Watching him move about it is difficult to imagine that Brownlow Place is one of Bermuda’s oldest citizens.At 95 he still drives, walks a few miles almost every day for exercise and his mind is still sharp as a tack. He puts his longevity down to having a positive attitude about life and a strong religious faith.Good genes played a part, too, as his father Alfred Brownlow Place lived into his mid-90s, his mother Julia into her 80s while his father’s mother was 102 when she passed. Two sisters Hilda Place and Rhoda Burrows are still living in their 80s, all three outliving their younger brother Winston.“I don’t want to be thinking negative, I like to make things happen,” said Mr Place who, at 95, is the eldest and first resident at the seniors home at Ferguson Park, Southside, where he has lived for the last ten years. He grew up on Ewing Street and moved to Marsh Folly Road after marrying in his 20s.“When you are coming along your earlier life determines your later life, so you have to make things happen. You just can’t say ‘I wish this to happen’, you have to see that you get out there and do it, make it happen.“When I was a boy I did things I should not have done and left out things that I should have done. I watched my elders and how they carried themselves, how they spoke. That’s how I learned. I went to school but didn’t learn very much, I learned more outside of school.”Mr Place left school aged 13 to go to work as a plumber, then joined his father ‘AB’ Place at the Bermuda Recorder newspaper as a printer. The bi-weekly paper was started in 1925 by his father and four others, Henry Hughes, David Augustus, Joaquin Martin and James Rubaine. Such was the contribution made by AB Place to the community that Government’s media room is named after him.After the paper folded Mr Place went to work for the Corporation of Hamilton where he stayed for 30 years before retiring aged 85.Mr Place’s wife of 59 years, Sadie Marguerite, died in 1999 and he has also outlived two of their three children son Brownlow Tucker Place and daughter Glenda Walker. Only his youngest daughter Charlene Tyrrell is still living. And while he has slowed down, he still keeps busy with activities that keep his mind and body active like walking doing volunteer work. And he still drives his grey car everywhere he goes.“I always had a very good appetite, ate well and did plenty of walking and thinking right,” he said. “All these things benefit you.“I was always a religious chap, I joined the AME Church when I was 19 and I’m still there at St Paul AME.”Mr Place, who turns 96 in July, was recently given another clean bill of health by his doctor, but he says he is only interested in living to 100 “if I can still have all my faculties”.Understandably Bermuda has changed from the one he grew up in.“We’ve gotten away from principles,” he said. “When I was in my early 20s there were no more than 30,000 people in the Island. Now you’ve got twice as much so therefore you have twice as much trouble. We certainly have lost our way. Now elderly people don’t even go out at night.”I don’t think there are too many places in the world where one could be as comfortable as I am, even though Bermuda has changed quite a lot. There is only one solution to the problems ... seek God first and his righteousness in order to clean up this Island.”