Alexander J Oberlender
Happy Birthday in Heaven
This guy. Today would’ve been his 89th Birthday.
Most kids idolize the usual suspects. Athletes. Actors. Directors. Business people. Politicians. I did idolize some of those, but this guy was a king to me. Some of you may be wondering who he was. His name was Rafael Kravec, and he was my great uncle. He came here from Cuba with nothing and built a life that included a big happy family, success in business, and success in his second career, philanthropy. He built his company from National Trading to French Fragrances and then purchased Elizabeth Arden, all the while bringing his family along for the ride. My father worked for him, and eventually, so did I during the summers as a teenager. He always had a smile on his face. He treated everyone like they were the most important person in the room, whether they were the janitor or the United States president. That taught us all an important lesson of how to treat people since we all learn from examples. Because he made that clear with his actions, the people loved him; on the warehouse floor, he’d mingle in the lines talking to employees and asking about families because somehow he remembered everything. I knew my uncle was nearby because the employees would light up and work harder, excited to see the boss come by and hope that he’d be proud of them. But to us, he was Tio Rafael. One memory that I’ve always had was when I was around 5 I was at work with my dad and went to see Tio in his office, he was showing me some tchotchke toy he had when the phone rang with an important call, he took it, and while getting loud with the person on the other end, he spent the whole time still smiling and playing with me, almost like it was a show for him. Every time we were together, it was as if the rest of the world shut off. I was lucky enough to visit him in February just before the pandemic was getting bad, and we sat in his penthouse apartment overlooking the ocean talking about his life in Cuba growing up. His phone rang a few times, yet he never looked; I was all the mattered at that moment. I will always remember that day.
