99-year-old vendor retires from market duties

Ninety-nine-year-old Essie Willocks had a birthday bash and a retirement party wrapped in one last Sunday. Willocks, who turned 99 on June 7, was a veteran market vendor, but she has now retired from that job. A mother of 13 and grandmother to 23, Willocks resides in Claremont, Hanover, and has been selling in the Charles Gordon Market in Montego Bay for 49 years.

"I grow up seeing her in the market. That is the only job she has ever done that I know of. I have been going to the market with her from I was going to primary school. I'm here most of the times with her ... . It's about 25 years straight that I'm with her," Delta Wilson, Willocks' daughter told THE STAR.

"She use the market to send us to school. Just my mom alone. She always want me to be here. If it's not me, it's my other sister. It's 13 of us and six died. And it's just our mother alone ... no father figure. Our father left her to live with another woman a long time ago."

Once there's music in the market, Willocks is quick to her feet - causing comic relief among the other vendors and shoppers.

"It's always really joyful for me to be out here with her. I'm always playing gospel and she is always dancing. If she goes around the market, anywhere she hears the music playing, she have to dance. The whole market know her as 'the dancer old lady.' One thing, she loves to dance. She only wants to hear music ... and anybody come and dance with her," Wilson said.

ADJUSTING TO PANDEMIC

After spending more than half her life in the market, getting there as early as 4 a.m. every day, it was a hard adjustment when she became home-bound because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Right now, she is at home. Since the corona, she has been home. Only corona alone coulda take her out the market. She stressed, and being home made her become so miserable. Everything about her is strange right now. She is just miserable and I know it's because of the market," Wilson said.

"She is always saying she miss her friends in the market. And when she is at the market, she seems more comfortable that when she's at home."

"What we start do, is take her to the market at least one day a week to look for her friends then take her back home. She is a loving, caring mother. She is not only caring to her kids and grandchildren. She is caring to everybody. She is always on the giving side."