IF for a moment we as a people could stop judging individuals and things in terms of black and white, of United Bermuda Party versus Progressive Labour Party, we would be better able to measure the real qualities as man and public servant of Dr. E.D.S. Ratteray, CBE, and the outstanding contribution he made towards ameliorating the quality of life in Bermuda.

The entire community was shocked on Sunday when news filtered through that the well-known dentist had died at age 68 while napping at his home in Southampton. He was eulogised yesterday at St. Theresa's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Hamilton. His brother, the Right Reverend Ewen Ratteray, the Anglican Bishop of Bermuda, was chief among the many mourners paying their last respects.

Edward Stanley Davis Ratteray was universally known as "Stan" to those privileged to pierce his public persona of taciturnity. Having seen him grow up in the hills of Somerset, where he was born, we feel qualified to testify that he was always a person of few words. The daily newspaper, The Royal Gazette, boldly cited him as "Bermuda's Quiet Revolutionary" in announcing his passing in banner headlines.

If we accept that revolutionaries come in all stripes there can be no argument that Dr. Ratteray was not of the same radical cut as the Kingsley Tweeds and Roosevelt Browns (now Dr. Pauulu Kamarakafego), who like him had significant roles in the fight to end racial discrimination and segregation in public places in Bermuda.

But he got things done in his own practical, conservative way. He was a man of positive action. After all, he became Minister of Education and as such spearheaded the desegregation of the island's dual school system in the 1960s.

Stan was the eldest of three sons of Stanley Ratteray, a Somerset stonemason, and his wife, the former Geraldine Davis of Pembroke. He was born on July 11, 1934. Exactly 24 years later to the day, the first of his own three children, Deidre Marie, was born.

He was an unquestionably brilliant student. The Ratteray families were prime movers in the founding and early development of Sandys Secondary School. That association started with the late Fanny Ratteray and her husband Lawson Ratteray, the foster parents of AME Bishop Vinton R. Anderson.

The late Hon. Sir George Ratteray used to brag that all of the Ratterays in Bermuda were related, being descendants of Rhodes Ratteray, the son of a former Governor of the Bahamas, and a slave mother.

In any case, Sandys Secondary became the only school beyond kindergarten that Stanley attended in Bermuda. At the ripe age of 15 he left the island for Mount Allison University in Canada, where he studied history. His ambition was to be a dentist. After his third year at the university, and being anxious to start his dental training, he applied and was accepted at McGill University in Montreal.

While in his first year at McGill he simultaneously completed his history degree at Sir George Williams College in Montreal. He graduated from McGill in June 1957.

He joined the Canadian Army while a student in order to subsidise his education and became a commissioned officer in October 1954 (at a time when Bermuda's own militias were still segregated into separate black and white units).

In 1956 Stan married Patricia Joy Noel, a native of Grenada, who was also a student in Montreal. In September, 1957 they were a husband-and-wife team in the start-up of his dental practice. Their second child, son Derek Francis Paul Ratteray, was born November 27, 1959. That was only months after their parents' dramatic participation in the Theatre Boycott. Their child, Aideen Sylvia Theresa, was born on March 20, 1962.

The year 1959 was a momentous one for the household of young Dr. Ratteray. That's when he organised the anonymous Progressive Group that launched the Theatre Boycott - when blacks island-wide mobilised to stay away from the island's cinemas to protest the segregated seating arrangements. We did not know it at the time but Dr. Ratteray was the chairman of that brave band. It took fully 40 years for him and his associates to stand up and be counted and publicly declare their roles (well documented in Errol Williams' documentary When Voices Rise).

Rightly or unjustly, we used to accuse the people of the Progressive Group of not having the courage of their convictions by not coming out front and laying their necks (and incomes) on the line like the thousands who heeded their call and made the boycott work. But that's a matter for history to judge!

Later in 1959 Dr. Stanley Ratteray became a high-profile, articulate member of the Committee for Universal Adult Suffrage, another pressure group that rode the crest of the mood in the community for everyone aged 21 years and over - as opposed to just landowners.

Some strange compromises emerged from factions within the CUAS, factions that eventually were among the founding members of the United Bermuda Party. Stan Ratteray was among the UBP's founding fathers and he eventually became chairman of the party, which ruled Bermuda for 40 years (they were eventually toppled by the Bermuda Progressive Labour Party in November, 1998). In 1966 he was a member of the delegation attending the Constitutional Conference in London that framed the modern Bermuda Constitution.

In 1968 - at the first two-party ballot conducted under the Universal Franchise and the new Constitution - Dr. Ratteray contested unsuccessfully for election to a seat in the House of Assembly. He can claim some of the distinction proferred on us by Dr. E.F. Gordon when he declared that "it's an honour to lose an election in Bermuda" (with its then-nefarious voting system). He added that the best man did not always win! Stan now joined this elite group.

He was instead appointed by the UBP Government to the Upper House (now the Senate). He served four years as Minister of Education, from 1968 to 1972. He was variously Minister of Planning or Minister Without Portfolio between 1972 and 1980. For many years in the 1970s and 1980s he was deputy chairman of the Defence Board.

When Dr. Ratteray backed off from "up-front" politics, he became a power behind the UBP throne. And he devoted his considerable energies and talents to the cultural and business spheres in Bermuda. He served as president of the Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society, nine years as chairman of the Bermuda Festival and along with the late Sir Stanley Spurling he established the Bermuda Arts Council and the Bermuda National Trust. He was one of the founders of the Menuhin Foundation. For a period he was deputy chairman of the Bermuda Mental Health Foundation.

Also he held directorships in the Bank of N.T. Butterfield, the Bermuda Press, the United Kingdom Steamship Mutual Limited. At the time of his passing he was a member of the Saltus Grammar School board of trustees. His daughter Aideen Ratteray Pryse evidently inherited many of his cultural instincts. She is the CEO of the Bermuda International Film Festival and a quiet but driving force like her father.

His beloved wife Pat, three children andd four grandchildren survive Dr. Ratteray. His brother Altman (Bobby) predeceased him.