It wasn?t just a phone call out of the blue that put Angelita Diaz-Douglass back in touch with Rhonda Jackson ? a similar call also renewed a friendship with the man she would later marry.

John Douglass, a fourth generation descendant of the most famous African American of the 19th Century, Frederick Douglass, knew Angelita from Howard University but the two had lost contact for many years.

?I met her in 1985 or ?86 and she had already been in the Miss Bermuda and Miss World competitions. It was Mother?s Day 1999 when we got together,? recalled Mr. Douglass.

According to his wife he made a good impression, showing up at her door wearing a royal blue suit and carrying a yellow rose!

He wasn?t about to miss out on this second opportunity.

?I was at work one day at the hospital and there was a little bit of downtime and we (he and colleagues) were talking about regrets and I said I met this girl a long time ago, she was very nice but I was extremely busy and regret not taking the time to get to know her,? explained Mr. Douglass a Senior Scientist.

?They said to me you should contact her and see what she?s doing. I went home that day and called the Howard University directory and got a number under her name and it was her aunt?s number.

?When I called her aunt she told me she was living in Maryland and that the next time she spoke to her she would tell her that I called. She called me that afternoon and the next day we decided to get together which happened to be Mother?s Day.

?We?ve been together ever since. I took her to Italy and we got married in a town called Ravello. We made very good friends with the interpreter, have stayed in contact and are supposed to go back next year for our fifth anniversary.

?The people were very, very nice there, they invited us into their homes.?

The couple now have two children, Phillip, three, and five month old Emily who is named after Mrs Diaz-Douglass? late grandmother.

?I feel very, very blessed,? said Mr. Douglass.

?We always look back and say those 14 years was time spent working our way back together, because we each took separate pathways.?

Said the former Miss Bermuda: ?I married a wonderful, wonderful man.?

She remembers how he called out of the blue one day a few years ago.

?I had been in Maryland the whole time and he was in Baltimore,? she explained.

?I had gone to the University of Maryland for my BS and he was at the University of Maryland the same time but we never saw each other. We have known each other for about 20 years.?

Mr. Douglass is proud of his connection to Frederick Douglass, whose life spanned nearly 80 years from the time that slavery was universal in American states to the time it was becoming a memory.

?I feel very proud of the name, felt very, very proud about things when I was growing up and always felt I had to be successful and wanted to be successful in order to carry it on so that my children can be happy and proud,? said Mr. Douglass, who does research for a microbiologic instrument company.

?I didn?t feel, growing up, that I was going to get any special treatment, I always felt it was in my heritage to be proud of.?

Frederick Douglass freed himself from slavery and through decades of tireless efforts he helped to free millions more. His life was a testament to courage and persistence that continues to serve as an inspiration to those who struggle in the cause of liberty and justice.

?The way it was explained to me, my great-great grandfather was supposed to have been a brother of Frederick Douglass,? said John Douglass.

?I was told that he was a great orator, could speak extremely well and could write well. He captivated audiences, black and white, and people believed in him especially the abolitionists at that time and that is one of the reasons why he spent so much time up in Rochester, New York and Boston.

?I?m from Maryland but my roots go back to South Carolina. At one time there was a Douglass plantation and the story that was told to me was not only were there people from the Douglass plantation in South Carolina but there was also people who got sold and were on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.?

Added Mr. Douglas: ?They didn?t teach a whole lot about him when I was in school, but there are more books about it now that I have constantly read. We actually tried to trace back our family history and the records are very very clear because slaves at that time had property and so all property records for each states are still listed in the archives.

?There is no record as such about who was Frederick Douglass? father but it is understood he was a slave master. A lot of people in that particular time were children of slave masters.?

According to research written on Frederick Douglass, all of his children were born of his marriage to Anna Murray, a free African American whom he met while he was still held in slavery in Baltimore. They married soon after his escape to freedom.

After the death of his first wife, Douglass married his former secretary, Helen Pitts, of Rochester, New York. His dismissed the controversy over his marriage to a white woman, saying that in his first marriage he had honoured his mother?s race, and in his second marriage his father?s!