GRACIOUS GRACE KEPT HER COOL AT 90Mrs Grace Mallorey Dill, as head of a family of prominent achievers who during the course of her regular job has had a front seat to most of the momentous events that have rocked Bermuda during the last 75 years, has been admired for her calm, cool and collected style, as a most personable cashier, first at the old Colonial Opera House, Rosebank Theatre, Island Theatre, and in recent years, the new Liberty Theatre.Grace celebrated her 90th birthday on Tuesday. On Sunday, the eldest of her four children, Jeanette Musson, the recently retired principal of Delwood School, told her mother she was going to lunch and to pack for a two-night stay at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess Hotel. Grace needed only a few moments to get ready.But when she entered the Gazebo Room at the hotel, Mrs Dill confessed she could have screamed. Standing before her were some 130 family and friends, singing “Surprise” and “Happy Birthday”. She almost became ‘un-gracious’.She confessed to this writer, she was taken completely by surprise. Her children, she said, had done an excellent job, keeping her in the dark.I also had to confess, as I did on Sunday during the open-mic portion of the celebration, that Grace and I were classmates at the Berkeley Institute. After paying my tribute to Grace whom I have always called ‘Gracious Grace’, a young woman came up to me afterwards and told me that I was revealing my own age.But I did not have the chance to explain how it all happened. In any case we remained the best of friends down the decades.Grace was the youngest in a family of seven siblings, brought up in Devonshire. She was aged 17, and was shattered, when her mother, who was a greatest inspiration, died. A family friend who was a cashier at the Opera House Theatre offered her a summer job.She had many perks in her job, being able to see for free all the great movies hitting the theatres; and being in the limelight for all the glittering live events at either one or another. But there were many more scary moments, inhaling tear gas during the riots and escaping the curfews, marches, and demonstrations that rocked the city centre during the Fifties and Sixties, most especially during the historic 1959 Theatre Boycott that desegrated theatres, hotels and other public places in the country.Grace was aged 23 when she became the bride of Earl Dill of North Shore, Pembroke. He was her protector, and no one dared mess with Earl. She was 65 when he died, and that’s when for the first time she acquired her driver’s licence.As we said before Jeanette was the eldest of the Dill’s four children.Next was Raymond, a one-time executive of the Bermuda Housing Corporation; and another son, Andre Dill,a clerk at one of the Island’s leading law firms; and there’s Patrice Dill, a nurse and top manager of the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute.There are four grandchildren who keep Mrs Dill fully challenged, when she’s not globe-trotting. They are the live-wire broadcaster and former PLP senator Thaao Dill, who heads Hott 1075 Broadcasting Station; his brother, barrister and attorney Kai Dill, sisters Courtney and Che Dill.Thaao was master of ceremonies at the luncheon, and it goes withouting saying it was an upbeat clebration, with Grace doing a mean waltz with one or another of her offspring. The one solemn moment was when family friend and poet Melodye Micere Van Putten sang and performed a libation, honouring kinfolk who had passed on to the great beyond.