“Highly successful and most productive” is the assessment Vincent Samuels made of his lightning trip to Bermuda in his capacity as secretary-treasurer of the Beersheba Old Students Association (BOSA), connected with the Beersheba Primary School Community in New Market, StElizabeth, Jamaica.We featured in this space a week ago, how the mission of the “BOSA Man”, which is how we got to refer to Mr Samuels, was to follow up on the life and times of James (Dick) Richards, a Jamaican who came to Bermuda in 1902 with a contingent of the all black British West India Regimen famously called ‘The Bully Roosters’, that had served with distinction with the British Army during the Boer war in southern Africa at the turn of the century.The primary role of the Bully Roosters in Bermuda was to help guard the Island which housed Boer prisoners-of-war the British had captured and interned here. When their tour of duty ended, Mr. Richards was one of two Bully Roosters who chose to settle in Bermuda. The other was George Morris. He was Barbados-born, not of the burly physical stature of his Jamaican comrade, but possesed of similar business acumen.The two Bully Roosters became prosperous, colourful innkeepers and big property owners; Mr Richards in the City of Hamilton, and Mr Morris on the North Shore border of Devonshire and Pembroke. The latter’s Bermudian descendants over the years became intimately involved in various facets of Bermuda’s social, cultural and professional life.As we said last week, Mr Richards was born in a village in one of the poorest regions of Jamaica. Both his parents died when he was at an early age, leaving him to fare for himself. Seeking broader horizons, he set out, walking for three days the 115-mile distance to Beersheba Primary School, and to work day and night in a bakery. He never forgot from whence he came. His alma mater was more like a leaky shack.As Mr Richards’ fortunes in Bermuda grew, he liberally spread his philantrophic interests to his newly adopted home; and, he was midful to similarly take care of his old community friends in Jamaica. Periodically when he returned to Beersheba, he would have with him trunk loads of goodies. He endeared himself to the peasant farming community that nurtured him as a child. According to Mr. Samuels, they revered him as Bermuda King. He purchased the land on which his alma mater stood, had the school rebuilt, and in his will stipulated scholarships would be made available for its brightest graduates to attend secondary school. Likewise he provided scholarships for the brightest scholars of the old Central School to attend the Berkeley Institute, the major high school for black Bermudians, back in the good old, bad old days of racial segregationBOSA has plans to turn the school into a museum honoring The Bermuda King and to rename the school after Mr. Richards. The association dispatched its secretary-treasurer, The BOSA Man, to Bermuda to attempt to clear up any ambiguities that may exist among banking and other authorities in the Island particularly so far as the scholarships in Jamaica are conrcrned and to get whatever artifacts existing for use in the proposed museum.The BOSA Man met many influential Bermudians in that quest, and visited sites where the old Bully Rooster or Bermuda King had impacted, including the old Canadian Hotel that he built in Reid Stret, Hamilton during the 1930s. That’s when when mainstream white owned and operated hotels were legally empowered by the infamous Inn Keepers Act of 1933 to keep blacks and Jews from “darkening their doors”, no matter their class in life. That was up until the 1959 Theatre Boycott resulted in the desegregation of public places in Bermuda.Also the BOSA Man visited the Bermuda Archives and the Museum of the Bermuda Historical Society in the city, where he was able to read the last will and testament of Mr. Richards. . He met the Pastor Rev Dr Lannel Guyton and congregants of St. Paul AME Church where a stained glass window is named The Good Shephered and carries the name of James (Dick) Richards, recognising the his philantrophic efforts financing the post-war renovations s for a balcony, new pipe organ and other implements at St. Paul.Following his meeting with the recently elected Mayor and Corporaton of Hamilton, as well as with the Honorary Jamaican Consul, Winston G Laylor; and the President of Jamaica Association in Bermuda, the BOSA Man has been able to report “a number of things that are in the pipeline for Mr Richards to be publicly recognised and cited for his invaluable contribution to commerce, education, and philanthropy in Bermuda, as well as in Beersheba”.