---

On a bright sunny Bermuda day, I noticed a figure moving along the roadside. As I came up behind this figure, I saw dark blue jeans worn low and baggy, hip-hop style.

The seams were picked out in white stitching. Above the jeans, a light brown hood-up hoodie, with its characteristic backwards and upwards pointing pointed peak.

The hoodie seemed too large for what looked to be a small slim and narrow-shouldered human frame.

This combination of clothes and colours was being shuffled along by the jeans enclosed legs. The legs ended in black - or were they dark blue? - sneakers or running shoes. What the Brits call 'trainers'. These, too, were trimmed in white.

Passing, I looked for a face and features. Some sign of a distinct human individual.

With the sun behind, all I saw was the dark shadow cast by the hoodie's enveloping hood. That dark shadow wouldn't let me see in. But I believe the person could see out.

Moving past, I realized that all that I had seen that suggested a human individual was the shape, the gait, and the two hands that protruded from the ends of each of the hoodie's two sleeves.

I thought it most likely that the clothes enclosed a male. A black male. I knew the person was black because the hands were black. I thought the person was male because I couldn't see any typically female protuberances and the style is one most often affected by black males.

I thought, further, that this was a black male who seemed not there. As if he had made an attempt to make himself disappear; to dehumanize or de-individualize himself. Because I never really saw him, he had succeeded.

In spite of my looking, he had succeeded in hiding himself. In the full bright light of a sunny Bermuda afternoon, he had managed to make himself disappear. He had made himself an anonymous shadow.

I believe that there are many male shadows who are just like him. Too many. But why?

Paths that cross

In other countries, people would say that we had come from different sides of the tracks. In Bermuda, we came off different hills. I came off Pond Hill. He came off Trimingham's Hill. We both lived in Bermuda. But we lived in different Bermudas. At the start, his Bermuda was white and privileged. At the start, my Bermuda was black and was kept, and kept well, in second place.

In life, and as in all of Bermuda's 398 year history, our paths crossed.

The first crossing was in 1966 when he brought his blue-hulled sloop 'Privateer' to Bermuda and slipped her at Darrell's Island. I was tasked with the job of varnishing and painting that yacht.

I did it well, and I enjoyed doing it. A sometime boatman myself, I understood the pleasure that a man derived from owning and sailing a yacht. Later, I gave up some May 24 holiday periods to work - for pay - and paint and varnish 'Privateer'.

I stopped that and moved on.

Later, from 1996 to 1998, our paths crossed again. I was working towards the PLP's 1998 victory. Our paths crossed because, as Chairman of the Board of Director's of the Bank of Bermuda, he was part of a consortium of Bermudian power-brokers who, every year - and year after year, pumped, and had always pumped, hundreds of thousands of dollars into UBP coffers; but had always denied similar funding for the PLP.

More time passed.

In February 2002, I wrote about Bermuda's overall tax structure. I said that in Bermuda's best long-term interests, Bermuda needed to shift from its 1930s style over-reliance on Customs Duties, that had been put in place as long ago as the 1830s. I'd written that Bermuda needed to move to taxing corporate profits and a point of sale Sales Tax.

In publicly agreeing with me in two newspaper pieces, Eldon Trimingham and I crossed paths for what turned out to be the last time.

From one Bermudian to another, I was sorry to note his passing.[[In-content Ad]]

---