Joe Issa Offers Condolences to Family and Friends of Community Stalwart.

Popular Ocho Rios civic leader Joe Issa has expressed in an interview his sadness at the passing of businesswoman and philanthropist Hazel Dalley, stating she will be remembered for her contribution to communities and tourism in Montego Bay.

 

“She was a very popular person and has been rewarded for community service…She was very much part of the business landscape on Gloucester Avenue for decades.

 

“I would like to express my condolences to her family and friends,” says Joe Issa, who had a successful career running his father’s chain of SuperClubs all-inclusive resorts, one of which was located close to Dalley’s Variety Shop.

 

By sheer coincidence, Dalley’s recent passing, at the age of 89 years, follows that of her brother Allan Vincent “Vackey” Dalley on April 23, 2010 also at the age of 89 years.

 

In her brother’s obituary published in the Miami Herald on the first anniversary of his death, Dalley wrote, “Gone from our presence but not from our hearts...from sis Hazel you will always be in my thoughts; fond memories of u will continually be in my heart.”

Today, it is the turn of others like Issa to express their sadness at her passing, and by all accounts she will be missed by many persons here and abroad.  

 

In a letter to the editor of The Gleaner on February 11, 2007 Canadian policeman Curtis Kempt and his wife, a nurse, commended some of the good people they met while holidaying on the island, including Dalley.

 

The Kempts wrote: “We were fortunate to meet Sister Hazel Dalley as well. In the short time we got to know her and her staff at Dalley's shop on Gloucester, we were truly treated like family. Her walls are covered with commendations and awards from far and wide; it is very obvious why. She is a fine woman.”

 

In a November 7, 2010 review on TripAdvisor a Canadian couple also commended Dalley while commenting on the hotel where they stayed. They said, “…Dalley's (Variety) shop a few doors down has coffee (Blue Mountain) on at 7 am and she is a wonderful old woman.”

A year earlier when the Granville community in St. James was overwhelmed by crime, Dalley contributed to the purchase over 20 footballs for the 19 teams in the Granville Corner League. The donation was in support of the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s community safety and security initiative.

In 2012 Dalley, referred to as a friend of the police, was recognized by the St James Police Civic Committee at its glitzy annual ball held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre.

 

Dalley was also a friend of the Royal Bermuda Regiment’s Band, hosting its members in a tent outside her shop to entertain locals and tourists alike whenever they are in Jamaica.

 

“Whenever we are in Jamaica we make it a point of duty to play at the store because Auntie [Dalley] is a good friend of the regiment, so it’s a kind of a payback for all the good things that she has done for us over the years.

 

“I can’t really tell you how the friendship started, but it is something that I have inherited and it would be bad of me to break a good tradition like that,” Director of music Major Dwight Robinson of the Bermuda Regiment said in a Jamaica Observer article.

 

Observers say although levels may vary there is much in common between the Cool Group founder and that of Dally’s Variety Shop, both being Justices of the Peace, recipients of national awards, business persons and well-known philanthropists, which Issa continues to express through Cool Charities, one of over 50 subsidiaries in the retail conglomerate he has built over the past 21 years.