Obituary of Florinda Guillen

Florinda Gullen entered into rest on Saturday, January 4, 2024.

Visiation will be held at Riverdale Funeral Home Inc. 5044 Broadway New York, on Saturday, January 11,2025 from 4pm to 8pm. 

Florinda Guillen, beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister and friend, left our world on January 4, 2025, at the age 97. She was the last surviving member of a generation of the Gonzalez and Rivera families who all migrated to New York City after World War II from the impoverished barrios of Ponce, Puerto Rico, searching for a better life.

Florinda’s childhood was especially tragic. Her mother died giving birth to her in 1927, while her father, Alfredo Rivera, an employee of the South Puerto Rico sugar company, left her and her two older brothers to the care of their maternal grandmother while he went to work for a company plant in the Dominican Republic, but he never returned. In 1946, Florinda married her first love, World War II U.S. army veteran Juan González, Sr. That same year, the couple followed Juan’s two older brothers and fellow war veterans, Tomás and Sergio, to New York City, where all three men landed jobs as kitchen workers at the legendary Copa Cabana nightclub.

Florinda and Juan’s marriage produced two children, Juan Gonzalez Jr. and Elena Gonzalez. Their mother, a skilled seamstress, easily landed work in New York’s flourishing garment industry, as did many of the Gonzalez women. Their access to secure, unionized jobs made it possible for that first generation to slowly improve their lot, and eventually to make possible college educations for virtually all of their children.

But tragedy struck Florinda again when her husband died suddenly of brain cancer in 1963 at the age of 39, leaving her a young widow with two teenage children to care for.

She soon found less arduous employment as a hospital clerk and was employed for years at New York’s Brooklyn Hospital. By then, she had married a second time, to Puerto Rican Richard Guillen, a banquet waiter at the Pierre Hotel, just as her children were finishing college and embarking on their adult lives. Thanks to her union with Richard, Florinda managed to find new happiness, traveling to many countries around the world. They soon relocated to Lakeland, Florida, where they purchased a modest but immaculately maintained home and where Florinda became a beloved fixture for nearly 20 years in the admissions department of Lakeland General Hospital.

To her family and friends still in the New York area, Florinda’s home became a wonderful vacation refuge. She was always enticing us there with her amazing hospitality, her unforgettable meals, and all those discounted coupons that Florida residents received for Disney World admission. Even into her late 60s, she was driven to constantly learn more: sewing her own clothes, taking night courses in upholstery, then completely reupholstering furniture for herself and friends.

But Richard died as well, and Florinda was widowed for a second time. After her retirement, and after her son Juan’s youngest daughter Gabriela was born, she agreed to sell her home in Florida and returned to New York in 2000, where she moved to an apartment in Inwood to help to care for her granddaughter. There, she built a circle of close friends who would gather almost daily in the neighborhood parks or in her living room, nurturing another generation of children and exchanging stories of the pain and the joys they had all endured in life. Even into her 90s, she was blessed with good health, was fiercely independent, and was admired and loved by all who knew her. She passed away on January 4^th after nearly a century of dignified triumph against adversity.