Mark Everett Stanley, Sr. will go down as Cayman’s first ‘COVID victim’ of 2021.
But to his friends and family, he was much more than that.
A loving father, an intrepid fisherman and a US Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, Stanley was an old-fashioned island guy who loved poker and the Beach Boys, his daughter Sarah Piña told the Cayman Compass.
A familiar face to many in Cayman from his time at Foster’s supermarket, where he managed the deli and seafood departments, and later ran the Fort Street Market store, Stanley, who was 73, had a long list of complex health issues.
The coronavirus was a complicating factor, but not the primary cause of his death.
His daughter, a professor based in Wisconsin, had travelled to Cayman in early October in hopes of bringing him back to the US, where she and her siblings could take better care of him.
Having tested positive for COVID-19 herself during her time as a primary caretaker for her father, she is still in quarantine at his condo, where she received the news that he had died in the early hours of Sunday, 14 Nov.
Piña said her father suffered from COPD – a chronic lung disease. He had a leg amputated just after the pandemic began in 2020, and periodically suffered from related infections. Stanley, who had been in and out of hospital over the past two months, had been recovering from COVID at home, and was readmitted on the evening of Thursday, 11 Nov. Piña was later informed that he had suffered a septic shock, due to pneumonia. She believes the virus was a secondary factor in his death.
“It has been tough,” she said.
“My dad was a fighter. I really thought I was going to take him back to the US with me. We had the plane tickets for this week.”
Stanley was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. He enlisted in the Navy when he was 18 and served three tours in Vietnam aboard the USS Kitty Hawk.
He later obtained his associate degree in applied science, and went on to raise a family in Kansas City, Missouri, managing and owning several grocery and convenience stores, as well as a catering business.
Passion for fishing
He was in his early 40s when he moved to Cayman, working at Foster’s and indulging his passions for fishing and poker.
He was a regular in angling tournaments, at the helm of his 17-foot outboard, Lickety Split.
A Compass report from one such event named him as a ‘local fishing legend’ who made tournament history, and recorded his tiny Twin V heading out to ‘brave high winds and heavy seas’ alongside a fleet of much larger boats.
That didn’t stop him from competing, however.
“He often caught the biggest fish,” Piña remembers.
Family shots of mahi-mahi and wahoo that dwarf the vessel bring back great memories for Piña of summers in Cayman with her father and siblings. There is still fishing bait in the freezer at his condo, evidence of his hope and belief that he would get out on the ocean again in spite of his ill health.
Woody Foster, owner of Foster’s supermarket chain, remembered Stanley’s legendary status as an angler, who would go out to 12-Mile Bank alone in his tiny boat and haul in big-game fish.
Old school
He also paid tribute to him as an old-school, hard-working guy. Foster said he ran the Fort Street Market “like it was his own”, capable of doing every job in the store and always going the extra mile for the business.
“He could run the register, he was in the back cooking, he was unloading the trucks…. he gave us his heart and soul,” said Foster.
“He worked extremely hard and he expected the same from everybody else. He led by example.”
For Piña, there is some comfort in knowing that her father is no longer in pain and that he died in the place that he loved so much.
“He was an interesting man, a funny man, a hard-working man. I know he loved it here and would have wanted to transition here,” she said.
“This is where he spent a lot of his life. He made a lot of great friends and he was a well-known character.”
Stanley leaves three children – Mark Stanley, Jr., Annie Ford and Piña – all of whom live in the US, as well as six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
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