Long before the advent of talk radio, online news and other media blogging, much of the political change in Bermuda, like elsewhere, was known to be solidfied in local barber shops and hairdressing parlours. Mrs Marjorie Grant, who grew up in a homestead in Church Street, Hamilton can justifiably lay claim to being a “solidifier”.Marjorie turned 89 on Saturday and she’s as calm, cool, composed and demonstrative as ever, keeping her highly accomplished daughters Sonia and Michelle and a wide circle of other family and friends on their “p’s and q’s”.Sonia is a lawyer by profession. She has already made an indelible mark having been the first ever woman elected to the centuries-old Corporation of Hamilton breaking in one swoop a gender and racial band of the hoary old Front Street merchants who had long had the city council as their personal enclave. Sonia only recently retired from the Corporation, after a 13 year tenure that saw her acting from time to time as the city’s Mayor.Michelle meanwhile is the long-serving Principal of the Berkeley Institute, Bermuda's senior secondary school. She’s the wife of the Rev Dr Erskine Simmons, now of St George’s, a widely travelled AME clergyman.Marjorie trained as a cosmotologist in New York City. She seized the first opportunity to travel there at the end of of the 1939-45 War. She qualified at a Madame Walker Institue and was privileged to have met the Madame Walker, who was the percursor of Oprah Winfrey as far as wealth and influence among black women and others, worldwide, was concerned.A younger sister, Dorothy, joined Marjorie at Madame Walker’s. The girls had inherited the strong work ethics and drive of their grandmother, Miriam Agusta Burnham, who was one of the natives of St. Kitts who migrated to Bermuda at the turn of the 19th Century, taking advantage of opportunies flowing from the modernising of the old Bermuda Dockyard. The parlour of the Durham sisters was strategically situated in Miriam’s homestead at the eastern end of Church Street. Patrons from both ends of the Island took advantage of its convenient access.Their home and business was just two or three blocks away east of Hamilton’s Anglican Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity. The Durham girls became committed Anglicans. Marjorie still sings alto in the Cathedral choir. She became treasurer of the Guild of the Good Shepherd. As secretary of the Cathedral Branch of the International Mothers Union, Marjorie was sent to Australia in 1977 representing Bermuda at a Diocesan Mothers Union Conference.Marjorie became the wife of master carpenter and building contractor Philip Grant. He too was a committed Anglican. When he died after 36 years of marriage, Philip was serving with distinction as the Bishop’s Warden at the Cathredal. Many years before, he was the People’s Warden on the Cathedral Vestry. Meanwhile the daughters of Philip Grant, Sonia and Michelle, have sustained the legacy of the Grants and Durhams at the Cathedral.Sonia is the Cathedral Vestry Clerk. and only this past Sunday at the Vestry's annual general meeting, sister Michelle for the very first time became an elected Vestry member; and like her fellow members, will have a say in who will become the next Anglican bishop of Bermuda after Bishop Patrick White retires before the end of the year.