Liborio Ricardo Fariñas was born February 7, 1907 and Ricardo grew up in Matanzas, Cuba, the twenty-third of twenty-four children according to one source, or one of eighteen children according to Hajdu.

In 1925, at the age of eighteen, he ran into trouble while trying to form a union, and he fled the country, an incident which his son would later fictionalize for his short story "The Passing of Various Lives." In the U.S. he Americanized his name to Richard Farina, dropping the tilde and the final "s".

Mr. Farina settled in Flatbush, a middle-classed neighborhood in the center of Brooklyn. He found work as a machine builder, and married Tessie Crozier. After they divorced in the fifties, he married a woman named Lillian and moved to Gerritsen Beach, a quiet, Irish Catholic, cottage-style community in the southeast of Brooklyn.

Commenting on his relationship with his son, he said,

"I think we had the same character--the same drive. I told him, when you want something, don't stop until you get what you're going after. Be very dedicated to whatever you do."

Mr. Farina loved to talk about his son and meet his fans. He would give slideshows and boast of his son's prodigious achievements. Mr. Farina died on August 24, 2001, only a few months after the publication of Positively 4th Street.

Links

• Richard and Mimi Farina: Meet the Parents