A memorial service will celebrate the life of one of the island’s oldest residents tomorrow.

Myrtle Burrows, who was 106, grew up in North Village in Pembroke and credited her longevity to keeping active and carefree.

She told The Royal Gazette on her 100th birthday: “I just eat healthy foods and I walk up and down my steps for my exercise.

“And I try to keep away from stress and just keep smiling.”

Mrs Burrows hailed from a tight-knit neighbourhood on The Glebe Road, the oldest girl to Mabel and Gilbert Dill, a dock-worker.

Events in 1919, the year of her birth, included the approval of prohibition by the US Congress.

The Russian civil war was raging while, back home, the Sunshine League children’s home was founded and the Furness Withy steamship company was moving into the Bermuda market.

Mrs Burrows attended Central School, which became Victor Scott Primary, followed by the Girls Institute of Arts and Craft, which became the Prospect Primary School for Girls, where she learnt dressmaking.

It became a lifelong skill. Mrs Burrows tailored clothes for herself as well as her family, taking ideas from the window displays of Hamilton department stores.

Her first job, at the age of 16, was at a Hamilton dry goods store. She worked for AS Coopers for 12 years and then Sullivan’s Jewellers on Front Street. She retired at 75.

She had three children, Allister Simmons, Carl Simmons and Cynthia Simmons, and married the late Hyel Burrows, a taxi driver, in 1963.

Mrs Burrows was still on the road at 100, ferrying fellow seniors around the island and to meetings at the First Church of God and the Mount Zion Seniors Club.

A funeral service for Mrs Burrows will be held at 2pm in St John’s Church in Pembroke.

• Myrtle Lavinia Burrows was born on July 25, 1919. She died in January 2026, aged 106