Marcos Antonio Rodriguez of Fairfield, Connecticut, passed away from a sudden stroke on April 30, 2026, at 91 years of age.

Marcos Antonio Rodriguez Garcia Abreu was born to Rafael Facundo Rodriguez and Candida Luz Garcia in the small town of Banes, Cuba, on June 13, 1934. His maternal grandparents were Manuel Garcia and Clotilde Gonzalez. His paternal grandparents were Ramona Abreu and his namesake, Marcos Rodriguez, the patriarch of the family, who was born in the Canary Islands in Spain and sailed to Cuba in the late nineteenth century as a teenager. Through hard work and the grace of God, the Rodriguez Abreu family grew and prospered to become a large and loving family in pre-revolutionary Cuba and then in the United States.

He was a devout Catholic. Marcos met Berta Teresa, his wife and the love of his life, before their First Communion. Marcos married Berta in 1960, and they shared sixty-three years of love and family until her death in 2023. Their long lives spanned continents, survived a revolution, and built a loving and lasting legacy.

After Castro's revolution confiscated their homes and livelihood, Marcos and Berta fled Cuba with their young family. It took several years to obtain permission to leave from the Communist government, and Spain was the first country to give them entry visas. They were among the hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees who had to cross the Atlantic twice to get to the U.S. They lived in Madrid until January 1967, when they flew to JFK on a charter flight paid for by Caritas, international Catholic Charities.

Settling in Washington Heights, Marcos and Berta embraced their new lives in New York City and dedicated themselves to their families. They both worked more than full-time jobs to provide for their young immediate family, as well as to send money back to extended family still in Cuba and to support their new community in New York, mainly through the Catholic church and schools.

Marcos worked for thirty years as a waiter at the Edwardian Room of the Plaza Hotel, where he served almost every U.S. President from Nixon to Carter, Clinton and Trump. Berta worked as a pharmacist for a corner drug store on Broadway and then, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, while raising and supporting their three children (and ten grandchildren).

Marcos believed in God, his family, the American dream of his adopted country, and hard work. Marcos and Berta moved from Cuba to Spain, then New York City, Leonia, New Jersey, and, for the last two decades of their lives, Fairfield, Connecticut. Every move was motivated by unbounded love and selfless sacrifice, driven by what was best for our family.

Marcos' prodigious memory allowed him to recite poetry at the dinner table to teach a lesson or to just have fun. One of his favorite poems was from the 19th-century Venezuelan Elias Calixto Pompa:

Trabaja, joven, sin cesar trabaja:

La frente honrada que en sudor se moja,

Jamás ante otra frente se sonroja,

Ni se rinde servil a quien la ultraja.

…

El pan que da el trabajo es más sabroso,

Que la escondida miel que con empeño

Liba la abeja en el rosal frondoso.

Marcos spoke softly, and his words were always kind and profound. He was surrounded by the family whom he loved throughout his entire life. He found beauty and joy in every season, every flower, and every one of God's creatures. But his greatest joy was making his family laugh.

To his last hours, he could paint a picture and take you back in time with his words and his smile, whether through reminisces of his and Berta's odysseys, or the poetry he could recite by heart, or nuggets of his own homespun wisdom.

The memory of Marcos and Berta are the bedrock foundation of the lives of those of us who they loved and who loved them. Whatever we build, whatever we do, we know well whose example drives us.

Marcos is survived by his three children, Marcos (Tia Kirk), Ana (Ed Barth), and Amanda (Brendan Murphy), ten grandchildren, two sisters, and an extended family, all of whom are grateful for his life and love.

In the old Spanish tradition of el nombre completo, his full name was Marcos Antonio Rodriguez Garcia Abreu Gonzalez Perez Garcel Hernandez Carapucheta.

Throughout his life, he was known by many much shorter and loving nicknames: Marquitin, el bacan, el Cubano, Papi, Papo, Abuelo, Don Marcos, and EZ Boy. By all those names, we love you and miss you dearly. We are comforted to know that Marcos Antonio is now reunited with the love of his life, his Cleopatra, Berta Teresa.

Calling hours will be held Thursday, May 7, 2026, 4-8 pm at the Lesko Funeral Home, 1209 Post Road, Fairfield Center. Services will continue on Friday, May 8, 2026, at 10:30 am directly at St. Pius X, 834 Brookside Drive, Fairfield, CT. Services will proceed to Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield, where he will be laid to rest.

 Memorial contributions can be made to the Society of Saint Teresa of Jesus or to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York.