Obituary of Iraida Frias

Iraida Frías never thought she would cross the Florida Straits before she fled her island home.

Leaving Cuba was an adventure she never asked for.

It marked a before and after in her life: She started over in a new country where she married late, started her own business, had a son when most would have given up hope, and watched her grandchildren take their first steps in her quiet home in Pembroke Pines, Fla.

She died in that home in hospice care May 21, with her husband, Fernando, gripping her hand as she slipped peacefully away. She was 86.

Iris to her friends, she was born in Cardenas, Cuba to a do-everything father who lived to 108. One of five children, Iris was the fun aunt who plucked nephews early from school to escape to Cuba’s Varadero Beach in a sundress, where the boys fought over who got to protect her honor.

Fleeing a dictatorship, she left Cuba on a Freedom Flight in 1966 at age 34 and arrived in Hialeah, where she and her sister Hortencia worked as a factory seamstress. While shopping for a refrigerator, she made the deal of lifetime — she married the salesman, another Cuban exile, her would-be husband of 45 years. She loved his son, Rogerio, like her own. And two years later, a month before her 42nd birthday, she gave birth to Carlos.

She and her husband each bought ice cream trucks, and she sold frozen treats to the children of Miramar, where the family eventually settled. Together, they sold the trucks and started a literal mom-and-pop jewelry story in Carol City, which her husband named for her, Iris Joyeria.

For 23 years there, she managed the books and cooked meals of fricase de pollo, ropa vieja and picadillo on a small stove in the back of the store, rarely wearing more jewelry than the rings her husband bought her on an ice cream man’s wages.

She was secretly a “car guy,” able to name the make and model of any car with a single glance. She liked to sneak into car lots at night with her son, unhindered by salesman, and peruse the latest models. When she was young, she was never able to afford that Mach 1 Mustang in Grabber Blue, but she did finally own a white convertible Mustang GT (a 1989 Fox body) that she loved to drive — fast — with the top down.

Her happiest times were cheering her son in T-ball, yelling “run, run!” from the stands, and summer family vacations to Disney and driving to Hollywood Beach in the convertible, where she watched the tide come in and ate ice cream on the Broadwalk.

She was preceded in death by her brother Julio and sister Hortencia. She is survived by her oldest sister in Cuba, Berta, her husband and sons, and six grandchildren — Justin, Sabelle, Savinna, Elise, Amelia and Catalina— that even in her last days made her eyes sparkle like waters of Varadero.

Family and friends will honor her memory at a wake May 22, between 3-9 pm at Joseph A.  Scarano Funeral Home with a service there at 7:30 pm. Address: 9000 Pines Blvd., Pembroke Pines, FL 33024