N 1965, Barbara Harries Hunter joined the staff at Prospect Primary School and became the island's first dedicated reading specialist. Her husband, J.H. Owen Harries, had died nine months earlier, leaving her to care for their two sons ? James, 13, and seven-year-old John.

Though trained neither as an educator nor a reading specialist, Mrs. Hunter assumed the pioneering role because she needed a job and teaching was "the only marketable thing" she knew how to do. Her son John had suffered from dyslexia, a learning disability, and she had helped him through it.

"We knew John was having trouble learning to read and on the advice of our doctor, we took him up to Massachusetts General Hospital," she said.

The noted hospital was at the time conducting a special study on children with reading problems and staff members suggested the Harries family might benefit from a book, by Rudolph Flesch.

Today the book is widely acknowledged for promoting a more effective method of teaching in the classroom.

"That method made sure that they learned each word family ? and how to spell it," Mrs. Hunter explained. "It made sure that they tackled the spelling, which is harder to learn than reading."

Using the methods of that book and a few others recommended by Massachusetts General, Mrs. Hunter said she began tutoring John and similarly needy children on an individual basis. After her husband died, she approached the Department of Education with this skill.

"I'm not a trained teacher but I did know D.J. Williams who was then the Director of Education," she said. "I went to see him and asked if I could have a job. He said: 'Oh yes. We're in desperate straits in the secondary schools'."

Mrs. Harries, as she was known then, suggested that a role with younger children might be a better introduction to the profession for her.

"The next thing I knew, Dr. Kenneth Robinson rang me up one day and said: 'Mrs. Harries, we're expecting you next Monday morning at 8.30 at Prospect Primary School'."

At that time, Mrs. Hunter explained, Prospect Primary was the largest school on the island with more than 600 students ? all of whom were black.

"There were no white children there at all," she said. "It wasn't a problem in the least. Children are children. Any white teacher who thinks going into an all-black school is going to be difficult but who is used to children, finds herself at home at once, not noticing (the race of) either the children or her colleagues.

"At least two-thirds of the staff was black. The principal was black. My very dear friend, Esme Swan ? Mrs. Lancelot Swan ? was the deputy principal. She's still one of my closest friends."

According to Mrs. Hunter, her challenge was how to cope with teaching a handful of children at once. She had previously limited her classes to one student at a time.

"I'd never taught in a school before," she explained. "And going up there, led to everything that came afterwards for me. But first of all, I had to work out for myself a way of handling that number of children. I had to find out which ones I had to take care of and how large a group I could handle at a time."

Mrs. Hunter continued with a laugh: "That turned out to be four or five."

The new teacher soon discovered that close to 20 per cent of the student population required extra help in reading. Recognising the importance of assisting the younger pupils, Mrs. Hunter said she began tutoring seven year olds. Having attempted the programme with five year olds, she found their limited attention span lessened the results of her efforts.

"For the (five year olds), I worked on their teachers," she explained. "Not being able to read or spell is really a horrible handicap and it does not have a very good effect on self image and so on. So I tried to show them how my methods might be of assistance. They made it easy for me. They were glad to have the help.

"There were over 30 children in every class in those days, even at that age. I would find four or five from a particular classroom who were at about the same level and meet with them two or three times a week, for half an hour or three-quarters of an hour, depending on how the school timetable was run."

Mrs. Hunter's arrival at Prospect coincided with the acceptance of phonics as a learning method in Bermuda's educational system. The principles were the same as those espoused in the books recommended by Massachusetts General.

"Phonics should properly be called linguistics," she explained. "It has been the saving of slower readers ever since it was introduced. It is all about teaching by word families. You start with all the three-letter words that end in 'at' and you end with words that end in 'etion', 'ation' and 'ution'. When you get there, they've pretty much graduated.

"But there was a range of (learning difficulties). Dyslexia was the most common. It is not necessarily a terribly serious thing and can be overcome fairly quickly for some. For others it may take several years. There were children whom I taught for probably three years. Some would graduate (from the system) in six months to a year."

Mrs. Hunter remained at Prospect Primary for seven years. She spent part of that period working towards a bachelor's degree in Arts & Science from Queen's University in Canada. A correspondence course, it took her seven years to complete as a part-time student.

"I left Prospect only because my father had had a stroke in England," she said, in explaining her decision to resign. "I spent a year over there settling my parents down and when I came back my job, of course, had been filled.

"(As it turned out), I was the first reading specialist to work in a Bermuda primary school, but only by months. Mr. Gervase Marson came back from postgraduate work overseas and became the reading specialist in Government education. Within a very short time he had filled the post in every primary school and that is when things began to look up for Bermuda's dyslexic children. He did a terrific job.

"But I still needed to work and the only vacancy was at Gilbert Institute. In seven years, there'd been a huge difference."

Hunter spent nearly ten years at Gilbert Institute. A far smaller school than Prospect Primary, her experience there was completely different. "There were just over 200 children there," she said. "It was a totally different story. It was very much easier. Before very long I was working with children in their third term of school ? before they'd reached the end of their first year. I found by then I knew much more what I was doing and I think that the teachers did too ? the word was going around that this was the way to (improve reading skills).

"I was able to reach every child in the school who I thought needed me. I'm not sure I ever reached that point at Prospect. A school that size really should have had two specialists."

Mrs. Hunter retired from teaching completely, in 1982, at the age of 61.

"I was able to retire a bit early which was fine because," she laughed, "I tired. I was . (Teaching) is extremely intense work. It's very demanding.

"But I didn't really want to give up on the topic of education. So I started writing for the . For two years I wrote a column on education which came out every weekend."

Her topics ran the gamut, Mrs. Hunter said.

"Sometimes I wrote about reading. Sometimes I wrote about how to study for exams ? how if you were reading something you needed to remember, it helped to read it just before you went to bed. Things like that. Useful memory tips.

"Sometimes I could be mildly critical or suggestive toward the Department of Education. Eventually, however, I decided that I would have to stop. First of all I was beginning to repeat myself, and the other thing was that people weren't doing what I told them to. So I left off doing that."

According to Mrs. Hunter, it was shortly after that the next phase of her life began. She married an American, Robert Hunter, and began dividing her time between Bermuda and his home in North Carolina. On one of her trips here, she was struck by how much Bermuda needed a book like .

"My first husband, Owen Harries, had been very interested," she said. "He was a physicist, a scientist, and had a very clear mind. He was very interested in (the island's race relations) and he believed that Bermuda was headed for trouble.

"He turned out to be right. But whenever there's been unrest there's been an answer. Whenever there's been unrest on the black side, there's been an answer from the white side. It's never been allowed to continue.

"I was at the opening of an (exhibition) at an art gallery on Front Street talking with a man I knew, Charles Collis, a partner in the law firm Conyers, Dill & Pearman. We were, of course, talking politics. This would have been some time about 1985 or 1986 ? when politics was all anybody ever did talk about. I said to him that I wish there was somebody sitting around making notes, who might produce a book on (Bermuda's racial history), that it ought to be recorded."

Mrs. Hunter said the question which then arose was who would be the right person for the job?

"He just looked at me and said: 'Why not you?' By the time I got home I had got the title. The 'crossroads' (represented) 1959, the year of the movie boycott and the docks strike.

"That was when white Bermuda had to decide whether it was going to be obstinate, or whether it was going to move. And, very much to the credit of the white people in politics at that time, the moves began. That is when sense started to make itself felt. That is how the book began."

To prepare for the task, Mrs. Hunter resigned as a committee member of the United Bermuda Party's Warwick East branch. With no political connections, she felt free to write about Bermuda life as she saw it.

"It took seven years to write," she said, "but that was because it was a part-time job. If I came down (to Bermuda from North Carolina) without my husband, I would spend every day in the library going through on microfiche.

"I had a wide briefcase, like a pilot's case. I simply took photocopies of anything I thought was going to be useful, dropped them in (my pilot's case) and took them up to North Carolina with me. I usually was there for perhaps a month at a time and every morning I would write for three hours.

"At one point I got stuck. And for six months I don't think I wrote a word. Suddenly I realised I was getting older ? I think I was about 70 at the time. I had an awful trouble getting started again. It took about three days before I forced myself into writing and finally decided I enjoyed it after all.

"But reports (covering that period) were excellent. I didn't have to go to the legal library to write about the trials for the assassination of (Governor Sir Richard Sharples). That all came out of which published ? very nearly verbatim ? the trials. It really was an excellent paper for research work; to get the continuity of what was happening in Bermuda."

book was published in 1993. "(It) was very well received although I have been criticised. Only fairly recently I read somewhere that I had been too kind to white people. "But I'm white," she laughed, adding: "You do your best.

"On the other hand, I know there was one Progressive Labour Party (PLP) politician who was asked (by a member of the media) what he was reading. He said he was reading thatwe needed to know what happened ? which I thought was the biggest compliment I could have, really.

"I also had a very nice call recently from (former PLP Senator) Calvin Smith who is now writing for . He called me to say what a help my book had been to him. He said he'd had a copy for a long time, but had never thought much of it until he needed to look things up, and had then found how accurate it was. I was so happy about that. So it's still surprising people, as it did Mr. Smith."

The book is still available in stores more than ten years since it was published. The Historical Society in the Bermuda Library on Queen Street and the Bookmart, both keep copies on their shelves. Former owner of the BGA Group of Companies, Ward Young, was especially helpful, she added, ensuring the book was distributed locally while she resided in North Carolina.

The author said she missed the General Election of 1998. Having discovered her second husband was suffering from Alzheimer's, she moved to California with him so he could be closer to his two children and their families. After Mr. Hunter's death, at the end of 2000, she returned to her home in Bermuda.

"If I had been living in Bermuda, I would have been tempted to write a sequel, perhaps just a little paperback to follow up," she laughed. "Although, in retrospect I'm glad I didn't write it."