When I start this feature with a declaration of how busy, busy this past week has been for Yours Truly, I trust it will not be construed as an excuse, but rather an explanation of how I have been called right, left and centre paying due respects, first upon the passing of trailblazing nurse Iris Davis and my old friend and colleague Iffor Nisbett, as well as fulfilling some inescapable roles as a grandfather honouring third and fourth generation offspring.

Iris Almeria Davis, state-registered nurse who had been honoured by the Queen with the MBE for public services, was in her 95th year when she died on January 5.

An extensive, most interesting front-page feature on some highlights of her career was carried a day later by The Royal Gazette.

This article is intended to stress that nurse Davis was cited in my book Heroines in the Medical Field of Bermuda, published by The Writers’ Machine Jacks: No. 2/Volume 1, May 1994. Iris was an outstanding graduate of Sandys Secondary School, trained as a nurse at the Bermuda Cottage Hospital, Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, New York and St Giles Hospital in London. She was sponsored by the World Health Organisation on a course in nursing supervision and administration in St Kitts and was later seconded to England were she qualified as a public health nurse at the World College of Nursing in London. Nurse Davis became the first Bermuda-born senior nurse and supervisor of internal services of the Bermuda Department of Health.

Nurse Iris Davis’s place in Bermuda history was noted as being a niece of the iconic nurse Cordelia Fubler, a midwife just before the turn of the last century, who travelled up and down the Somerset to Hamilton corridor through thunder and lightning to render services. Cordelia is photographed in the book with her sisters Lovinia Davis and Alice Simmons. All three lived beyond 90 years.

Lovinia and Alice pioneered the Marcus Garvey Movement in Bermuda. The sisters were my neighbours on Sound View Road, Somerset and I have no hesitation in crediting them with my own profundity as a historian, and would venture to state that of Iris as well.

It was some of the foregoing that took me off course, following through with what was promised a week ago as Part 2 of the story on City of Hamilton beautician Sandra Stowe; and how the latter had been overwhelmed by an urge to pay tribute to the legacy of her own phenomenal mother Emma Isabelle Stowe and grandmother Alice.

That tribute was also on behalf of Sandra’s siblings including brother Ronald.

Having only recently celebrated my own 90th birthday milestone, the realisation that this is a new age hit me hard again, upon being invited to the Sabbath Day service at Midland Heights Seventh-day Adventist Church atop Crawl Hill for the christening of my great, great-great-granddaughter Rea Philip-Adams. I recalled attending christenings at the ancient font near the front of St James Anglican Church, Somerset decades ago when five or six babies with their parents and godparents would be baptised, all within a few minutes and it was over.

This time around with much solemnity, it was only Rea with her parents and four godmothers and an equal number of godfathers as well as a dozen or more other family and friends participating.

Climaxing it all we were invited to a repast at the St George’s Royal Artillery Association’s hall. It was sumptuous with a variety of food, fruits, meats and mixed vegetable to feed part of the proverbial five thousand.

Beautiful little Rea was the star. She did not whimper once during the next three hours including photo sessions before it was all over.