Federico Paul

Federico “Freddy” Paúl, of Rosedale, NY, died on December 30, 2023 at the age of 83. After previously surviving a triple bypass, esophageal cancer, and a heart attack and stroke eight years before, he suffered a heart attack and died in the home he was very proud of with his loving wife by his side. A funeral service and viewing will be held at O’Reilly’s Funeral Home in Rosedale, New York on January 3, 2024.

Freddy was born to Lina Howard Paúl on March 20, 1940 in Caracas, Venezuela. While his mother was a single parent, he was raised with his grandmother Beatrice Amelia Howard Paúl. Although he was an only child he was raised with cousins as close as siblings: Rosa, Magdalenda, Elie, Anita, Geraldo, Judith, Ingrid, Hector, Oscar, Alejandro, Luis, and Enrique. He joined the Venezuelan Navy as a teen, lying about his age, to enlist. Incredibly intelligent, he applied to pilot school but was refused entry because of racism.

Following in his cousins Magda and Rosa’s footsteps, Freddy came to New York with very little but a dream of making his way in “The Land of Opportunity”. Federico worked different jobs in New York including as a livery cab driver. An experience that gave him a “mental map” of practically every street and avenue in New York and the best shortcuts to get from A to B and back again.

He was fluent in English and Spanish and would regale his passengers with stories and jokes. One day his charm overwhelmed a man who gave him an opportunity to use the technical skills he learned in the Navy to work for a Food transport logistics company called Embassy Grocery which distributed Lucky Boy brand foodstuffs across the Atlantic Seaboard. This was at the beginning of computerized logistics and programming and Freddy had to teach himself how to program computers the size of rooms to output trucking solutions using punched cards! Despite teaching himself programming languages like PASCAL and FORTRAN, when Embassy was bought out, he worked at American Airlines with his wife Marlene for almost a decade until he retired.

Freddy was an autodidact carpenter, mechanic, electrician, and electronics repair person, even forming his own business FRD Electronics to service televisions, VCRs and other small appliances Give him a schematic or a blueprint and he could figure out the problem and find a low or even no-cost solution! His family, including his sister and brothers-in-law, all counted on him for sage advice, mechanical assistance, or just his presence whenever things were tough. He was someone that people could count on no matter what. You may want a lift and not a lecture or a lesson, but you would come away with both.

He was as handy with a hammer and wrench as he was with a good joke. He had a big laugh that you could hear across the room and then you would wonder why you weren’t on that side of the room since that’s where the drinks were being poured.

Unfortunately, after a stroke that left him with aphasia, puzzling out solutions was no longer easy for him. But he never lost his sharp mind or the muscle memory of how to work a multimeter or the fastest way through the winding roads between Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island!

Freddy survived the death of his mother Lina, his cousins Geraldo, Anita, Oscar, Hector and his siblings by marriage Lennox, Earl, Jacqueline, and Shahied (Vonrick) Jeffers and his beloved poodle Negro. He is survived by his wife of 52 years Marlene and their children Rashish and Deshant, his oldest daughter from a previous marriage with Eve Caton, Deidre and his grandchildren Makeda, Amanicque, Asha, Men-I, Anando, and Kian, and his great-grandchildren Malachi, Matthew, Malina, and his most recent Aubrey.