Working for the Bermuda Public Services Union, Thelma Hart developed a permanent indentation in her finger from taking minutes.

The 75-year-old Southampton woman remembers typing up one important set of documents by candlelight during Hurricane Emily in 1987.

“It had to be done by the morning,” she said. “Those were the days when you could still take your typewriter home with you.”

She started as a secretary with the organisation in 1979, when they were the Bermuda Public Services Association, and saw it grow from there.

The late Eugene Blakeney became the organisation’s first full-time general secretary two months before Ms Hart came on board.

“The BPSA was not as large as the BPSU is now,” she said. “They were still moving into the public services. When I started, it had government, the hospital and the Bermuda College. The Bermuda Telephone Company was our first private-sector organisation to mobilise. It grew from there.”

She was there during a pivotal time for Bermuda.

“I was on the periphery of segregation going into integration,” Ms Hart said.

In April 1981, a deadlock over wages, between the Government and the Bermuda Industrial Union, spiralled into two weeks of national paralysis before a deal was struck. The General Strike of 1981 became the biggest labour dispute in Bermuda’s history. Ms Hart was on the front line.

“The BPSU was the last to come out,” she remembered. “There were 900 people in the yard of the Cecil Harris building on Wesley Street [where Argus is today] in Hamilton. That was very interesting. From there, we tried to forge a trade union congress so that we could speak as one voice but it took a while before that really came into fruition. That happened under Betty Christopher’s presidency.”

She loved getting to know the key players in labour relations in Bermuda on both sides of the table.

“Relationship-building is very important,” Ms Hart said. “If you build a relationship, even though you’re bargaining or fighting about issues, there is that respect level that is there that you can bounce back to afterward.”

As the BPSU grew under Mr Blakeney’s leadership, so did Ms Hart. She worked her way up from secretary to assistant general secretary, to research and training officer and officer manager.

In her early days there, she would often pay her own way to go to important labour conferences overseas so she could learn more about trade unionism.

“I really believe in lifelong learning,” she said.

She took courses at the Bermuda College to achieve her professional secretary designation and in 2000 she earned a bachelor’s degree from the National Labour College in Silver Spring, Maryland, through a long-distance programme.

“That helped me to progress to become the assistant general secretary,” she said.

She is particularly proud of her involvement with a programme called Pathways to Leadership organised for shop stewards. Jason Hayward, the Minister of Economy and Labour, was one of the people to come out of that.

“When I see him, I think, wow, that was a good programme,” she said. “It went through seven cohorts.”

Ms Hart retired from the BPSU in 2013, after 34 years with the organisation.

She was honoured for her dedication last year at the BPSU’s 70th anniversary banquet.

She grew up in Sunnyside Park, Southampton, the fifth child of seven. Her parents were Herman and Myrtle Todd.

Mr Todd, was a bartender, originally from St Kitts.

“He was a West Indian disciplinarian type,” she said. “He would tell me to leave the boys alone, get my education and travel.”

At The Berkeley Institute, she initially wanted to be a nurse but changed her mind.

“I transitioned from the academic programme to the commercial one,” she said.

It was taught in a small building further up the hill from the old Berkeley campus on Berkeley Road in Pembroke.

She learnt secretarial and administrative skills and surged ahead.

“That was my forte,” she said. “If I was not in the first three in my class, it just did not happen. I won the Commerce Cup at Berkeley in 1966.”

Her first job was working as a secretary for Carr Construction on Serpentine Road. From there, she worked at a few other places before applying for a job with the BPSU.

Ms Hart found it emotional to retire.

“At that time the Government was looking at extending the retirement age,” she said. “I was hoping I could have gone on but I made the decision to retire.”

However, she still works part-time, in the Oceans Gift Shop at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.

“I have been there seven years,” she said. “I just love meeting the tourists, especially first-time visitors. I get really excited by them. I am a Certified Tourism Ambassador.”

In her spare time, she swims in the ocean every morning with two groups of friends one called the Beach Girls and the Sunrise Swimmers. With the Sunrise Swimmers she helped to raise $6,000 for cancer charities through their fundraiser Tatas to the Sunrise.

Ms Hart has three sons, Jamal, Mtume and Omari and nine grandchildren.

• Lifestyle profiles the island’s senior citizens every week. 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