When the time comes to write an obituary, it is easy to say that the deceased person was a giant in their field, or had a vast impact on their community. In the case of Dame Lois Browne-Evans, who died yesterday, it is nearly impossible to find superlatives that are adequate to describe her life.

Dame Lois was Bermuda’s first female barrister and blazed a trail in the law that has been followed by dozens, if not hundreds, of women lawyers since.

It is difficult today to recognise just how giant a step this was, given that in the 1950s, a woman’s place, let alone a black woman’s place, was considered to be in the home, and certainly not at the Bar. But Dame Lois accomplished it. The price of failure would have been very high, since “Miss Browne” had not only her own hopes and aspirations riding on her shoulders, but those of hundreds of other women and much of the black Bermudian community. Far from failing, she excelled.

Still, with Dame Lois, there was virtually no divide between law and politics, and while studying in England, Dame Lois became close friends with many other Commonwealth and British Empire students from Africa and the Caribbean, many of whom went on to leadership roles in their countries. This experience, she said, inspired her long involvement with politics and the Independence movement. One would imagine that one of her greatest regrets would be that she did not see Bermuda become Independent in her lifetime, although the Progressive Labour Party’s triumph in 1998 and reelection in 2003 must have done much to assuage that.

On her return to Bermuda, Dame Lois quickly established a reputation as one of the Island’s leading courtroom lawyers and at the same time she threw herself into politics, as Bermuda moved quickly to universal adult suffrage. An early member of the PLP, she was elected at the age of 36 to the Devonshire seat she would hold until 2003 when she retired from active politics. That first election victory came against the late Sir Bayard Dill and was probably the one she relished the most, because Sir Bayard was a giant in the white establishment.

Just five years later, she was leader of the PLP after Walter Robinson lost his seat in Hamilton Parish, and she would hold the leadership until 1972 when Mr. Robinson returned to the House. By 1976, she was leader again, and she would hold the leadership until 1985 when she resigned following a calamitous election defeat at the hands of Sir John Swan’s reinvigorated United Bermuda Party. That defeat must have been particularly painful because in 1980, the PLP was on the cusp of winning power, having taken 18 of the then 40 seats in the House.

But Sir John, who replaced Sir David Gibbons in 1982, took the PLP by surprise when he held an election a year later and won a resounding mandate. That defeat led to unhappiness among some MPs with Dame Lois’ leadership. She forced their departures and this led to the formation of the National Liberal Party. Taking advantage of the divisions in the Opposition, Sir John struck again in 1985, winning 31 seats for the UBP. The PLP was reduced to just seven seats, with the NLP holding two.

It is to Dame Lois’ credit that she recognised then that she had to go for the sake of her party, and she stepped aside to allow the late Frederick Wade to begin the long rebuilding process that culminated in the PLP’s election victory in 1998 under the leadership of her protege, Dame Jennifer Smith. The 1984 PLP split, which was probably avoidable, will forever be on Dame Lois’ record. She was undeniably and necessarily a strong leader, but at times this became “my way or the highway”. Mr. Wade’s ability to build consensus and to move the party to politics’ middle ground was the reason the PLP recovered, but it is unlikely that it could have been done had Dame Lois not been his biggest supporter.

Nonetheless, that failure is relatively insignificant compared to her extraordinary list of achievements and firsts — among them first woman called to the Bar in Bermuda, a leading barrister who was never afraid to take on difficult and controversial cases, the first black female MP in Bermuda, the first female Opposition Leader in the Commonwealth, the first woman Attorney General of Bermuda and long-time Honorary Consul for Jamaica.

It is a dizzying list of accomplishments. But Dame Lois would have been quick to remind her listeners that she was equally proud of her long marriage to her “rock”, John Evans, and her three children, Nadine, Tina and Donald. To them, the whole community surely offers its heartfelt condolences at the loss of a great Bermudian.