A West End funeral home director who cultivated “tact, sensitivity and a deep appreciation for what people are going through” was an accomplished sailor who served one term as an MP.

Colin Pearman threw his hat in the ring in 1985 as a United Bermuda Party MP for Sandys North.

He represented Sandys on the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce, and served on the Bermuda Race Relations Council.

He was a lifelong member of the West End Sailboat Club and former director of the West End Development Corporation.

Mr Pearman became the third generation of his family to work as a funeral director of C.W. Pearman and Son Funeral Service in Somerset despite training in college as a teacher.

The family business was begun in 1885 by William Morris Pearman and carried on by his son, Mr Pearman’s father, Charles Wilfred Pearman.

After an early foray into teaching, Mr Pearman told The Royal Gazette in a 1993 interview that he felt that he could do better following in their footsteps.

“Meeting and counselling with the families is something I really love,” he said.

Mr Pearman valued empathy, saying that “you can't really understand what people are going through, but you learn with experience to appreciate and sympathise with them”.

Mr Pearman was a keen sailor who joined the West End Sailboat Club in the early 1960s and took up comet racing, building his own craft named Lille Angel.

He sailed competitively, served as a race organiser and, in 2019, came back to the sport as official starter for the 75th Edward Cross Long Distance Comet Race.

Politics beckoned in 1984 when internal strife in the Progressive Labour Party resulted in nine opposition MPs leaving, followed by the formation of a third party, the National Liberal Party.

Among those expelled from the PLP was Lionel Simmons, MP for Sandys North, while his running-mate in the old dual-constituency system, Eugene Cox, stepped down in 1985.

Sir John Swan, the premier and leader of the United Bermuda Party, called a general election in 1985 with Mr Pearman and Edward Bailey elected in the traditionally PLP Sandys North.

The two were unseated in 1989 by Mr Cox and Dennis Lister. Mr Pearman campaigned again, unsuccessfully, in 1993.

He served in the 1980s and 1990s as director of Wedco.

Mr Pearman and his late wife, Gloria, had two children, Craig and Jo-Dina.

· Colin Wilfred Pearman, a funeral home director, former MP and former director of the West End Development Corporation, was born on March 13, 1934. He died in 2022, aged 88.