LAST week Thursday, the Jamaican business community turned out in impressive numbers to honour Tony Hart, a man and legend in his own time, by inducting him to the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) Hall of Fame, at a glitzy ceremony at the The Jamaica Pegasus in New Kingston. The Tony Hart story is both an inspiration to fellow Jamaicans and a tribute to the true Jamaican genius which has set this small country apart. And it is a story that must be told to Jamaican schoolchildren:

There is now no doubt that history prefers legends to men. But every so often, destiny brings forth one who is both man and legend. To the pantheon of great Jamaican superstars of business comes in due season Antony Keith Edmund Hart, Commander of the Order of Distinction, known to his legions of admirers and beneficiaries as simply, Tony Hart, the man and the legend.

Overshadowed throughout his life by the awesome history of a famous town and family, Tony Hart was born on October 8, 1932 in Montego Bay. After Munro College which he attended between 1941 and 1948, he worked briefly at the Casa Blanca Hotel, then went at the Parker Pen Company in Canada. He spent a year there and enrolled in a business course at the Queen’s University in Kingston, Toronto, working during the summer at the Lake Louise Hotel as a houseman and fishing guide.

But ruing the hostile cold of the northern climes, and missing his sun-drenched island home, Hart returned to Montego Bay, his return made more urgent by a fire which destroyed his father’s store, Samuel Hart and Son. Hit hard, they sold most of their property and decided to rebuild the business. Samuel Hart and Son which gained the distinction of being the first store in the town to have got electricity reopened in 1950. But dark days were ahead.

The economic depression of the 1920s viciously gouged businesses, including the Harts’. When it seemed that respite had come, the 1938 riots erupted. That was followed by World War Two. But after the War ended in 1945, a new day dawned. The government of the day built an international airport and that heralded new life for Montego Bay through tourism. The Harts came up with the idea of bringing in goods duty-free in a bonded warehouse that got the in-bond trade going.

Jamaica’s first record manufacturing company

This was the actual point at which Tony Hart, aged 18, came home from Canada and joined his father. It was the year 1950. After three months, he convinced his father to buy back a building that was previously owned by Samuel Hart and Son and established another store there selling radios, refrigerators, housewares and (vinyl) records. In 1951, Tony Hart started the first record manufacturing company in Jamaica, Records Limited, based in Kingston. That same year, he left Samuel Hart and Son and established Jamaica Electronics in Kingston, but returned to his beloved Montego Bay in early 1953. Soon after, he acquired a sub-agency for the dealership of Ford, the giant American auto firm. Hart called it the Northern Industrial Garage (NIG). NIG sold sold 300 cars in three months, at a time when cars were relatively few on Jamaican roads.

NIG grew rapidly and he moved to new offices at Union Street. Eighty per cent of the cars in western Jamaica was Ford. Hart established branches of the dealership in thriving St Ann’s Bay, St Ann; Savanna-La-Mar, Westmoreland and another at Bogue, just outside MoBay. In 1958, he became part of a joint venture called Central Motors, another Ford sub-dealership, in Mandeville. By then NIG had become a direct dealership with Ford.

But something else was stirring in his blood. Politics. Tony Hart went one night to a meeting of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) at the corner of Barracks Road and Hart Street, which was named after his great-grandfather. Greatly impressed by the speaker, Dr Herbert Eldemire, Hart decided to campaign for him in a losing bid for the 1959 general elections. But in the 1962 election, Hart managed Eldemire’s campaign and saw his candidate win, by 500 votes, and become minister of health. Ten years later he himself would run unsuccessfully in the 1972 general election.

The fight for Montego Freeport

In the run-up to the 1962 elections, Hart had begun to dream of developing the Montego Bay harbour. After the elections, he started working immediately on a plan to build what would become the Montego Freeport that would unleash the economic potential of the second city. It was not going to be smooth sailing but it would demonstrate the tenacity and the true mettle of Tony Hart.

First, the shipping companies threw cold water on the plan, saying that under that plan ships could get caught in rough seas. Back to the drawing board, Hart flew himself over the area and chose the Outer Bogue Islands west of MoBay as the new site for the Freeport. In 1966, with 55 per cent of the funds sourced from the United States and 45 per cent from Jamaica, negotiations began for the port development, to include a railroad and a road from the Pye Bridge that is now called the Alice Eldemire Way. The railroad idea was dropped but the US$2.4 million which was needed to finance the dredging of the harbour to allow big ships to dock at pier side, was secured.

Then, three days before Prime Minister Alexander Bustamante was to formally approve the project proposal, he suffered a stroke. The document was taken to the acting Prime Minister Donald Sangster but the 1967 elections intervened before the signing. Right after the polls, Sangster, too, suffered a stroke and died before signing. With support from his mentor, Eldemire, Tony Hart got the nod for the project from new Prime Minister Hugh Lawson Shearer who sent it to the portfolio minister and he who declared that it was not viable. Eldemire angrily resigned as MP, causing Mr Shearer to set up a commission, headed by the famous G Arthur Brown, to look into the project, He gave it the thumbs up and Shearer approved it.

The development, the largest of its kind in Jamaica at the time, involved the dredging of three million cubic yards of sea and the filling of all the mangrove-covered Bogue Islands, the main one being 100 acres, and cutting a channel through the reef. The harbour was deepened from five-feet deep to 45 feet, and 32 feet deep at dockside, so that it could now dock three large ships and two small ones.

That changed Montego Bay forever.

Up to that time, all ships had to anchor about quarter mile offshore and everything, including sugar and banana, loaded by deep open boats called ‘lighters’. Everything else came through Kingston. From his home at Seawind on the Bay, Tony Hart can watch with satisfaction today as ships laden with big containers call twice a week at the port. Cruise ships offload hundreds of passengers at the pier, a far cry from the days when tourists disembarked from lifeboats. The Freeport development ultimately led to the creation of 350 acres of land and four berths, and is today home to a booming industrial estate, the free zone, upscale residential complexes, numerous resort offerings, a beach club and the Montego Bay Yacht Club.

Montego Bay grew exponentially and was soon dubbed the tourism capital of Jamaica and the commercial centre of western Jamaica. The population swelled from 17,000 in the 1940s when Tony Hart was a boy to the current 200,000 in Montego Bay and surrounding areas. With the Freeport up and running, Hart looked to new ventures. He took over the bankrupt Montego Towers Hotel, now the Sunset Resort and started an all-inclusive programme called Go-Bananas, filling the 350-room hotel every week with tourists at a time when visitors were scarce in the troublesome 1970s. In 1979, he added 120 rooms and the Cave Night Club, selling the property four years later.

Six heart bypass operations

From 1980 to 1989, Hart was chairman of the national airline, Air Jamaica. His tenure was memorable for bringing the world’s fastest commercial plane, the Concorde to Jamaican skies which tripled business on the New York leg. In 1981, he gave up the chairmanship of the Freeport. His instincts were correct. The year 1983 would force him to make life-changing decisions. After six heart bypass operations, he sold nearly all of his remaining assets in companies like Blaise Trust, Avis Rent-a-Car, Unique Travel and Tours, Northern Industrial Garage and an insurance company.

But with business still in the blood, Hart turned to the land in 1989. He bought the Covey and Good Hope properties in Trelawny, now the parish’s premier resort attraction. This acquisition was followed by the Chippenham Park farm for cattle rearing; the 1,000-acre Woodstock in Westmoreland, also for cattle; a small citrus farm in Cambridge, St James; a joint venture fish farm at Brumdec and a banana farm, at Springvale on the St James-Trelawny border which he changed to sugar-cane production. Later he sold all his property but kept Good Hope until 2012 when he handed it over to his son, Blaise and his wife Tammy.

Retired but not tired

Alleging that he has retired, Tony Hart, over the last 12 years, has been doing mostly voluntary work, insisting what few men would or could — that he is no longer interested in anything for personal gain. During his active working life, his enormous contribution to Montego Bay and Jamaica could be summarised through his services as:

* Chairman-founder of the Montego Freeport Limited

* Chairman, Apparel Handlers

* Chairman, Air Jamaica

* Chairman, Caymanas Track Limited

* Chairman, Samuel Hart and Son

* Chairman, Coconut Industry Board

* Commodore, Montego Bay Yacht Club

* Founder and Director of Records Limited and Federal Records Limited

* Director, Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica Limited

* Director, Jamaica Development Bank

* Director, Sam Sharpe Teacher’s College.

For his selfless service to his country, Tony Hart was awarded Jamaica’s fifth highest honour, the Commander of the Order of Distinction (CD). The recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of Technology, he continues to support his children in business, though now at a far more leisurely pace. He speaks with pride of Apparel Handlers which his eldest son, Mark Hart, founded as he was winding down and which at its peak had 3,000 employees.

Tony Hart has never seen a worthy cause that he could resist. Retired but not tired, he spearheaded the planning and preparations for the 2007 celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the world famous Doctor’s Cave Beach that put MoBay on the map. One of his favourite charities is the St Mary’s Preparatory in Montpelier, St James, which has grown from 70 students to 430 in four years, and in academic status. The school has one of three well equipped computer centres for which Hart has raised funds, the others being at the Corinaldi Preparatory in MoBay and the Black River Preparatory in St Elizabeth.

And he recently accepted the chairmanship of the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship which provides mentorship for young businessmen and women, saying he had himself benefited greatly from mentorship when he was starting business.

A vivacious man who laughs heartily and enjoys lunching with friends, Tony Hart also celebrates family: his marriage of 53 years to soulmate Sheila, formerly Desnoes, and their children Mark Hart, Bruce Hart, Blaise Hart and Wendy Hart Schrager. It is no exaggeration to say that Tony Hart has built a city and touched the lives of countless Montegonians and other Jamaicans.

On this 31st day of October, 2013, in the 81st year of his birth and the 21st year of the Hall of Fame Awards, Antony Keith Edmund ‘Tony’ Hart, humanitarian, philanthropist and visionary, took his place among the true titans of business.