On Island: Leo Barbel Still Moving Ahead

Sitting across from Leo Barbel in his downtown office, listening to tale after tale full of big deals and famous names, it’s hard not to think of a riverboat gambler stepping out of a 1940s movie to dazzle the hayseeds with improbable schemes.

But this is for real.

Younger generations may know “Barbel” simply as the name of the shopping plaza across from Charlotte Amalie High School. But the man who helped build it and named it for his father has been a major player on his native St. Thomas and throughout the Caribbean for all his life.

Now 81, he has moved a bit into the background, letting his children, nieces and nephews take the lead in running Barbel Enterprises. But he’s still the force behind it, and he continues to display the creativity and the energy that has infused his life.

He is, he says, “busy as hell for a man who should be in the grave.” He had major health issues last year but recovered from the worst of it, and he still climbs the long flight of stairs to his discreet office in a central alleyway off the Waterfront, though he does it now with cane in hand and a pacemaker in his chest.

One project he just completed was publishing a work of fiction, broadly based on the way of life and people he knew in his early years on St. Thomas – with what reads like some generous embellishments. Titled “Paradise Rush,” the novel’s action circles around a poker table populated with colorful characters. Barbel did not discuss how far removed the book’s card players are from real-life poker buddies he has had, though he did confide that “the two sexy ladies are real.” He estimated about 40 percent of the book is based on fact.

Barbel’s own story begins in privilege in October 1932, the year after his famous maternal grandfather died.

Alfred Harris Lockhart had moved from St. Croix to St. Thomas in 1884 and over time became one of the wealthiest and most powerful businessmen in the territory. He started in trading operations on the docks and harbor warehouses, added cattle and dairy farms, an abattoir, a hotel, bakery, lumber yard and dry goods store. He established a legacy in real estate that continues today. According to information published by the Lockhart family business, when the patriarch died in 1931, he owned one-eighth of all the privately held land on St. Thomas, as well as considerable property on St. John.

If a sense of entrepreneurship can be genetically transmitted, Barbel inherited a double-shot of it. Not only was his mother, Ella Blanch, a Lockhart, his father, Leopold Alfred Barbel, for whom he was named, was a developer. “He was a self-made guy.”

Barbel attended Lucinda Millin’s school for his first three years of education, then went to Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School from fourth through ninth grades, and had the distinction of being in the first ever ninth grade class at the school, as it expanded its offerings.

By his own account, he was more than mischievous as a child. Apparently his parents reacted negatively when somehow he “walked through a pane glass window.” It must have been a last straw, because after that, he says “I was sent to Puerto Rico,” to a prep school run by strict Jesuit brothers.

“I learned my Spanish over there,” he said, adding that he had to because “it would be difficult dating without Spanish.”

From there he went to Saint John’s University (now The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University) in Minnesota where “there were a number of Virgin Islanders at the time,” he said.

“I was an athlete from Day One,” he said. In high school and college he distinguished himself in cricket, baseball, softball and basketball, table tennis and badminton. But it was his tennis that really captured attention.

In a brief history of the school’s tennis accomplishments, the Saint John’s website notes that “newcomer” Leo Barbel played “phenomenal” tennis and helped win the championship in 1953.

“Tennis became my love after a while,” he said – and the relationship has lasted a lifetime. When he returned to St. Thomas in the mid 1950s, he teamed with local tennis great, the late Victor Ebbesen Sr. “We became the doubles team to beat” throughout the Caribbean and at one point were ranked No. 1 in two divisions in Puerto Rico. In 1972, they became the first Virgin Islanders to play in the U.S. Open.

Barbel recalls playing at the Forest Hills club in New York where fellows and friends included comedians Bill Cosby and Alan King.

He does not name names when he speaks of another game: poker.

“I started playing for money in ’49,” he said, and it has clearly been one of the passions of his life. Over the years, he’s played with stateside aficionados and with prime ministers and other government leaders from around the Caribbean.

A good player has to memorize what’s been played, and bluffing is a very serious part of the game, he said, but if playing with the same people regularly – as he came to do – the player comes to know their unintentional signals, so “it becomes a question of cards” who wins.

So, has he made money playing poker?

“I didn’t lose any,” he responds.

He has, however, both made and lost money in a list of business ventures so long it’s hard to believe he could possibly remember them all. In some cases he’s been the primary sponsor or a partner; in others, he’s the man-behind-the-scenes.

His first real experience came working in an IBM-sponsored program while in the Army. When he left the service, he said IBM offered him a job, but he decided to return home to raise his family and to help his dad, who was ailing.

“In those days, there were no jobs in St. Thomas,” he said. But armed with a degree in money and banking, and favored with family connections, he was able to get a start. He and one of his sisters went together and bought a restaurant – the Oasis, which was located on Main Street – from his brother.

It was a much smaller community then, and much safer.

“We went 14 years without a murder,” he said. “People worked so damn hard, they had no time to kill each other.”

In the early 1960s he sold his share in the restaurant to his sister and went into the laundry and dry cleaning business. He was the regional agent for Westinghouse. He opened the first coin-operated laundry on St. Thomas and the first automatic dry cleaner in the Caribbean. He also established operations in Guadeloupe, St. Kitts, and a number of other islands. “I did travel up and down the Caribbean quite a bit in those days.”

He also went into partnership with Herbert LeVine, who was originally from New York, and who was “the nicest person I knew …(when he died in the 1980s) it was one of the saddest days in my life.”

Together, the two built the first shopping center, a strip mall, along Lover’s Lane on St. Thomas in 1965. At the suggestion of customers, they named it Barbel Plaza in honor of the senior Barbel. A few years later, they expanded it by opening a smaller space adjacent to the original.

Barbel said he followed his father’s axiom: if you go into the business of development, build something that doesn’t require a lot of bathrooms.

In the world of business, there’s little Barbel hasn’t tried. He dabbled in fabrics and sewing in Antigua, oil exploration off Barbuda – “We found little oil, but did find some gas. The wells were capped and we walked away.” Did “some work” in Santo Domingo, got into plywood manufacturing in Brazil and “lost a bunch of money” but invested in a number of other companies in Brazil. Back home, he spent about 20 years with local partners promoting Carifest, a proposed theme park for St. Thomas that never got off the ground; he had an interest in Royal Communications operating communications towers, was chairman of the finance committee for the V.I. Film Festival, and has a reputation as a silent partner for local small businesses.

While his interest is primarily in the private sector, Barbel said he did flirt a bit with politics years ago. He worked on the finance committee for the V.I. Democratic Party and considered himself a protégée of longtime Democratic boss, the late Earle B. Ottley. He once had thoughts of a run for governor, but realized that he lacked the necessary public speaking ability.

At this point in life, he has a vast store of knowledge to share.

His next book project, he says, will be non-fiction. He wants to tell the stories of some of the most influential leaders in the Caribbean – not all of them totally admirable, but all of them people who brought their islands into the modern world. Some of them are people he knew personally.

“I could work with the Devil,” he said. “I could play poker with the Devil.” With a laugh, he adds, “maybe even tennis.”

Barbel has a younger brother; all three of his sisters are deceased. He has two children, Leo Barbel III and Joan Barbel Sibilly, by his first wife, Isabelle LaMotta Barbel, three grandchildren and one great grandchild. He’s been married to Ann Williamson for about 20 years.

Concerning his ancestry, Barbel said there must be 15 to 30 different nationalities running through his veins.

“I’m a ’57 Variety,’” he said. He has no desire to get into genetic testing to find out more specifics. “I don’t care about my background. I’m just happy to be here.”