Elliott Simons loves wearing a blue baseball cap that reads “Sam”. The Devonshire resident got the nickname years ago working as a mechanic at Masters.

“The company bought in Bedford cars,” the 80-year-old said. “They had a mascot called Sam that went on notices like, ‘Service Sam says don’t put your hand in the door’. Two other guys in the garage started calling me Sam, because I was the smallest guy there. I was right out of school.”

Before going into the profession, Mr Simons had an idyllic childhood growing up on Cooks Hill in Somerset.

His grandfather, Arthur “Skipper” Knights was an important figure in his life and well known in the community.

“He came to Bermuda from Turks & Caicos and worked as a pilot in the Dockyard,” Mr Simons said. “He had 14 children and lived to be almost 103.”

When he was not with his grandfather, he loved to swim in the waters around Sandys.

“I do not remember a time when I could not swim,” he said. “I must have been born in the water.”

When he was 10 or 11, he and his friends would get large inner tubes and swim out to warships anchored in the Great Sound.

“They were way out,” he said. “This was in the Fifties, and the Navy still had a presence here. Sometimes people on the ships threw money into the water and we would dive for it.”

Mr Simons can remember blimp airships floating in the sky, sometimes anchored to the warships.

“We would be there with wide eyes,” he said. “They were used to track submarines and were usually grey to match the colour of the sky.”

As a little tyke, he attended the Sylvia Lee School run in the Sunday school building at St James Church in Sandys. The school’s headmistress, Mrs Lee, was very strict.

He was somewhat mischievous as a child. When he became older and attended Southampton Glebe, today Dalton E Tucker Primary, he and his friends would often walk to Whale Bay in Southampton during their lunch hour. They loved picking through a military dump there in search of old pedal bikes to fix up. The only problem was that by the time they snagged a bike and trekked back to school, lunch was over and they were late.

Few people had telephones back then but somehow his mother, Enid Simons, always knew when he had got in trouble at school, before he even reached home.

“The cellular phone had nothing on her,” Mr Simons laughed. “My mother kept a strap hanging on a nail. If it wasn’t hanging in its place, you knew you were going to get it.”

After Southampton Glebe he went to Prospect School for Boys in Devonshire, where CedarBridge Academy is today. It was there that he chose motor mechanics as a career.

He left his first job in the Masters garage to work on the building site of the new Southampton Princess Hotel.

“For several months I drove a truck to Dockyard to collect cement and bring it to the building site,” he said. “I saw the hotel go up from scratch.”

He resumed his job at Masters before the hotel opened in 1972 and went on to work at the firm for 25 years.

Mr Simons came into adulthood during a turbulent time in Bermuda’s history.

In the early hours of the morning of March 10, 1973, the Governor, Richard Sharples, and aide-de-camp Hugh Sayers were assassinated on Government House grounds in Pembroke. That night, Mr Simons was at the Bus Driver’s Club on Dundonald Street in Hamilton.

“There was a nightclub there and dancing,” he said.

Driving home, he and his friends were stopped by police and questioned.

“I did not even know that the Governor had been shot and the police did not tell us,” Mr Simons said.

The next day the police came to his job and took him to the police station. They were questioning everyone who had been on the road the night of the assassinations.

“It was scary but they let us go home after a couple of hours,” Mr Simons said.

In 1977, Erskine “Buck” Burrows and Larry Tacklyn were hung for the assassinations and another set of murders at the Shopping Centre in Hamilton.

“Buck Burrows used to ride past Masters on a blue Mobylette with pink spokes,” Mr Simons said.

Today, he has his doubts that Larry Tacklyn and Buck Burrows had the sophistication to pull off such a crime.

In those days, as the community grappled with discrimination, there were several riots and violent skirmishes.

Mr Simons remembered that during a riot on Court Street in October 1970, the late journalist Ira Philip had his car fire-bombed while he was in it. Police armed with teargas were called out to quell the disturbance.

“That was on the corner of Dundonald Street and Court Street,” Mr Simons said. “The rioters put 45-gallon barrels filled with water across Court Street to stop people coming through. They didn’t care who you were. If they did not know you, you would be a target.”

After working at Masters, he worked as a mechanic in the motorpool on the Kindley Air Force Base in St David’s. He then took a three-year course in boiler engineering. That allowed him to work on boilers in the laundry room at the Elbow Beach Hotel and at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

“I have been retired for about 20 years now,” he said.

After having a stroke a few years ago doctors told him he would never walk again. He was determined to prove them wrong.

He now walks with the assistance of a cane.

He and his wife, Peggyann, have been married for 54 years.

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