Feb. 20, 2008 — When former Sen. Earle Benito Ottley died Aug. 26, 1999, observers hailed him as the man who did the most to improve the lives of V.I. residents by creating a middle class.
Ottley's nephew, Sen. Basil Ottley, credits the work done by his uncle and the late Gov. Ralph Paiewonsky.
"He and Ralph and others shifted conditions from a cycle of poverty to create a meaningful avenue of opportunity," Basil Ottley said.
His uncle understood that the way to build families and communities is to create affordable housing.
"One of the essential things was a roof over your head," Basil Ottley said.
While Ottley and others of his era are sometimes berated for growing the local government, they did so to provide jobs.
"They don't understand the conditions of the time," Basil Ottley said. "If not for the government, what private sector had the resources to uplift people? There was no tourism."
Basil Ottley also spoke about his uncle's compassion.
"Everybody went to Uncle Earle for help," Basil Ottley said. "He helped as best he could."
When the late Gov. Cyril E. King was near death, he asked Ottley — who tangled many times with the governor — to look after his family.
"He was a man of honor and he did it," Basil Ottley said.
The Legislative chambers on St. Thomas are named in his honor. This was the second attempt to put his name on the halls where he worked so many years. The 13th Legislature passed a bill to that end, but Ottley declined the honor.
In 2000, Ottley's ashes were buried on the grounds of the Legislature.
A labor leader, he worked to unionize workers. He founded the Unity Party, an early political party, before working as a Democrat to join forces with others in his quest to lift residents out of poverty.
Ottley served 13 terms on the St. Thomas Municipal Council, starting in 1947, and its successor, the Legislature, before retiring from the Legislature in 1980. He served three times as the Legislature's president.
He was then named executive director of the V.I. Status Commission, and in 1985 headed the newly formed V.I. Housing Finance Authority, where he oversaw development of middle-class housing for residents. He retired from that job in 1989.
Ottley was a journalist at heart, however. According to Profiles of Outstanding Virgin Islanders by Ruth Moolenaar, he started his career on the Charlotte Amalie High School newspaper, the Reflector, and worked part time at St. Thomas Mail Notes.
After graduation from high school in 1939, he joined the V.I. Daily News, eventually becoming assistant editor.
Ottley went off to study journalism and political science at Columbia University in New York before joining forces with his brother, Basil Ottley Sr., to publish the Photo News, later establishing the Home Journal.
Politics intervened and he sold the Home Journal, but in 1973 he took over ownership and renamed it the V.I. Post. He sold it in 1976.
In the 1980s, he began publishing Pride Magazine.
In 1982 he published the book Trials and Triumphs: The Long Road to a Middle Class Society in the Virgin Islands. It details the struggles to bring the territory out of poverty. The Hardball Years, published 10 years later, outlines political struggles.
The son of Eulalia Queeman and Henry Ottley, he was born March 21, 1922. He and his wife, Alma, were parents to six children, Diane, Judith, Patrice, Larry, Linda and Juliet.
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