Darrell Hazelwood, retired Newsday employee, gifted photographer from the Bronx, dies at 73

He was the man always willing to be there, to help, to lend whatever hand needed to be lent. To make a difference.

There was Darrell Hazelwood, taking photographs at New York Association of Black Journalists meetings. And there was Hazelwood, an active member of the tenants association at the Clason Point Gardens houses in the Soundview section of the Bronx, where he grew up and spent almost his entire life.

He was ever-present working for the Black student newspaper at Syracuse University in the 1970s. He also worked in the newsrooms of The Daily News and Newsday, where, as an editorial assistant, he did whatever task was needed. 

Born March 1, 1953, Darrell T. Hazelwood was found dead on Oct. 26, alone in the home where he was raised on Clason Point Lane. He was found after friends and neighbors realized he hadn't been seen in days and had missed one of the meetings he'd always attended.

Though his family said the New York City Medical Examiner's Office had not released its findings, a cousin said all indications were that Hazelwood, 73, died of natural causes.

"He was a quiet guy," former NYABJ Parliamentarian Robert S. Anthony said this week of Hazelwood. "He didn't sell himself, he didn't try to be the most important person in the room. He just did good stuff.

"He just was always there."

But most who knew Hazelwood knew little about his personal life; knew little or nothing of the burdens he'd carried.

"He was more of an introvert," a cousin, Ilyasah Simpson, a former longtime resident of Freeport who recently moved to Lithonia, Georgia, said last week. "He was not someone who was easy to know."

Most didn't know that Hazelwood's father, of whom he never spoke, had been an absentee figure, missing from a young age. That Hazelwood bore scars from a fire that saw him suffer massive third-degree burns as a young child. That his younger brother, his lone sibling, Devenn, then 22, had been brutally murdered when Darrell was 24 — stoned and beaten to death in a Bronx supermarket parking lot by a gang of youths blocks from home after he refused to hand over a dime.

The account of that murder, reported in the March 29, 1978 Daily News, was headlined: "To Gang, His Life Wasn't Worth 10c."

And even in the telling, the compartmentalization that would define Hazelwood was apparent — quoted, matter-of-fact and devoid of anger, about how his brother had been a devoted Catholic; about how he'd loved to cook, had loved chess.

"I think Darrell had some close friends, but for the most part it was only his close friends who got to know him, and even then," former Newsday photo editor David Trotman-Wilkins said.

Trotman-Wilkins, now of Syracuse, met Hazelwood in college there, where the two shared classes and worked together at the paper The Black Voice. The two later worked together at Newsday.

"I think he made a choice a long time ago, to bury it, the pain — and that was just how he handled it," Trotman-Wilkins said. "Even me, I didn't know his brother had died until the 1980s when I asked one day how his family was doing ... All he said was, 'My brother passed away.' That was it. But that was just how he was."

Hazelwood graduated James Monroe High School and Syracuse and worked as a reporter for The Daily News, where he wrote about music, politics, the arts and Black culture.

Stories from his clip file include subjects like an African American and Caribbean arts festival, reggae, Black business owners and a story about an African American science fiction writer.

Hazelwood worked at Newsday from October 1993 until his retirement on Aug. 16, 2019.

"Darrell," Newsday Publisher Debby Krenek said, "always had a smile for everyone at Newsday. He was a valued colleague and a gifted photographer and will be missed by all of us."

Former Newsday colleague Ellen Yan said: "Darrell was a being with grace. You felt emotionally safe with him because he never complained and never punched your ego. ... He had all the time you wanted."

Hazelwood, who never married, trekked worldwide with his mother, Barbara. Simpson and Trotman-Wilkins recalled him telling of visiting South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, Ethiopia, Egypt, England and France. He also went on frequent cruises to the Caribbean.

Simpson said her cousin loved jazz.

Trotman-Wilkins said Hazelwood enjoyed the arts, was well-read and well-versed in politics, noting: "He was a backer of David Dinkins long before David Dinkins became politically well-known, let alone before he became mayor."

"What made Darrell Darrell?" Simpson said. "It would be that he had a heart of gold — and that he always put the world before himself. He'd do anything for you."

As Trotman-Wilkins said: "Darrell never talked about most of this stuff with people. And, I think most people saw him as maybe being a bit eccentric — and so never took the time to get to know him. That's a shame, because he was not your run-of-the-mill person. Underneath it all, he was a complicated man."

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a Newsday reporter since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press, Society of the Silurians and National Headliner Awards for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing. He is the author of “Swee'pea,” about New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. His debut crime novel, “For Nothing Is Hidden,” rooted in 1950s Long Island, was released in October 2025.