GREAT philosophers will say that life, like wine, gets better with age while memory does not. But in the case of Florence Brady, this is not so. This 95-year-old matriarch still remembers events from more than 80 years ago as if it were yesterday and is eager to tell her story to anyone who has the time to listen. Putting her age into context you have to bear the following in mind - Mrs. Brady was born the year the Titanic sank; she has lived through two World Wars and every war since, left school the year Charles Lindbergh flew solo from Paris to New York and grew up on an island that had yet to know what motorised transport was. Despite being blind and having limited mobility following a recent hip replacement, Mrs. Brady met with the Mid-Ocean News to talk about her childhood and what life was like in Bermuda almost nine decades ago.Mrs. Brady was born in the Netherlands’ Antilles and moved to Bermuda with her parents when she was eight years old. Her father, Percy Johnson worked for the wealthy Canadian businessman, James Morgan, a member of the firm Henry Morgan and Company of Montreal, on his 38-acre plantation in Warwick, known as Southlands.

She recalls her father being one of hundreds employed by Mr. Morgan and worked primarily on the estate, planting and harvesting vegetables.

At the time she attended Warwick Academy when the school only had three classrooms. She recalls Mr. Morgan taking a personal interest in the school, and paying for the construction of additional classrooms, the Assembly Hall, known as Morgan Hall, and a self-equipped laboratory in which the pupils received up-to-date instruction in physics and chemistry.

“He and his wife are buried on their estate in Warwick. They used to go to Canada every winter,” she adds.

After a few years working for Mr. Morgan her father moved the family to Devonshire where he bought a dairy farm.

“Bermuda was a different place back then. We had no lights or cars ... my father owned some horses and carriages which he would take down to meet the Queen of Bermuda when she docked to transport passengers,” she explains.

He also delivered milk by horse and carriage and often she and eventually, her children, would accompany him on these trips.

She explains that if you wanted to go somewhere you either had to walk, or take a push bike.

Years later, this devout Catholic would walk with her children from Devonshire to St. Edwards on Sunday mornings to attend mass.

With a chuckle she explains that St. Edward’s was a tiny church in Hamilton and only years later did they replace this catholic church with a brand new cathedral on the corner of Laffan and Cedar Avenue - St. Theresa’s.

As for the>Queen of Bermuda, Mrs. Brady has another, more romantic connection to the ship. Her husband Julio was working as a baker and chef onboard the cruise ship when the couple met and fell in love.

“A lot of young boys worked on the boats in those days,” she recalls, adding that they very rarely finished school, whereas she stayed in school until she was 15.

After meeting Julio Brady she started working in the linen department at the Belmont and later moved to Elbow Beach. Being romanced in the 1930s included taking long romantic moonlit walks on the beach, family picnics and bicycle rides to some of Bermuda’s most scenic spots. “At night the moon would shine so bright, just like daylight,” she recalls, adding that Bermuda had no electricity at that stage so it was “very, very dark at night”.

Walking hand-in-hand on the beach on a full moon was considered very romantic and the couple would collect “pretty little shells” as they went along. Of course there are very few, if any shells on the beaches anymore and taking a walk on a beach at night nowadays is considered downright reckless.

Mrs. Brady sighs at the thought of all the changes the island has undergone: “Oh it’s changed and you’d never think it was the same old Bermuda and the changes are not that great. Years ago, in 1928/1929, people helped help each other. If you were sick, you had people come in to help you and if you had children, they would take care of your children, but nowadays, even your own children don’t recognise you.”

At the age of 53, her husband Julio died following several strokes, leaving her to raise their 12 children. She returned to work and moved in with her mother, Joanna Johnson, who still lived on the family farm in Devonshire.

“I loved him very much,” she says with a sad smile, adding that despite the fact that she was a young widower she never remarried because she never believed anyone would treat her children as well as their father had treated them.

As for moving in with her mother: “Grandparents played a big part in raising children back then ... they say it takes a village to raise children and back then, that’s what it took.”

Mrs. Brady adds: “My mother always used to say about this, that and the other ... but I always said the Lord would provide, and he did. I had 12 children and not one came out with a blemish. They all went to school and I didn’t lose any when they were small, or growing up. What more could I hope for?”With a smile her oldest daughter Millie Ray picks up the story after the family moved in with her grandparents.She and her eleven siblings helped their grandfather on the farm by picking potatoes and delivering milk - by horse and carriage no less.

“Milk was delivered in glass bottles and when they started pasteurising milk, we used to have to transport it down to Dunkleys Dairy in these huge metal cans,” she recalls.

“We used to have to go over Brighton Hill and we were always scared the horse would slip wearing their metal shoes.”

Mrs. Ray adds that most food was transported by carriage or cart in those days and she remembers when the fishermen used to go through the parishes selling fresh fish - from the back of a cart which was screened with mesh to keep the insects off. This was before electrical refrigeration when most Bermudians bought their blocked ice from Miles Market to use in special ice boxes at home. Another vivid memory is of the first time she ever saw a motorised vehicle. It was during the Second World War and before busses or cars were introduced in Bermuda and the US Army bases used trucks to transport soldiers and equipment. Mrs. Ray recalls soldiers being transported to Devonshire Marsh - just below their farm - by truck where they would spend the day doing tactical manoeuvres before being shipped off to Europe.

“Because my grandfather had the farm, he grew watermelon and corn and stuff like that and he’d invite the fellas up to the farm to eat watermelon and we got to meet a lot of them. Of course a lot of them lost their lives (in the war), but Bermudians accepted them ... Bermuda was a different world then,” she recalls.

Mrs. Brady, who has been sitting quietly listening to her daughter chuckles when asked if she still felt young despite her 95 years. “You don’t want to be my age,” she says with a big smile. “I’m blind ... but I feel young and I have a lot of children!” And she is not exaggerating. Mrs. Brady has 12 children, of whom eight are still alive, 25 grandchildren, 38 great-grand children and five great-great grandchildren - most of whom still live in Bermuda.