Eulogy to Don Fernando Rosado

On behalf of my mother, Rosalina Contreras-Rosado, I would like to thank you for coming tonight to pray, to celebrate, and to take leave of our deeply loved and respected brother, colleague, friend and companion, Fernando “Freddy” Rosado.
There is no doubt in my mind that many of you sitting here could speak volumes of his achievements that would be more elevated and serene, more fitting for this man and this occasion. There is no doubt that you could recount endless anecdotes about his remarkable life; the how and why his family emigrated from Spain to Cuba; about his boyhood there; how he met and fostered friendships with so many illustrious musicians (Mario Bauzá, his stepbrother; Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and our own Benny Velarde); You could tell us of his early years as a newspaper man, what brought him to America — first New York then San Francisco; his loyalty to the Cuban Diaspora, “Democracy”, and the art of friendship, political discourse, and the lost discipline of sitting at the table or around a bottle of Jerez talking about the “current situation.”
All of these things — these moments — comprised a life that some of you were blessed to witness but that for all of us comprise a life we admired. In his last few months, notwithstanding all the physical stress, still he came to table whenever possible, and on Thanksgiving, he laughed at jokes, conversed, enjoyed a generous portion of marshmallow pie, and only alter everyone had finished, asked to be taken back to bed. We all knew the end was near, and in the end, he left us much in the same manner with which he lived his life: that is to say, with dignity, tranquility, and honor. “Como un caballero,” my mother said, “he waited for me to leave the room before he passed.”
I met Freddy almost 20 years ago as the unwitting beneficiary of a wager he made with my mother. It was around 1992 and UNESCO had sponsored an international poetry contest on the Quincentennial of the Americas (a los quinientos años del descubrimento). My mother announced at work (she had just started working at El Bohemio News) that she would write and submit an entry. Feeling confident he was making a safe bet, Freddy responded, “Rosita, si tu ganas, yo te llevo;” that, if she ...