In Memoriam: Delroy "Fatty Boo" Wilson

Delroy "Fatty Boo" Wilson was a fixture outside of his shop, the Unique Mini Mart at 65a Fenimore Street. Whenever the weather would allow it, he was in front of his market cooking jerk chicken on a small oil drum grill. Sadly, Mr. Wilson passed away over the New Years' weekend. His viewing and funeral will be held later this week (details below).

PLG resident Carmen posted her memories of Mr. Wilson - "Mr. D" as she called him - at her blog Talking Out Loud, and I'll excerpt from her eulogy here:

When we first moved to the neighborhood, Mr. D was one of the very first people we met. He owns a bodega on my block which at the time had two other mom & pop shops on either side. As gentrification took hold on the neighborhood, the two stores on either side of his were brought out and new, hip businesses emerged. Mr. D stayed put, and continued to cook his tongue-tingling BBQ-jerk spicy chicken just like he'd done for almost twenty years. From the very beginning, we hit it off with him. Kai grew very fond of Mr. D and even though she was only nine months old, she thoroughly enjoyed his cooking, particularly the spicy chicken. In fact, there have been times where Kai wouldn't eat any meat unless it came from Mr. D's grill. No matter what the weather, Mr. D's store was always open six days out of the week. His grill, located right outside his store, was in service from Memorial Day until it got too cold to cook outside. Each day that we left our block, we had to pass by Mr. D's store. We always said hello and he would always stop what he was doing to chat with Kai. Last summer he even offered to let her grill some chicken, but she declined, wanting instead to watch him work his cooking magic.

A viewing of Mr. Wilson will be held on Friday, January 14th from 5pm - 8pm at the Home for Funerals (169 Empire Boulevard, east of Bedford (gmap)). The service will begin on on Saturday, January 15th at 8:30am at the Pilgrim Father Church (1338-44 Broadway in Bushwick (gmap)).

(If someone could send us a photo of Mr. Wilson, we'd love to add it to the post.)