David Allen served Bermuda's first political party for 35 years, having joined the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) in 1967. Soon he was being praised by party leader Lois Browne Evans for his "dedication and faithfulness".

Mr. Allen first ran for Parliament in 1980 but it was not until 1989 that he was elected to represent the Pembroke East Central constituency.

Prior to entering parliament he had served as a senator from 1980. And in the years before entering the Island's legislature he served in a number of supporting roles, perhaps the most significant being as adviser to the party during the 1979 Constitutional Conference at Warwick Camp.

Works and Engineering Minister Alex Scott remembered a consummate professional with almost total recall who brought his journalistic and public relations skills to bear on the fortunes of the party.

"He has always been totally committed to whatever endeavour he was involved in. He was a journalist and he was an excellent journalist. I used to be known for note-taking and I would become obsessed because he wouldn't take any notes and he didn't have to because he had an excellent memory ... he could just pinpoint any event."

Mr. Allen took a major risk, as a white man, when he joined the party formed to protect the interests of the working classes and fight racial oppression.

"Certainly he was a man alone in the sense that he was a great person who chose to and dared to stand with the PLP against the establishment to voice the expression of freedom that blacks were seeking in the 1960s and 1970s even though the whites were trying to maintain an oligarchy but David Allen was fearless... and the rest is history."

He was to play a major role, as Opposition Senate Leader from 1985 to 1989, in keeping the party alive during its weakest years.

The party had gone through a devastating split which left Mr. Allen, his two Senate colleagues, Mr. Scott and Jennifer Smith, and just seven Members in the House of Assembly holding the fort.

"He ate slept and drank politics," continued Mr. Scott. "There wasn't any aspect of political life in Bermuda he didn't touch influence or participate in. He was a Senator, he was a parliamentarian, he became a minister but before any of that he was a stout supporter of any MP. He would always research material for the party and insist it was professionally presented."

Ironically, his deteriorating health was a major factor in galvanising the party after months of infighting and bickering that left some fearful that another split was in the offing.

"I'm inclined to believe that the fact that we came out of the symposium as unified as we did was that we couldn't sit there and bicker knowing that David Allen was struggling for his life far away."

And the publisher of travel trade journal Dateline Bermuda, syndicated travel columnist and the author of many travel guidebooks was destined to become Tourism Minister - a portfolio he held with passion and enthusiasm even on his deathbed.

Mr. Allen offered to resign the Tourism portfolio last Sunday, however, said Mr. Scott.

"He was prepared to step aside in the best interest of tourism.... I told him he would be tourism Minister until the day he dies and that's the way he will be remembered."

His friend and colleague said that Mr. Allen's initiatives aimed at breathing life into the ailing industry may not have taken hold yet, but they will in the near future.

As Tourism Minister he steered through such groundbreaking initiatives as the Hotel Concessions Act and the African Diaspora Heritage Trail.

Mike Winfield, hotelier and former Senate Leader for the United Bermuda Party, pointed out that Mr. Allen had appointed him chairman of the Bermuda Alliance for Tourism - a "gutsy move" which showed that he would not hesitate to rise above political differences for the sake of tourism.

And if politics is the art of rhetoric and persuasion, Mr. Allen was the master of that as well. Most will remember his portrayal of former Tourism Minister C.V. Jim Woolridge as "Rip van Woolridge" - a criticism that he, Mr. Woolridge, had been asleep at the helm of tourism for 20 years.

"He could turn a phrase, take over a debate just by the force of his verbiage and his barrage of rhetoric, and I don't mean that in a bad way - he just kept coming at you with that information from his prodigious memory and he would bury you with his facts and your facts."

But Mr. Allen himself came under attack as Tourism Minister and arguably held the record as the most vilified Cabinet Minister in Bermudian politics. History, his friends say, will vindicate his leadership of the tourism portfolio.

"He was an extraordinary character," said Mr. Winfield. "He was an erudite, well spoken and extremely energetic and determined individual. And he brought those characteristics to the portfolio."

He added: "He will be missed not just as Tourism Minister but as David Allen - the unique character of David Allen, a man of tremendous energy and a believer. You could not shake the belief he had in Bermuda. They broke the mould - there will never be another David Allen."