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Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Enid Dwyer Honored For Her Year’s Of Service To Seattle’s Jamaican Population

Enid Dwyer with Oystian Sinclair, former secretary of FOJS and a branch manager at US Bank at a Jamaican Independence  Day celebration in Seattle. 

One of the earliest Jamaicans in the Seattle area, Enid L. Dwyer was here long before employers began recruiting young professionals from her home country.

For 50 years, and most recently in the last two decades, Dwyer has acted as advisor, confidante, teacher and friend to cohorts of Jamaicans moving to the Seattle area for jobs at places like Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing. She watched them settle down, buy homes, and start families of their own — offering advice, sharing lessons of how to successfully navigate life in corporate America.

In 1995, the Jamaican government named her Honorary Consul to the State of Washington and the Pacific Northwest, making official duties Dwyer had been doing for her fellow compatriots all along.

Among her accomplishments in representing the island and government of Jamaica in Washington State, Dwyer helped create the organization, Friends of Jamaica Seattle (FOJS), which is committed to providing assistance to Jamaicans in the region. The organization is also involved in the advancement of education in Jamaica by supplying schools with computers, books and educational supplies.

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At the FOJS annual fundraising banquet recently, Jamaican Ambassador Audrey Marks, visited from Washington D.C. to bestow upon Dwyer the Jamaican government’s national honor for service to the Jamaican population in Seattle.

Expressing her gratitude for the award Dwyer said it would not have been possible “without the encouragement and cooperation of my family and my friends.

“This award is for Seattle and all the people who have supported me,” the 91-year-old Dwyer said. “I’m happy to receive it while I’m still alive.”

Dwyer is the face of Jamaica in Seattle and throughout the Pacific Northwest, home to an estimated 400 people of Jamaican descent. However, her reach extends beyond people of Jamaican decent to those from across the Caribbean – from the Virgin Islands, Trinidad & Tobago, Montserrat, St. Vincent – people living thousands of miles away from their homeland.

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“Mrs. Dwyer was the first Jamaican I met when I moved to Seattle in 2000,” said Peter Morris, a Principal Engineer at Microsoft. “She opened her home to me and welcomed me warmly. This let me know that there was a little slice of Jamaica already here even though I was so far away from home.”

Lembhard Howell, a retired Seattle attorney, Jamaican native and longtime member of FOJS, called Dwyer a “woman of vision, substance, drive and determination.”

“Mrs. Dwyer has ably represented the political, civic and diplomatic interests and needs of Jamaicans throughout the region,” Howell says. “In addition to her usual consular duties, she has on numerous occasions served as patient advocate, court translator, life coach, advisor, friend and confidante.”

Dwyer helped to form FOJS in 1996, after a devastating hurricane struck the island. The organizations raises thousands of dollars each year to provide support and supplies to schools on the island.

Additionally, Dwyer spearheads an annual excursion to Brewster, Washington to provide food and entertainment and camaraderie for Jamaican farm workers, bringing joy to them while they are miles away from home.

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