FROM OLYMPICS TO NURSING HOME
FRIENDS were aplenty for Alfred Daley during his career as a sprinter for Jamaica.
Daley competed in three consecutive Summer Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, Montreal in 1976 and Moscow in 1980.
Fast-forward to 2021 and Daley, who won gold in the 400 metres event at the 1971 Central American and Caribbean Games, currently leads a lonely life in a nursing home at Schulman & Schachne in New York City.
And even though he cannot move around without using a walker, due to suffering a stroke, Daley finds solace in remembering his glory days as a runner and from time to time the 71 year old hallucinates about being called up for trials with the senior Jamaica men’s track team.
Despite these infrequent hallucinations, he manages to keep himself abreast with the latest updates on the Olympic Games to be held in Tokyo, Japan, according to his sister Sylvia Daley.
Sylvia told the Jamaica
Observer that she tries to communicate with him on a weekly basis but said he would be in a much better place, mentally, if he wasn’t harbouring feelings of abandonment from friends and associates. She said it may be as a result of people being unaware of his current status and location, and she would be grateful if those who were once close to him began rallying around him again.
“For the last four years he has been in a nursing home. Alfred had a stroke some years ago and for the last five years he needs help because he has a balance issue when he walks, and so he is in a nursing home in Brooklyn. He has been doin, well, thank God. He hasn’t been ill otherwise. Thank God he has remained healthy throughout this period and we expect that he will continue to remain healthy. Each week, on Tuesdays at around 2:00 o’clock, we speak for half an hour on Face Time with Alfred.
“He is fine and is reading all he can on the upcoming Olympics in Tokyo. He is still a big track and field enthusiast. He watches football, baseball and other sports but track and field is his love. A handful of his track and field friends visit him at Schulman & Schachne nursing home, however we would very much like his many friends to give him a call or get in touch with him. He longs to see and hear from them. He has a lot of old friends living in the tri-state area but they just don’t know where he is or what the situation is,” she told the Sunday Observer.
Sylvia shared that as her