Mrs. Lillian Minors, who was in her 98th year when she passed, was a vibrant woman, gifted with inordinate charm and extraordinary entrepreneurial instincts.

She was a pace-setter in the hospitality field, and was also distinguished for her leading initiatives in various social, cultural and literary spheres of Bermuda. She was a founder and long-serving President of the Bermuda Business and Professional Women Club; and President of the Socratic Literary Club.

Perhaps she was best known as owner and operator of "Archlyn Villa" Guest House along with Archie Minors, her husband of 70-plus years who also operated his own successful printery.

Archlyn Villa, beautifully situated in St. George's, was a first class resort that Mrs. Minors and her husband went to great lengths and personal expense to establish for black visitors who otherwise were neither sought after, catered to or indeed allowed into Bermuda's white-owned hotels, guest houses and restaurants.

That was during the period when "the mainstream" fully capitalised on the infamous 1933 Inn Keepers Act. That Act provided legal sanction for service to be refused to black people and Jews who were not particularly welcome to Bermuda so far as Government policy was concerned.

And the Act gave justification to Government's Trade Development Board to exploit the public purse for decades sustaining that blatant racism and bigotry through its one-sided advertising and promotional programmes, all to the disadvantage of enterprising business people like Mrs. Lillian Minors.

It was not surprising on the other hand that the warmth of the hospitality and pampering of guests by Mrs. Minors and her staff resulted overwhelmingly in repeat and new business for Archlyn Villa. And her imaginative initiatives in personally promoting her business excited wider interest in black travel to Bermudsa. Archlyn Villa, needing more accommodation, was moved out of St. George's to a larger facility acquired in Pembroke West.

At the same time other enterprising Black Bermudians copied the example of Mr. and Mrs. Minors and ventured into the guest house and hotel business. Sunset Lodge in North Shore, Pembroke was brought on line by D. Wesley Gayle; Dilton Cann opened Cannville; the Imperial Hotel on the corner of Church and Burnaby Street was purchased by a black group; Mrs. Florence Swan developed Swanston on Berkeley Hill and Dorothy Eve established Homeleigh in Warwick. Simultaneously, black-owned and operated clubs opened catering to tourists, clubs like The Leopards Club, Cardinal Club and Clay House Inn.

Mrs. Minors with her track record was in the vanguard persuading her fellow black owners and operators to form themselves into The Bermuda Resort Association (BRA). They made many futile efforts to get the Trade Development Board (TDB) to advertise Bermuda and their properties in the Negro Market in the US.

It was the tenacity of former Member of Parliament Hilton G. Hill, and his election as BRA president that resulted in the government granting a subsidy that enabled the BRA to open and staff an office on 42nd Street in New York and to undertake on its own the separate advertising and promotion of that segment of tourism which the TDB and Chamber of Commerce had snubbed their noses at for so long.