Leon James never imagined he’d become a school principal. As a child, he didn’t see the point of education; once he finished primary school, he quit.

“I was a big boy and wanted to go out and work,” the 77-year-old said.

His parents, Aileen and Arthur, reluctantly agreed but insisted he that he take maths and English lessons on the side. He also had to join his father in the quarry.

“He said he had a space [there] for me to work and my mother was to put aside my money each week so that I would have savings,” Mr James said.

He changed his mind about the value of an education at age 14, when his parents joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

A lady at church asked him to help with a Sabbath class and he fell in love with teaching.

Meanwhile, his mother had a plan of her own.

When he was 17, she took his money and bought a piece of land for him on Cobbs Hill, Warwick.

“She didn’t tell me she was going to do it until it was done,” Mr James said. “Then she said, ‘I want to show you the piece of land you bought for you’.”

Over the next three years, he spent his weekends building a house on the land. At 20, he was able to rent out the house to finance his education.

He completed secondary school in Canada and then moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he got his bachelor’s degree in social studies from Oakwood College. He was there at an historic time and marched with Martin Luther King Jr from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 to improve civil rights.

“I had no idea what it was going to be like,” Mr James said. “To be honest, I was scared. There were so many people on the march. It was a dangerous situation. I certainly had no idea we were making history.

“I didn’t tell my mother I was going. I told her later and she really had kittens. But I was there for the whole march and saw him walk up the steps of City Hall in Montgomery. The police there had these big German shepherds who lunged at anyone who came within a certain distance.”

He graduated with top marks and returned to Bermuda to teach at the Churchill School in Devonshire, later renamed the Robert Crawford School.

He subsequently earned a master’s degree in education and qualifications in special education. He said: “I was one of few Bermudian male teachers so the principal, McNeil Warner, had special tasks for me.

“He wanted me to teach the boys health science.

“I ended up having to learn more than the boys in order to teach. But I couldn’t just go by the curriculum, as Mr Warner wanted me to teach the boys what life was about.”

In 1973, he became the deputy principal at Devon Lane School, an institution for children with educational challenges.

His early days there did not go well as the principal only wanted him to discipline the boys.

“He was a white Englishman,” Mr James said. “There was a lot of racial tension in Bermuda at the time and the principal was scared to discipline the boys.

“I wasn’t against corporal punishment but I felt that was his job and I refused to do it. He eventually reported me to the Ministry of Education.

“When I went down to the ministry and talked with Kenneth Robinson, he agreed with me.”

After a few months, the principal left and Mr James was offered the post. Many of the students actually did not have learning challenges at all, he said.

“They sent a lot of Portuguese students to us who were new to Bermuda and didn’t speak English. Many of them were very intelligent and I felt sorry for them,” he added.

“As soon as they could speak some English I would have them transferred to the Robert Crawford School. We also had a lot of students from the West Indies.”

He worked hard to find all his students jobs when they left school.

“Some of them couldn’t read but were very good with their hands,” he said.

Mr James, who grew up on the South Shore in Warwick, was the middle child of six children. His brother, Winfield, and sister, Cynthia Lightbourne, have since died; he and his surviving siblings remain close — former Progressive Labour Party MP Elvin James, well-known cricketer Lloyd James, and Lillian Grant.

He met his future wife, Judith Dickenson, on a dare.

“I was 28,” he said. “She had moved next door to us. One day I saw her and her sister walking past the house to go to the beach.

“I asked my brother Lloyd who they were. He said, ‘Don’t pay attention to those stuck-up girls’. I bet him I could get a date with one of them. He laughed and bet me a pint of sherbet.

“We had recently had a hurricane and had a lot of roof slate taken off roofs. My father had a truck and was selling slate.

“Driving the truck, I passed one of these girls, Judith, standing near her gate. I asked her if she wanted to come with me and see some of the damage.

“When she got into the truck I drove past my house and I tooted the horn loudly so my brother would see me. I wanted my sherbet. This year we will have been married 50 years.”

He retired from Devon Lane in 1996, but not from teaching.

He now helps adults to earn their general education diploma through a programme at the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

“I have been doing that for some time,” he said. “It is voluntary and I like doing it.

“Most of my students are older. I have one lady who is in her fifties. She decided she wanted to get her GED because she was having trouble helping her children with their homework.”

In his spare time, he loves fishing, golf and gardening. He also drives a taxi. He and his wife have two children, Shannon James and Nikita Euler, and three grandsons.

• The Royal Gazette profiles senior citizens in the community every Tuesday in Lifestyle. To suggest an outstanding senior, contact Jessie Moniz Hardy: 278-0150 or jmhardy@royalgazette.com. Have on hand the senior’s full name, their contact details and the reason you are suggesting them