For years, whenever there was a hurricane, Noela Haycock would wait nervously until the roads reopened then race from her home in Hamilton Parish to St George’s.

She wanted to check on the Deliverance, her baby.

“I was always afraid that the masts would blow down,” the 80-year-old said. “But luckily the only thing that happened was once a yard arm came down.”

She had been with it since the beginning. In 1967, soon after she joined the Bermuda Junior Service League, she was given the task of supervising the creation of the replica ship – something no one else wanted to do.

The original Deliverance was built by people stranded here by the wreck of the Sea Venture in 1609. The following year they sailed the Deliverance to their original destination, Jamestown, Virginia.

BJSL members were divided about the build; some believed it was not the right project for the charity.

The ship, built by the late Raymond DeShields, was opened to the public in 1968, on Ordnance Island.

It was demolished last July after it fell into disrepair.

“It was very successful for a while,” Ms Haycock said. “But a wooden ship sitting on dry land does not fair very well, especially if it is not looked after properly. It had to be rebuilt a couple of times before it finally reached the point where it had to come down.”

She grew up on Cut Road, St George’s.

“I had a happy childhood,” she said. “Our world was so much more innocent then. We did not have access to all the information that our children have now.”

In her day, manners were critical.

“If I was walking into St George and was micing and didn’t say good morning to someone, my mother would hear about it before I got back,” she said. “Then I would be sent to apologise.”

She grew up knowing her late husband, Arthur Haycock. Their parents were friends.

“My sister and his brother shared an incubator when they were both born prematurely,” she said. “The hospital only had one incubator.”

She remembered Mr Haycock as a shy boy who was sent away to boarding school early.

Then one summer he turned up at her house.

“I was 16 and he was 18,” she said. “He asked me out. I was shocked, but I said yes.”

They “courted” for five years, mostly long distance since he was in college and she was in boarding school. She has all the letters they exchanged and loves reading them.

“Reading them makes me feel like I am spending time with him again,” she said.

She feels sorry for today’s generation, most of whom do not know the pleasure of reading, writing and posting letters.

“Everything is so instantaneous,” she said.

After attending St Mary’s School in Peetskill, New York, she entered the cartography programme at Briarcliff College.

“I just thought it would be really interesting,” she said. “I found old maps really fascinating.”

Her studies led her to a summer job at the Sound Fixing and Radar Station in St David’s after her freshman year.

Between 1948 and 1969, the Sofar station used a series of hydrophones set up around the Atlantic to listen for passing Russian submarines. It was staffed by members of the US Navy and Columbia University students.

“In those days the space shuttles were brought down into the ocean,” Ms Haycock said. “Nasa had no communication with them once they entered Earth’s atmosphere.”

Nasa decided to use the hydrophones to more quickly locate and retrieve the space shuttle capsules.

Ms Haycock had to construct a map that took into account Earth’s curvature. This allowed Nasa to draw a line between the retrieval ship, the triggered hydrophone and the space capsule.

It was challenging work.

“Everything had to be drawn by hand,” she said. “When I was done, I remember my boss coming in and saying he was going to be sending 250 of those to the Navy and to Nasa. And Columbia University was going to use them for something. I also had to do maps for them of the hydrophones, because they had added some.”

She loved cartography but did not continue with it after graduation.

“I wanted to come back to Bermuda and there was no work in that on the island,” she said. “My degree allowed me to do town planning but I don’t think there was much of that in Bermuda at that time.”

She was able to put her town planning skills to the test when she became an alderman for the Corporation of St George in 1992 and then deputy mayor of the town in 1998.

“There was always something going on,” she said. “The infrastructure of St George was so old and so neglected. We spent most of our time putting [metaphorical] fires out.”

At the time, she felt that St George was slipping away because there was not much activity.

“There was this lethargy,” she said. “But it was fun to be on various committees to try and get things working better.”

Her grandfather and father, both called William Meyer, had been members of the Corporation of St George and she felt she had an obligation to do the same.

“It was always made clear to me that you give up your time to the community,” she said.

David Saul, the former Premier, invited her to become a United Bermuda Party senator in 1995.

“That was one of the most difficult times in my life,” she said. “I took on too much. All of the positions I had were busy and full of meetings.”

She never wanted to be a senator but felt it was her civic duty to accept the invitation.

“Otherwise I would have lost my chance to complain and moan about the UBP and what it was doing,” she said.

In the early 2000s she began stepping away from her community responsibilities to relax and spend more time with her family.

Her husband died in 2017. They had been married for 52 years.

“I still miss him every day,” she said. “He was the love of my life. Everything I achieved was with his love and encouragement.”

Now she enjoys decluttering her house and spending time with her children, Stephen and Elizabeth Haycock, and their children.

Lifestyle profiles the island’s senior citizens every Wednesday. Contact Jessie Moniz Hardy on 278-0150 or jmhardy@royalgazette.com with the full name and contact details and the reason you are suggesting them