She hadĪ distinctive, scratchy voice, and was a feisty personality, a lot of Possible as I stayed in her home in barrio Pueblo and in Rocha. Them while researching lacemaking in Moca, and Malen made it especially Hernandez Vale and Mokay Hernandez Vale worked with other lacemakers to X-posted in part from Mundillo, encaje y vidaĪway yesterday on August 22, 2015. She hoped to bring him stateside once he recovered, but his condition was too fragile, and he died a couple of weeks later in the hospital in Ponce, on my mother's birthday. One of his daughters went to Puerto Rico and saw to his care after suffering a brain aneurysm. I'll remember his smile, the face that shares the features of my mother, my aunt and the grandparents I never got to meet or see in photographs. It was a newsworthy moment that brought him some coverage in the local press and a degree of pride that he responded so quickly.įredy Babilonia Rodriguez, 2006. He rushed up to the front, took control of the vehicle and was able to drive the bus and its passengers to safety. He told me about an incident in New York in 1952, where he boarded a bus and the driver had a heart attack along the route. He loved baseball, and played locally in a team both in Puerto Rico and in New York. They too would have liked to know Fredy better. He married and had partners, and left a legacy of several children in the city, my wonderful cousins. Perhaps it was the string of deaths begun by his brothers, each named William, dying, one as infant and the other as toddler, followed by his mother and then his father, that kept him moving. As soon as they came of age or near it, each sibling left the small town to make a life for themselves between Manhattan and Brooklyn. They died, first Felicita and then Alcides, and the family was split up to be cared for by relatives. He began life in Moca, Puerto Rico, on November 23, 1933, the son of Alicides Babilonia Lopez and Felicita Rodriguez Vale. Still, I was glad to see him when I was in Puerto Rico, and to have the chance to talk to him a few times. His golden years were not exactly comfortable, and he was plagued by health issues. The embezzler left him and his co-workers without any money for their old age beyond whatever meager amounts Social Security could provide. He might have had a pension, but someone stole the pension money from the company he worked for in Brooklyn. It was a struggle for a meager living, and he worked for a metal company in Brooklyn that made pots and pans. Image: Wikimediaįredy lived in the barrio pueblo (town ward) of Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico, having returned to the island for his retirement. He had stopped talking to me because I asked him to do a DNA test, in the hopes of learning more about his paternal ancestry, but he probably took umbrage because he thought it was a straight paternity test.
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