Puerto Rican musician, entrepreneur and father of three dies in Surfside collapse

In April, Jay Kleiman released an album called All the Voices in My Head. His voice carries smoothly over the soulful melodies tied with lyrics about being alive, being in love and being loved.

“No matter that all these things happened, I’ll still believe in good, I’ll be OK,” he sings in rock-inflected “Long Way Home.“

“I’m OK. I will see the sun rise and live every day to its fullest until the sun sets on me.”

Only three months after releasing this, his third album, Jay perished in the debris when the Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside.

The 52-year-old had flown into Miami from his home in Puerto Rico to attend the funeral of a friend. He stayed with his mother, Nancy, at the Surfside condominium. His brother Frank and his newlywed wife, Ana, along with her son Luis, lived on the same floor.

All five disappeared when the tower caved into itself on June 24, leaving loved ones in Puerto Rico and Florida praying the family survived the fall.

The bodies of Ana and Luis were pulled from the rubble. Two days later, Frank was discovered lifeless. On July 5, search and rescue teams recovered the last two missing Kleimans, Nancy and Jay. Another relative who was in town for the same funeral, George Washington University student Deborah Berezdivin, is still among the missing.

Jay grew up in Puerto Rico, the child of Saul Kleiman and Nancy Kress Levin, a Cuban couple that migrated there when Castro took power. He was a student at Saint John’s School, a tight-knit beachfront school in San Juan. Along with his brother Frank, he became a beloved fixture of the community.

He moved to South Florida before graduating high school when his parents split, later enrolling in the University of Miami, where he received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science with a double minor in English and Religion.

Jay returned to Puerto Rico in the 1990s to work in the family business for over a decade. He helped run the day-to-day operations of Infinito, an iconic fast fashion retailer that once had dozens of stores on the island. He also worked at major Puerto Rican retailer Kress. Equipped with an eye for fashion and a tireless work ethic, he launched Morena Studio in 2017, a women’s apparel designer and wholesaler with a boutique in the metropolitan San Juan area.

“Friend, colleague, boss, we say goodbye and though it hurts, we’ll keep your smile forever captured in our hearts,” his employees wrote about Jay’s passing, “It has been an honor to be a part of your life.”

Jay had three children with ex-wife Karen Demel: Samara, Ari and Eitan.

Alex Garcia, a close friend who has known the Kleiman brothers for years, called his friend a “forward-thinking, straight-shooting” doting father who has an “admirable” relationship with his two sons and daughter.

“What a chip off the old block. They were just partners in crime with their dad,” he said. “He was so freakin’ proud of those kids. And they loved each other. It was a love fest.”

He was also “the athlete of the family,” said René Fernández another classmate. For years, the two played soccer every Saturday and attended a boot camp multiple times a week. Often, Jay would bring his black Labrador, who would run around the beach in Condado as the two friends worked out. Frank and Jay, devoted fans of the Philadelphia Eagles, came over to watch football games at Fernández’s house.

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Friends across Puerto Rico and South Florida described Jay as a man whose presence brought a sense of well-being and joy.

“He always has a smile on his face. I appreciate his wonderful sense of humor and extraordinary compassion,” said Mark Eiglarsh, a South Florida lawyer who has known Jay since childhood.

Another friend, David Karpel, said that “one could not help but to fall in love with Jay Kleiman.”

“He had an aura of charm, mischievousness, and beatitude in his beautiful and bountiful smile, a little jive in his walk. His idiosyncratic mannerisms — he practically danced as you conversed with him, he spoke like he was phrasing a song, and his eternal optimism: ‘It’s all good,’” wrote Karpel.

Since the world learned that the Kleimans were trapped in the condo rubble, loved ones have remembered Jay through his music. His classmates from Saint John’s hope to spread his song, “Long Way Home,” far and wide.

In a seven-second clip cousin Alex Ripol posted after his body was found, Jay strums on a cream-colored electric guitar with a caramel neck. He sways with the infectious tune, his eyes focused on his instrument.

“Jay Kleiman in concert tonight and every night in a venue we can’t yet go to,” said Ripol, “See you when I see you.”

There will be a memorial service for Nancy Kress Levin, her two sons Frank and Jay Kleinman, and Frank’s wife Ana Ortiz at 10:30 a.m.. Thursday at Temple Sinai of Hollywood, 1400 N. 46th Ave., Hollywood.

This story was originally published July 7, 2021 at 7:40 PM.