SMOKEY JOE IS GONE

He was known for his use of colourful and often blunt language on both newspaper and radio, and today News Five records the death of “Smokey Joe” as he was popularly known. He wrote for the Amandala for long years and more recently, this eighty-eight year old man whose real name was Selvin Wade, was host of the weekly “Smokey Joe’’ programme on Krem TV, in which he engaged his regular hosts on current issues. He was known as a man who said it as he saw it, and was never afraid of calling a spade a spade.

But health has been failing him for several months and tonight we report that early Sunday morning Smokey Joe died at his home at fifteen Faber’s Road in Belize City. His sister, Viola Harrison, with whom he lived and who was his caregiver, recalled the man whom everyone knew as Smokey Joe. She told us about his latter days.

Viola Harrison, Sister of Smokey Joe
“He was a very kind person with anybody, to wah dog. If he see wah dog pan di street he tek ah and ker ah home and he wah feed ah and he wah mind ah. But I guess lotta people never like ah because he’s too open for them. That’s Smokey Joe. Sometimes I tell ah hey, hold on man. Ih seh no, yoh tell dehn with di bad word. Tell dehn and mek deh know weh yoh coming from. Ih seh “I wah dead, I wah dead Sunday so yoh noh wah have worry noh more. I tell ah God noh got no way fi put you yet because me and dah di same thing. So when di time come ih tell me mi sister dis is it, I can’t go no more and he lay down right down pan di floor and ih tell me fi lef ah right deh and go dah mi bed go sleep. I tell ah I noh wah sleep, I seh I wah stay right yah. And I sit down deh, I rub ah up wid some alcohol and I talk to ah till ih mek di last breath ... and dat was it.”

Smokey Joe left Belize in 1944 at the age of twenty-three to join the U.S. Army. He returned home for the first time in 1958 on a visit, making frequent trips thereafter, and in 2001 he came back to Belize to retire. Smokey Joe, dead at eighty-eight years.