Pablo Maximino Barrientos, 82: upholsterer and wood carver remembered as kind, compassionate
This story is part of an on-going Miami Herald series chronicling the lives of South Florida COVID-19 victims.
Pablo Maximino Barrientos, 82, loved his two countries, God, and above all else, his family.
He was born in Provincia de Oriente, Cuba, on Dec. 23, 1939, one of 10 children. He fled to the United States in January 1971 with his wife, Deborah, and their 3-year-old daughter, also named Deborah, after his father, Eusebio Barrientos Rojas, urged him on his deathbed to leave the island.
Pablo Barrientos lived nearly 50 years in the United States, working in upholstery before he fell victim to COVID-19 and died on April 4. This Nov. 7 would have been the couple’s 55th anniversary.
“He was a person who won everyone’s affection. He got along with everyone,” Deborah Barrientos said of her late husband. She described him as “incapable of saying no” when someone asked a favor.
The couple first moved to Los Angeles, where his second daughter, Ana, was born, and then in 1979 to north Florida, where they bought 10 acres of land. He didn’t return to Cuba for 27 years, finally traveling there to see his mother and the family he had left behind.
“He adored his family,” his wife said.
She recounted their first days in their new country.
“He got very emotional,” she said. “He said, ‘Along with my flag... I embrace this new flag of a country of liberty.’ He was very moved.”
Deborah Barrientos said her husband was the type of man who would stop at nothing to help those in need.
“He would see a person on the expressway, with a broken-down car . . [he would say] ‘Deborah, we have to help this person,’” she said.
Daughter Ana Hess remembers him as kind and compassionate.
“He never looked like he had a bad day. He was always a happy person, making jokes. . . he was into helping others,” she said. “When there was a heavy conversation, he made everything feel okay.”
She recalled her father spending time in his later years making wood carvings and giving them as gifts. Her mother remembers his skill in crafting them.
“He made marvelous wood carvings,” Deborah Barrientos said. “God gave him that gift to work with his hands.”
Hess and her older sister, Deborah Barrientos Odom, both live in Georgia, where their parents also stayed until recently. Only a few months ago, the couple moved back to South Florida to care for Deborah Barrientos’ elderly mother after her father passed.
Deborah Barrientos said they were waiting for an at-home COVID-19 test, but Pablo Barrientos’ turn came too late. She was notified the test was ready on March 31, but he had already been taken to the hospital.
Before they took Pablo Barrientos, he told his wife he did not want doctors to “perform miracles.”
“I told him. . . ‘You fight for your life!’” Deborah Barrientos responded.
She said once the doctor called them saying there wasn’t much hope, she felt as though the sky had fallen on top of her. At the recommendation of the doctor, they chose to take him off the ventilator.
Pablo Barrientos was a very religious man. Deborah Barrientos said the family was told the doctors and nurses took each others’ hands and prayed for him after he passed.
“I am grateful with all of my heart to this doctor and those nurses,” she said.
Pablo Barrientos was cremated and his ashes were buried at Honey Creek Woodlands at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia.
He was preceded in death by his mother, father, and five brothers, and survived by two brothers, three sisters, his wife, two daughters, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
The family has a GoFundMe page and other donation sites for the funeral expenses.
Beatriz De La Portilla, a Florida International University journalism student, wrote this story for The Miami Herald..