Asquith Phillips never received a toy as a gift until he was 8.

Before that, for every Christmas and birthday he received a book or a puzzle. His beloved aunt, Mary Eve, made sure of that.

“When I was born, she was a teacher at the Sylvia Lee School, which was in a little building next to St James Church,” the 88-year-old said. “There were no desks, just tables with benches.”

His aunt married Alfred “Dudley” Eve, a distinguished Bermudian sports administrator.

“They lived on Court Street,” Mr Phillips said. “There is a park there named after him.”

When he stayed with his aunt during the holidays, she would always set aside time for reading.

“I really didn’t mind,” he said.

Strong early reading skills meant he was always in a class with students one or two years older than himself.

“I never had a problem with expressing myself, which I put down to my early exposure to reading,” he said. “I am really grateful to my aunt.”

A certain gift for the gab, came in handy, years later when he worked in real estate for John Swan Ltd.

“I started the rental side there and was responsible for creating about 500 rental accounts,” Mr Phillips said.

In 1983, he left John Swan Ltd and started his own business, PTA Real Estate.

He says even now, he is not fully retired as people sometimes call him asking for help or advice.

He had an idyllic childhood growing up at Willowbank in Sandys, where his father, Richard Spurgeon Phillips, was the caretaker between 1938 and 1960.

At that time the property was a home owned by American Brigadier Alfred Robinson Glancy and his wife, Lenora.

“My father was delivering meat for the meat market in Sandys, when he met Brigadier Glancy,” Mr Phillips said. “Brigadier Glancy must have seen something in him, because he hired him.”

The Glancys only visited Bermuda for a month or so during the year. The rest of the time, the Phillips family, including mother Inez, had six acres of property to themselves.

“In the summer, we used to swim from the dock at Willowbank, to the island across from it, which we called Palmetto Berry Island, and then to the dock below Fort Scaur,” Mr Phillips said.

They would touch the wall, make a left and swim back to Willowbank, having swum a total distance of about a mile.

There was only one rule. When the Glancys were in town, the Phillips children were supposed to stay away from the main house.

One day, Mr Phillips, 6 or 7, was caught off-guard when he came home from school and found Mrs Glancy in her yard. He thought the Glancys were still off the island. She kindly asked him about himself, and he, with his usual loquaciousness, told her all about his birthday coming up in a short time.

On the evening of his birthday, there was a knock at the door.

“My mother asked me to get it,” Mr Phillips remembered. “I said why do I have to get it when my sister is closer to the door?”

There was muffled giggling from his siblings, as his mother insisted he be the one to open it.

Mr Phillips still gets a tear remembering Mrs Glancy standing on the doorstep with other members of her household, singing happy birthday to him.

Mr Phillips wanted to become a Dockyard apprentice like some of his older brothers but the British Navy’s programme to train young people in trades such as mechanics and plumbing ended just before he was old enough to take part.

He did become a mechanic, working in the garage at Belco. His still remembers the day he bought his mother a new stove.

“Twice a week my mother baked 13 loaves of bread in the oven, all lined up,” he said. “She had 12 children to feed. She did all the cooking. I was not even allowed in the kitchen to make toast. For a long time she had been using this old kerosene stove.”

The new stove was delivered sooner than he expected.

“It had a glass front and came with some new pots,” he said. “I came home and she was standing in front of it with tears in her eyes.”

He was eventually hired by Esso as a mechanic working at the Kindley Air Force Base in St David’s for twice the amount of money. One of his tasks was to mix up a chemical cocktail put in fighter jets to stop the windscreen from freezing over.

When he later went into real estate, he bought his own home off of Harrington Sound Road in Smith’s. He still lives there with his family.

Today, he has an odd relic from his childhood at Willowbank, a walking stick.

“In the 1950s there was a blight on cedars,” he explained. “The Government was worried that it might spread to other vegetation, so people were told to pull down the cedars on their property.”

A neighbour was given the task of removing the cedars around their house in Sandys and then cart away the roots.

“He wasn’t paid to take them away,” Mr Phillips said. “But he was allowed to keep the wood, because he sold firewood.”

One day the neighbour turned up at the door with a beautifully carved, polished cedar stick for Mr Phillips’ father. The wood had come from a root at Willowbank.

It was some time before the gift became useful.

“Over the years my father lost his foot and used the cane,” Mr Phillips remembered.

It was passed along to other family members as they needed it. Now, dealing with some hip challenges, Mr Phillips uses it proudly.

He and his wife Veronica, a retired teacher, will celebrate their 63rd wedding anniversary next July. They have three daughters Karla Phillips, Kelly O’Leary and Katrina Knights, six grandsons and one granddaughter.

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