As well as covering the news, Mr Seymour became a household name through the new station’s programmes. In 1965, when ZFB launched Channel 8, he became a TV news anchor and reporter.

He also took to print journalism, coming to the Gazette in 1973 as a reporter. He launched the hotel industry publication Inn Connect in 1977.

Mr Seymour returned to broadcast in 1978 as a radio and TV anchor and reporter for ZBM, where he remained until 1985, embracing new technology and garnering an award for his coverage of the Marques disaster in June 1984.

Nineteen crew perished when the tall ship was sunk by a rogue wave 80 miles north of Bermuda.

“It was one of those situations where there was no time to fret, but simply to get on with the job and with great teamwork do the best we can,” he recalled on the 40th anniversary of the tragedy.

Mr Seymour’s childhood was spent in the tight-knit north Hamilton neighbourhood of Ewing Street.

He attended Central School, now Victor Scott Primary School, and was known to cut across Pembroke Marsh to make it there on time.

He joked that he came to dread Christmas, once his artistic skills came to the school’s notice.

“Every Christmas, they would summon me to come to each classroom to draw Santa Claus and Christmas trees and presents,” he recalled.

One of his watercolours ended up in the home of the headteacher — Mr Scott himself.

Teachers got him signed up for art courses at the old Hamilton Hotel, and he went on to excel in correspondence courses at the Washington School of Art.

Mr Seymour taught art at Sandys Secondary and Robert Crawford, then to adults through the Spice Valley Community Programme.

However it was the Cecil W Frith Funeral Home, just up the street from his childhood dwelling, that provided his first job.

Al Jr said his father readily had any number of bizarre stories.

He also sketched nonstop, finding the white pine used for coffins irresistible — although one family was less than pleased to spot his drawings on the underside of a casket, as it got carried down the church stairs.

Mr Frith, something of a second father to Mr Seymour, paid for a series of art classes.

It was a family of artists. Siblings Stanley — the late calypso master who went by Lord Necktie — Keith and Marilyn all showed strong artistic gifts.

Al Jr said: “My dad could easily have worked for Marvel Comics.

“He and my Uncle Stanley drew comics; they did a horror comic that they tried to get picked up, but that didn’t quite work.”

Another creation, Captain Cosmic, got him featured by the Gazette in 1953.

A love of film was nurtured in classic cinemas such as the Aeolian Hall and the Colonial Opera House.

Rolls of film for classic cartoons such as Popeye could not be sent back during the Second World War, and Mr Seymour was intrigued by the technical aspects of animation after discovering a roll at the dump.

In 1956, Mr Seymour and his brothers pitched together for 8mm movie cameras, shooting clips of island life.

Performing their own stunts, they created three films: The Bicycle Thief, The Trap and The Manhunter.

Mr Seymour also loved classical music, particularly Beethoven. Another gift was singing, which included duplicating the style of Bing Crosby — to the point where his family found the artist’s signature White Christmas eerily similar to Mr Seymour.

In 1960, he married Barbara Simmons who, according to family, was already taken by his voice.

Mr Seymour’s sense of humour was evident when he picked her up for their first date driving the hearse from his job. The marriage produced Al Jr and Lisa Pace.

Ms Pace called him “a very adventurous father — he took us everywhere”.

The father would bring a projector home from work to the family residence at Dock Hill and set up a backdrop to give cartoon shows on the veranda.

Home movies were a constant — and, in what Al Jr called “eight seconds that changed my life”, his father created a short stop-motion film using their toys.

Al Jr was soon enough creating his own cartoons and animation. Father and son worked together on the animated Blue Manta film, which was entered in the 2002 Bermuda International Film Festival — a first for the island — using his comic book character that had run in the Bermuda Sun.

Mr Seymour remarried in 1987 to Shirley Simmons, bringing Carla Simmons, Sharain Glasford, Paula Carlington and Ralph Simmons into the broader family.

His commitment to art remained unstoppable. He was a prolific sketch artist for guests at the Grotto Bay Hotel, illustrated books and painted relentlessly, gradually shifting over to oils. He went to the studio each day.

Mr Seymour also produced two documentaries for CITV, and his reflections on local life and international affairs appeared regularly in the Gazette.

Al Jr recalled his father’s final words to his children at their last hospital visit were: “Thank you for everything you have done.”

Ms Pace called him a positive but driven personality for whom “failure was not an option”.

She added: “He’d say that if you’re doing something positive, never give up. If you give up, you’ll never see the end result. He would say ‘keep at it’ — I go by those words today.

“He was a great man, and I’m just glad to have him as a father. I’m also glad to be able to paint and draw. I will keep at it. Those are his words.”

• Allison Augustus Seymour Sr, a broadcaster, journalist and artist, was born on February 23, 1933. He died on January 4, 2026, aged 92