Though he has been a tailor for more than half a century, providing garments for President Richard Nixon and other prominent personalities, Howard Saunders has become even more famous for his part time work on Bimini. Day after day, the 81-year-old is seen throughout Bimini on what seems like a one-man crusade – sweeping Bimini into pristine condition as he voluntarily cleans areas of the island.
It is a job he has done every morning since 1958. He would get up, clean a block near his home then clean one further away. He does it, he says, because he loves doing it and he loves Bimini.
“My part time (job) is to keep the island of Bimini clean,” he says. “It is a beautiful island, but sometimes it is not as clean as I would like it.”
Already, Mr. Saunders has logged more than 16,000 days of work. By his conservative estimate, he has put in more than 3 million strokes with his tool of choice – the yard rake.
“I have done with the scratch rake, 3 million strokes,” he says. “I am doing that from Monday through Saturday and doing 900 strokes a day. I worked it out and it came to 3 million, not including Sundays. But that’s where it is at now.”
Mr. Saunders says the exercise keeps him healthy. It also satisfies him because he likes seeing Bimini looking tidy.
“I come on and I rake and I will push with the broom,” he says. “I push the sand out of the road with the broom, and that is one of the joys of my life, after church. Church is first and then your family and then the raking is third.”
Mr. Saunders believed there is often a challenge to keep the island clean because of a litter problem. At times, people simply dump items or throw trash on the ground, he says.
For him, it is natural to want to keep his island clean. He says it was instilled from him and his contemporaries from they were children.
“That is in me,” he says. “When I was a boy, we had to clean and clean every day. Then we would clean Saturday and you wouldn’t have to clean Sunday.”
Mr. Saunders hopes to return to the days when there was a greater sense of personal pride in one’s environment. He believes it would make it easier to keep the surroundings clean. Meanwhile, he plans to continue doing all he can to help for as long as he possesses good health and strength…at the rate of 900 strokes a day, seven days a week.
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