Well known in the St. Thomas business community for decades, Alfred "Al" Cohen died Oct. 26 at his home in Charlottesville, Va., after a three-year battle with cancer and renal disease. He was 69.
Cohen was buried Oct. 28 at a private ceremony in Ellwood City, Pa.
Margaret Cohen, Cohen’s wife of 35 years, said Tuesday they chose Ellwood because, "it’s our old hometown. This is where the children were born."
Cohen said their daughter, Margaret, whose field of study is ancient history, said Kaddish, at the Jewish ceremony. "It was a small service, but several very special people showed up, high school friends I hadn’t seen for years. That was awfully nice," she said. "They all knew Al because he loved to go to class reunions with me."
Cohen shared some of her husband’s St. Thomas days, where he went from liquor salesman, to owning two malls, which operate today under his name—one at Havensight, the other on Raphune Hill.
Born Jan. 17, 1940, in Philadelphia, Cohen worked in the family wallpaper retail business before being drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War. When he returned home after serving in the war in the 1960s, his sister suggested he take a vacation in Puerto Rico before getting back to work. While in Puerto Rico, Cohen saw a sign offering day trips to St. Thomas, so he booked a PrinAir flight that would change his life forever. After arriving on St. Thomas, he fell in love with the island and called home to tell his family he was not coming back.
Cohen’s first job in the Virgin Islands was at a small liquor store and travel agency in Palm Passage owned by Jean Hendrix. Cohen drove the store’s liquor delivery truck. After meeting Michael Paiewonsky, owner of A.H. Riise, Cohen told him he would love to work in his downtown store, and Paiewonsky offered him a job.
"He didn’t know a thing about liquor then—he was just beginning to learn from Jean Hendrix. Michael taught him everything he knew," Cohen said.
After working at A.H. Riise, Cohen decided he would like to open his own wholesale and retail liquor business and leased the former Peppino’s Restaurant off Raadets Gade in 1972. He named his business the St. Thomas Liquor Company. After he opened and was not making any sales, he went down to Main Street to look for customers and found that people were looking for Al Cohen, not St. Thomas Liquor Company. He changed his sign the next day to Al Cohen’s Discount Liquors.
"Al was really the only independent wholesaler and retailer on St. Thomas in those days. He did very well at that store," she said.
In 1973, the privately owned Danish Company, now the West Indian Co., was looking to turn warehouses off the cruise ship docks into retail spaces and approached Cohen about opening a liquor store there to attract other businesses. Cohen quickly turned the warehouse into a shopping opportunity.
"It was an exciting time on St. Thomas," Cohen said. "Al used shopping carts. People would come to him and say they had heard about the cart idea. The carts were the talk of the town."
"In the ’70s it was different. Everybody bought their quota of five bottles and their quota of cigarettes, and sometimes extra and paid the duty."
In 1980 Cohen bought the warehouse he was leasing from Fishman in Havensight. This was his first commercial property. At this time he decided then to get out of the retail business and opened up the property to tenants. Later, he bought the adjoining two acres from the West Indian Co. and built two more buildings next to Al Cohen’s Plaza.
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, he expanded his commercial property holdings when he built Raphune Plaza.
Cohen married Margaret, an English teacher at Antilles School originally from Ellwood City, Pa., on Feb. 10, 1975. They have two children together, Margaret Elissa Cohen and Lee Cohen.
The family asks that donations be made to his favorite charities: the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands, the United Way of St. Thomas-St. John, the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas and the American Red Cross.
