18273: (Hermantin)Palm Beach Post-Haitian business directory in works (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Haitian business directory in works

By Gariot Louima, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 2, 2004



BOYNTON BEACH -- In front of Manny's Music World, the Haitian compas streams
out to the parking lot where Jack Sweet leans forward in conversation with
the store's owner.

Wearing all black except for his blue beret, he strolls into the music shop
as if he owns the place. He points up to the photographs of green hillsides,
beaches and mountain resorts pasted to the walls.

They are pictures of Haiti taken by Sweet on visits there from 1983 to 1991.

Sweet says he fell in love with Haiti and its people on those visits. After
his last trip, he began selling prints to Haitian-Americans from Miami to
Orlando. Along the way, Sweet said, he grew to admire the resiliency and
resourcefulness of the Haitian immigrant community.

Sweet seems an unlikely ally of the Haitian community. He's a stocky
62-year-old Irish Catholic who attended private schools through college,
served in Vietnam, and spent the early part of his career in radio and
television, producing Spanish programs for South Florida's new Cuban
immigrants.

Now, Sweet wants to publish a directory of Haitian-owned businesses. His
won't be the first. Three years ago, a Haitian publisher in Broward County
compiled an international directory listing 20,000 businesses. But Sweet's
directory will feature an extensive list of Palm Beach County contacts.

He doesn't know when his directory will be published. He doesn't know how he
intends to distribute it once it's printed. Those details, he believes, will
work themselves out.

"I know this is valuable information that people would want to have," he
said. "Maybe it's not just the Haitian people that could use this. Maybe it
could be American businesses who want to reach out to the Haitians. They
could form partnerships."

South Florida is home to the largest number of Haitians living outside the
Caribbean nation. In Palm Beach County, the community is exploding. The U.S.
Census Bureau counted 13,000 Haitians here in 1990. A decade later, the
number ballooned to 31,000. Community leaders say those figures are
conservative.

Sweet takes pride in being able to identify Haitian enclaves from Miami to
Orlando. He's particularly familiar with Palm Beach County, which he
traverses on foot and by bus.

"In Boynton Beach, most Haitian businesses are along Federal Highway --
first at Boynton Beach Boulevard, then at Gateway Boulevard."

The areas around Old School Square in Delray Beach used to be saturated with
Haitian businesses, Sweet recalls. "After the area was developed, Lake Ida
Road became the main drag."

Farther north in Lake Worth, a cluster of Haitian-owned stores, restaurants
and offices are along Dixie Highway, at Eighth Avenue North, south to 16th
Avenue South, he said.

"In West Palm Beach most of the Haitian businesses are on Broadway, from
15th to 20th streets. In Riviera Beach, it's Blue Heron and Broadway."

Sweet has counted 34 Haitian business enclaves from Miami to Orlando.

"Right now, I want to get it (the directory) put together so that Americans
can appreciate what's happening here," he said.

Sweet didn't always know "what's happening here."

John Joseph Sweet was born in Norfolk, Mass. His family moved to Florida
when he was 10 after his mother, a middle-school teacher, was injured in a
taxi-cab accident in New York. She suffered internal injuries and never
fully recovered, he said. The family used the $40,000 settlement from the
accident to buy a house in Miami Shores. That was back in 1951.

"We were very comfortable," recalled Sweet.

He attended Catholic schools and graduated from Archbishop Curley High
School. He went on to the University of Miami, were he majored in radio,
television and film. He also enrolled in the ROTC, so he could enlist in the
military as an officer.

"It was a clear-cut idea. You went and you served your country," he said.

After earning his degree, he married his college sweetheart and then left
for Vietnam. Serving in a support unit, Sweet never saw combat, though he
says he served in "combat areas." When he returned, he was a bit
disillusioned, he said.

"You feel you should serve with willingness, but at the same time, there is
a failed policy that's taking 58,000 lives," he said.

He divorced his wife soon after returning to South Florida ("I guess I
wasn't the same person I was before the war.") and began working in local
television. He did voice-overs, worked the camera, did some marketing. From
1969 to 1972, he worked with Miami television personality Bill Wyler
producing videos and television programs in Spanish.

Sweet had studied Spanish in high school and college. By the late 1970s, he
was pretty fluent and began producing a series of entertainment shows called
Los Estrellas.

Sweet left television production in 1977 in favor of advertising. He
designed newspaper ads for business owners and eventually launched his own
quarterly publication.

In 1983, when Pope John Paul announced plans to visit Haiti -- then
suffering the oppression of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier -- Sweet decided
to attend.

He was simply interested in taking pictures of the pope, who was making his
first visit to the Caribbean. Sweet is not a religious man and he knew
nothing about the political tensions consuming Haiti. Duvalier and his
Tontons Macoutes thugs meant nothing to him.

Once he landed at Port-au-Prince Airport, Sweet felt an urge to learn
everything he could about Haiti.

"You land there and it was just beautiful. You have the green mountains at
one side. You could see all the way out to the water at the other side," he
said.

With his camera in hand and a guide to lead him, Sweet traveled the
countryside, walked through shantytowns and visited exclusive suburbs. His
camera captured the gleaming, white-washed pillars of the National Palace,
the lush hillside of Cap Haitien and a clear blue pool at a resort in
Petionville, a well-to-do suburb overlooking the capital.

After a dozen trips to Haiti, Sweet had amassed a portfolio of thousands of
images. For more than a decade, he's sold copies of those pictures
exclusively to Haitian entrepreneurs.

"It's just amazing to see the progression," he said of the local Haitian
community. "You won't find another group of people so scattered around the
state. There are all these enclaves. You have food stores, mortgage people.
You have all these homeowners."

He wants to include his contacts -- 1,500 of them -- in his directory.

Sweet's interactions with Haitian merchants are sometimes a bit clumsy.

Recently he visited a Boynton Beach convenience store where a few of his
pictures hang above the shelves of canned food and other goods.

In a back office, a woman stared blankly as he introduced a news reporter.

"He's here to talk to you about a story," Sweet said, gesturing as if taking
notes. Speaking loudly and exaggerating his enunciation, he said, "I told
him about your business, your store. I told him that he could talk to you."

She sat quiet for a moment.

"I don't think I'm interested in that," she said finally. "No, no. I don't
want anything today."

Later, Sweet said the woman hired him a few years ago to design a calendar
for her store.

"One thing I should have done is learn Creole," he said. "It's really hard
to communicate sometimes."

gariot_louima@pbpost.com

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