June Stanton, long-time owner and manager of Bermuda guest house cottages, died on July 19 of natural causes in King Edward VII Memorial Hospital. She was 80.

Mrs. June Stanton leaves a successful chain of guest house businesses and a large group of friends and family who recognised her for her jovial company and treasured efforts in the hospitality industry.

The daughter of Commander Guy Ridgway and Helena Ridgway, June was educated at Bermuda High School for Girls. There she spent a number of years under the tutelage of Miss Ida Smith, to whom she credited much of her ability to read and to write. June grew up in a Bermuda where there were no paved roads, and where transportation was by horse, carriage, and bicycle. It was a place she felt lucky to live in at those times. Swimming was her passion. This and readily available climbing trees were some of the charms she valued most while growing up on the Island.

After BHS, June was accepted at Smith College in the United States. Because of difficulty during the Second World War with currency exchange controls, she had to forgo this experience to stay on the Island. A similar situation occurred with her qualification in 1939 for the 1940 Olympics in swimming, also thwarted by the Second World War.

Needless to say, June bounced back and got a job with Imperial Airlines (now British Airways) at Darrell?s Island in the early days of airport transportation. Commissioned to deliver passengers and intercepted Atlantic mail, Imperial Airways flights sometimes would come in during Island-wide nighttime blackouts. June, who was trained in all airport jobs, was engaged in laying flares along the runways for the flights coming in at night. Work at the airport was challenging during wartime due to being sworn under secrecy acts to not discuss her work at the airport with anyone, including her father, then Senior Officer of Navel Intelligence for the North Atlantic Fleet.

June continued to present dedicated Bermuda journalists with the Ridgway Awards, named for her father, a long-time director of The Royal Gazette. Ltd. To this day, the Award consists of a cash prize and certificate in her father?s name for his work as director of The Royal Gazette. It was presented by June to six people last year for various areas of journalism from reporting to photography.

At the tail end of the Second World War, June went married Mal Martin, a US fighter pilot visiting the Island while on duty. Mal and June began their life in Bermuda by purchasing The Reefs. Together, they established a good reputation for the tourist resort by enlisting the famous Talbot Brothers to play Saturday-night dances. June would later praise them for being Bermuda?s best foreign ambassadors. June then acquired what was later known as Bermuda Cottages with business and tennis partner Jane Dennison. Running from Somerset to Pembroke, the accommodations required many an hour undercover doing lawn mowing and renovation work that June and Jane split between themselves, unbeknownst to visiting guests.

In the 1950?s, June brushed up on her bridge skills, which proved to be as formidable as her commitment to Bermuda real estate. She also wrote feature articles for the Bermuda News Bureau as well as practising tennis and amateur theatre.

During this time, June?s key business venture was the antique shop Cabbages and Kings, above Waterlot Inn in Southampton. June?s buyers in Scotland and Ireland would provide china, Toby jugs, and Georgian tables and chairs to the business whose customers were reputed to have? come into buy antiques for wedding presents and stayed for dinner,? June would say.

June expanded her horizons with interior design by accepting projects from US friends and associates to beautify their Vermont ski lodges and residences on the US East Coast. Coupled with a headquarters in Manhattan, she ordered furniture and accessories for those clients in much the same wasy she ran Cabbages and Kings; with a notoriously friendly efficiency and care that earned her many an admirer.

In a moment of real estate revelation in 1956, June purchased a South Shore property while her husband was away. Having spotted the beauty and convenience of the area, June decided to build five guest houses and called the collection Marley Beach cottages. It would become the centre point of her life for years afterwards. Before the days of the Internet, June made many a personal relationship with her guests who came to stay by booking over the telephone. Together, June and guests bonded over the appearance of ?palmetto beetles? and the idiosyncrasies of ?ancient Bermudian plumbing?, she would joke. Those same guests remained close friends, and returned with many a child named Marley for swizzle parties at her home at 16 Harbour Road.

June re-married on July 30th, 1970 to Gifford Horton Stanton,a Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering graduate with a passion for clocks and for June who worked for Gosling Brothers in Bermuda. During this time, June managed Marley Beach and with the help of a devoted group of associates; Loretta Bascome, Ronnie Sloper, and Egon Jensen, made the upkeep of Marley Beach her primary concern.

Interviewed for her memories of early Bermuda, June was the star of her own ?Living Treasures? feature video commissioned by the Ministry of Cultural and Community Affairs in Bermuda.

In the video she describes what she thinks is the uniquely Bermudian persistence in ?hanging together during hardships and fun?. Her experiences during the war tell much about her own and other?s fortitude in dealing with such hardships as food rationing and lack of new shoes. June remembered how nail polish was ?liquid gold to al the girls? who painted their dancing shoes with the lacquer for a fresh look. Window curtains became bathing suits with a sash, and pumpkin was on every menu during the bleakest times of the war.

June is remembered by her three children Van, Stephen, and Lane Martin; and grandchildren Malcolm, Anya, Stephen, Seth and Ashley. Her second husband, Gifford Horton Stanton, died in 2002.