At 80, Austin Simons is easily the oldest person in his class with Wing Lam Kung Fu School. The group trains in Bulls Head Car Park three days a week.

“I am not as mobile as I once was,” the Devonshire resident readily admitted. “I just do what I can.”

As it turns out, doing what he can means cleaning up in martial arts competitions.

In 2021 Mr Simons’s instructor, Albert Simons, took a video of him and entered it into the open hand category in the Kung Fu Taiji Online Tournament sanctioned by the Pan American Wushu Federation. Participants had to use various techniques to attack or defend, without curling their hand into a fist.

“I don’t know how many other people I was up against but I was competing with people from martial arts schools all over the world,” said Mr Simons, who was stunned when he won a gold medal.

He has been doing martial arts for more than 35 years.

“It keeps you in shape and it is something positive to do,” he said, stressing how it was important, after retirement especially, to do things that keep your mind and body active.

Shaolin kung fu can get rough as he learnt while fighting in a tournament in the early 2000s.

“I was in the ring, and I came up with my left foot and the other person came up with their left knee and caught my shin,” he said. “My foot just kept on going and my leg snapped right off.”

The bone was visibly pushing the skin out. “It was no one’s fault but my own,” he said. “The martial arts teach you to be humble.”

At King Edward VII Memorial Hospital doctors put his leg in a cast and told him to go home and rest. He went to work instead.

“I had my own business, Simons Enterprises, renovating and building houses,” he said. “At that time we were putting a roof on a building at Butterfield & Vallis. I wanted to be there to supervise my workers.”

Someone snapped a photo of him with his leg up on a stool, directing the job, and sent it to The Royal Gazette. He still has not been able to pin down who put it in the paper, but he suspects Jim Butterfield, former head of Butterfield & Vallis.

“Jim said some people stay home when they have a sniffle, and there I was directing things with a cast on,” Mr Simons said. “He said I was a good example to the staff.”

Mr Simons grew up mostly in Sandys. Even as a child he had an ambitious streak.

“I used to make kites and sell them for six or seven shillings each,” he said. “Before Good Friday I would have a whole living room full of kites. At Cup Match I would sell cedar walking sticks with Cup Match colours. I always wanted to get ahead. Being the oldest of ten children I had to set an example for my siblings to follow.”

He loved drawing and wanted to become an architect but his police officer father, Austin Simons Sr, decided that his son should be a carpenter.

“In those days you did what your parents told you to do,” said Mr Simons, who has no regrets. “I was able to make my own living. I am most proud that I built my own home, and have a good marriage and family.”

At 13 he left school and started sweeping floors for general contractor Arthur “Governor” Smith. It was mindless work, but he tried to do his best.

“I always made sure the floor was spotless because I wanted to keep elevating myself,” Mr Simons said.

After a few years he went to work for Ambards, a commercial carpentry firm on East Broadway.

“I had my own bench there,” he said. “I used to make things like box frames for windows and screen doors, and rafter feet for houses.”

When the company fired the top mechanics a lot of the work fell onto the younger workers.

“After a couple of years we guys were producing, but we had not seen a pay raise,” he said. “I was getting £7 a week.”

He was not the only one to complain, but he was the only one to ask the manager for a raise. When the answer was no, he quit and joined Robert Gray’s contracting firm.

There he was paid £17 pounds a week, which felt like a princely sum after Ambards.

In 1965, Mr Gray sent Mr Simons and two other men to work in Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands.

“We were building Cable & Wireless there, and seven apartments for Cable & Wireless workers,” he said. “At that time the landing strip in Tortola was a dirt track, and no planes could land at night because there were no lights out there.”

He returned to Bermuda after 19 months, and then decided he would start a home renovation business.

“At 26, I renovated an apartment for my parents so they could have a steady income,” he said. “Then I built my own home.”

He still lives in the house he constructed near Chaingate Hill in Devonshire.

He ran Simons Enterprises for several years before he got tired of directing staff. In 1987, he joined the Department of Planning as a building inspector.

“I retired at 59 then went back to renovating homes,” he said. “I am not really retired now, but I have just one client that I occasionally do work for.”

He practises martial arts three evenings a week and also enjoys putting together puzzles, and growing vegetables in his back yard.

He and his wife Daisy have been married for 53 years.

“I had just divorced my first wife and was single,” Mr Simons said. “I said I would never get married again. This guy asked me to drop him at home. At his house, three girls came in. They were all visiting from Jamaica.”

Mr Simons offered to show Daisy around the island. “Everything just clicked,” he said. “It was seven years before we got married.”

They have three children – Austin III, Juliet and Suzette – four grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

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