Lucille Harris’s only request for her 90th birthday was to go dancing. She assumed her family had forgotten when November 14 rolled around and the only invite she got was a lunch date with her granddaughter, Bianca.

“We went to the restaurant and I heard all these people yelling, ‘Surprise’,” said Mrs Harris, who lost her eyesight five years ago through macular degeneration. “I almost turned around and went out again. I didn’t know what was going on.”

When she figured out it was a birthday party in her honour, she was thrilled. Friends and family from Bermuda gathered at the restaurant near her home in Pickering, Ontario, to celebrate the milestone; an Elvis impersonator made the event even more special for her.

“My son asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday,” she said. “I said I wanted to go dancing. He didn’t say anything more about it.

“Elvis was my favourite singer and I still love his music. [The impersonator] sang my favourite song, Love Me Tender.

“I said, ‘Bianca, I can’t stand this, let’s get up and dance’.”

Others soon followed.

Mrs Harris grew up on Woodlands Road in Pembroke, the eldest of five children. The area was predominantly white, and many neighbours would not associate with her family.

“BAA field was across from us, but events there were ‘whites only’,” she said. “That’s OK because my siblings and I created a little hole in the fence to slip through. We were smart. We went to all the events there.”

Her father, Alvin Eve, was a tailor who made a sports coat for Edward, the Duke of Windsor, when he was here during the Second World War.

“My father was a fitter for Trimingham’s and H.A. & E. Smith,” Mrs Harris said. “He had to take the prince’s measurements and everything.

“My mother, Helena, was also a tailoress and dressmaker and made all my clothes. All my friends were jealous.”

She attended the old Central School and won a scholarship to the Berkeley Institute. Instruction at the Glebe Road, Pembroke, school was so good that she and several other former students moved three classes ahead during their first year.

“As a result, I was through with Berkeley before my scholarship was finished,” she said.

At 19 she was in need of a job. She went back to the Central School and asked the principal, Victor Scott, if she could teach there.

Three years later she won a scholarship to study teaching in Jamaica, but it did not feel right.

“I’d heard it was primitive there and you had to go out to collect your own water,” she said. “That wasn’t for me.”

In the end, she paid her own way to attend Toronto Teachers’ College in Canada. It did not completely prepare her for what was to come.

“I couldn’t rule my first class,” she said. “But the other teachers were very good and they helped me out. I got the hang of things.

“The key is to make the children interested in the subject, and you have to get them to like you.”

After a few years she found her niche teaching the very young at Central, and then at Prospect Primary. Her career spanned 44 years.

“I really liked the little ones,” she said.

“They are so loving and will do anything for you. I miss working with them.”

She married bus driver Charles Harris in 1956.

“In those days teachers would take on other jobs in the summer,” she said. “I worked for a dry cleaner and met him there.”

They had five children: Michael (deceased), Judith Baumann, Andrea Brown, and twins Robert and Roberta Talbot. Mr Harris died in 2001 after 45 years of marriage.

Mrs Harris moved to Canada with her daughter, Judith, in 2011.

These days coming back to Bermuda is bittersweet.

“It often seems to be for a funeral,” she said. “But everywhere I go people remember me. I was in Gibbons Company one day and a woman stopped me and said I used to be her teacher. I was a little shocked as she looked older than I did.”

She recalled one day when she arrived at a bank and realised she had forgotten her identification.

“I asked the bank manager if he could help me,” she said. “He asked me if I knew any of the staff. It turned out I had taught all of the bank tellers present — I got my money.”

Mrs Harris has 14 grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. She is very proud that they are all university graduates.

Her granddaughter, Ciara Talbot, recently graduated from Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California.

“Ciara asked me to come to her graduation in California,” Mrs Harris said.

“I told her it was too far for me to travel and I was too frail. Then I surprised her by turning up.”

During the quieter moments in her life, she enjoys taking part in senior activities in Pickering.

“They think I am brilliant,” she said. “I’m not. I may be blind, but I still have a mind of my own. I still remember things. I still can walk. I can still can jump. They have dances there and always call me.”

• The Royal Gazette profiles senior citizens in the community every Tuesday in Lifestyle. To suggest an outstanding senior contact Jessie Moniz Hardy: 278-0150 or jmhardy@royalgazette.com. Have on hand the senior’s full name, contact details and the reason you are suggesting them