Around this time every year Susan Brown Kelley gets a bit homesick for Bermuda.

Easter isn’t celebrated in the same way in the United States and she misses the kites, fishcakes and hot cross buns she remembers from her youth.

“My father, Charlie Brown, was Bermudian and my mother was American. I was born and raised there till I was 25, at which time I married and left the island,” she said.

“We were pretty deep in the Bermuda traditions, one of them being Easter and Good Friday and the kites.”

Ms Brown Kelley and her siblings Greg and Michael attended Roger B Chaffee High School on what was then the US Navy Base.

They’d travel there each day from their home in St George’s with their mother, Mary Frances, who taught at the St David’s school.

“We incorporated a lot of the Bermuda traditions in our school and the biggest was Good Friday kite flying.

“Our classes would make a kite and we would enter them in the Agricultural Exhibition and display them. We loved everything surrounding Good Friday. It was just a really exciting time of year for us.”

Ms Brown Kelley now lives in Florida and is an administrator of the Roger B Chaffee High School Facebook page.

The group has about 1,100 members who regularly post about the school, Bermuda and their friendships.

It helps keep the memories alive for the 59-year-old who no longer has any family on the island and hasn’t been back to visit since 2006.

“Good Friday is not as big a deal in the States as it was in Bermuda. In Bermuda we had the food that went along with the Easter holiday and there was the kite making and the kite flying – they just don't do that here. I've tried to get my grandkids into it, but it's just not the same,” she said.

As a child, she and her family would head to the hardware shop Godet & Young each year for balsa wood, tissue paper, string and glue.

“A lot of times it would be a project in school during that time of year. We would bring everything to school and make our kites – a lot of intricate cutting of the tissue paper; you had to glue it all just right. It was very delicate, but it was a lot of fun.”

The years their kites were entered into the Ag Show were especially fun. Ms Brown Kelley never won anything but her brother Michael’s third place prize was a big deal for the whole family.

“We had a huge front yard so there was plenty of room and we would fly the kites. They always flew.

“After you make them so many times you kind of have it down to a science – the kites with the tails and the hummers and you'd have to adjust the length of the tail to make sure it would stay up in the air. It was a lot to it back in the day.”

Being out on the water is another fond memory. Her father was a top sailor who won the Western Hemisphere Championship Cup in 1958.

“We were big into boating and sailing as I was growing up,” Ms Brown Kelley said. “We went to school on the base and so we had a lot of local and American friends; it was just the best childhood you could ever ask for.”

She left Bermuda sometime around 1988, having married an American sailor who moved to another post.

“My brother Greg, he stayed in Bermuda. He married a British girl and worked for one of the banks in Hamilton and they stayed there until around 2006. He was the last family member to leave the island. They live in the Isle of Man. We seem to gravitate towards islands.”

A recent post on the Roger B Chaffee Facebook asked members to share “great memories of making and flying kites at Easter time in Bermuda”.

“All of us kids that went to school out at the base we all have the best memories of, particularly Easter time and the home-made hot cross buns and making the kites,” Ms Brown Kelley said.

“Every now and then I’ll throw out a little something that I know will get everybody started in conversation. The memories are so wonderful.

“There's been a lot of activity on that post from the kids I went to school with and the teachers too. For them it was just as exciting.”

The school opened in 1970 and closed with the handover of the base to the Bermuda Government in 1995. The Facebook page is comprised mainly of students.

“It's just kind of a special little group,” Ms Brown Kelley said. “We all have Bermuda in common, even though we've all dispersed and are living in different parts of the world.

“It's just something that kind of brings all of us together because everybody had such great memories and such a fantastic time.”

Follow Roger B Chaffee High School on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/7202636670