The Betty Black Blog

Over the centuries, Jamaica has attracted many an adventurous soul from far away. Some come to stay; some stay a while then continue on their journey. There’s been Henry Morgan and Horatio Nelson; there’s been Errol Flynn and Ian Fleming and many more not quite so famous. Nor have all these interesting visitors been from days gone by….

I was born in Ireland in 1950 near a small town called Ballymore Eustace in county Kildare on the banks of the river Liffey – purportedly the source of water for Guinness! It was a small town then and is a small town now, and it’s most recent claim to fame was that a lot of the movie ‘Braveheart’ was filmed in the surrounding countryside. Paul Newman also established his ‘Hole in the Wall’ camp there for kids with disabilities. Kildare is the heart of horse racing and breeding in Ireland and it would appear I have come full circle to Del Mar.

I was the youngest of three children, having an older brother and sister, and most of his life my dad was a truck driver. We never owned a home or car, and in my early years we never had electricity or running water; could have written a best seller if Frank McCourt had not gotten there first with ‘Angela’s Ashes’.

My Mom passed away when I was nineteen and my Dad when I was twenty-six, life in Ireland for them was tough. I went to high school and college on scholarships and part time jobs. Everything from making hay and working in a sawmill as a high-schooler, to security guard and builder’s labourer in college.

I did business studies at Trinity College, Dublin, and in my final year I was president of my faculty’s society. We had John Kenneth Galbraith address us at my demotion meeting; he had recently been Ambassador to India for president John F. Kennedy. My law lecturer and mentor was Dr. Kader Asmal, a South African Indian, he later went back home and became Nelson Mandela’s first Minister of Education. He got me interested in human rights, which helps explain my involvement with Pathways to Peace and other organizations.

I loved college and took advantage of the long summers to live and work abroad: Germany as a carpenter, the Channel Islands as a truck driver – I ‘borrowed’ my Dad’s license – and Corfu, Greece teaching water skiing – I spoke no Greek and could not even swim! Seems like all my life no-one can understand my accent…

I was in New York in ’69, working for American Express and Jane Parker’s Bakery…and yes, I went to Woodstock in an old VW Beetle (and I did not inhale!) I was in Times Square watching a full-scale model of the lunar module when man landed on the moon and helped collect signatures to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a National Holiday.

After college I went to work in England, various jobs in the packaging industry, corrugated cases (cardboard boxes to you and me). I was there for eight years, during the IRA Campaign and the hunger strikes, not a very comfortable time to be Irish in the UK.

I was offered a job in Kingston, Jamaica in ’82, making, of all things, toilet tissue, napkins, hand towels and, just like in Greece, lack of prior experience was not a handicap! I ended up staying there for twenty years, moving from one manufacturing company to the next: packaging, office furniture, carpets, building products. In ’98 I started importing and selling pallet racking and shelving, the big heavy duty shelves you see at Costco or Home Depot, and that is still my main business now, exporting from the US. to Jamaica. However it was
not all work and no play, and somewhere in the twenty years I spent there I met and married MaryKay. We have two great kids, Ryan and Tara.

In Jamaica I had helped start and run a non-profit called The St. Patrick’s Foundation and we built five Skills Training Centres in depressed inner city ghettos. I am still involved and on my last visit we donated computers to one of the centres. One of the benefits of being involved with St. Patrick’s was getting invited when VIPs were in town, and over the years I met President Regan, President Carter, Desmond Tutu, Pope John Paul II, Harry Belafonte ….and Mother Theresa! She invited me to come to Calcutta and become a nun, an offer I gently refused on the basis that I might get into the habit!

I joined the Kingston Rotary Club in 1990, the ‘Mother Club‘ for Jamaica and almost immediately I was asked to be Sergeant-at-Arms, a post I held for seven years and was a combination of greeter, comedian, and enforcer. No-one said ‘you lie’ when I held the gavel… One of my favourite memories is being Sgt.-at-Arms for our District Conference and acting as aide-de-camp for President Jonathan Majiiabye, from Nigeria; he was an Rotary International Director then, and still jokes about going to Jamaica and being assigned a white man to carry his bags!

Dr. Dick and the Rev. Al have invited me to join them on the board of M.A.E.G.A., a scholarship program for Mexican-American students. I am on the board of the Elbanna-Peled Foundation, dedicated to peaceful humanitarian missions in Israel and Palestine. Miko and Nader are two incredible people who shipped over 800 wheelchairs to children from both sides. Guess I was hooked back in the 70’s when I saw graffiti in London that said: “Give Palestine back to the Irish!”

This short biography was written by my great friend, Rob Mullally, a most interesting Irishman who stopped this way for twenty years, married a Jamaican wife, had two Jamaican children and then moved on to California. I guess our Island in the Sun was not quite exciting enough for him!

Rob, ever mindful of the Luck o’ the Irish which has blessed his life, supports more causes than the average human being would consider. While in Jamaica he helped create the St.Patrick’s Foundation and even now is probably trying to wrest a hefty sum from one of his movie star friends to send to the starving children of the Sudan or the mistreated women of Afghanistan. Beannacht Dé ort, Rob. God bless you and keep up the good work!

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com