Rafael Rojas, of East Hampton, caretaker for estates, dies at 90

From the Amazon jungles to a Manhattan social club, Rafael Rojas lived a fantastical life that he didn’t talk about much until his retirement.

The Colombian native was 5 when he harvested tobacco in his father’s fields, rolled his own cigarettes to smoke, sharpened knives and cleared jungles with a machete, his two daughters said. If he sneaked off to school, his father beat him for not working, he told his family.

Rafael ran away by age 7, initially dividing his time between living in the jungle, where he ate insects and snakes, and shining shoes in nearby neighborhoods, his relatives said. After several days, he got to an aunt’s home, later becoming a teenage shoemaker in the capital, Bogota, before taking a job in the petroleum fields in the jungle in hopes of earning more money, his family recalled.

In the jungle, the teen survived two bouts of malaria — he avoided the coffin his co-workers made for him during his second bout but this spelled the end of his petroleum career, relatives said. His employer believed conditions were too risky for his health and let him go.

“To hear the stories of the jungle, with the machete cutting down the branches and looking for the petroleum and then a tiger would come or a jaguar would come and my father would have to eat snake or alligator ... people were like, ‘Oh my gosh, what a life he lived,’ ” said his daughter Carmen Kenrich, of Winchester, Massachusetts. “It was all true. He wasn’t the kind of person to make up things.”

Rojas, an East Hampton resident for five decades, died Jan. 10 of congestive heart failure in Winchester. He was 90, the retired caretaker for several estates.

At the behest of an aunt in New York City, he had applied for a green card, arriving in 1958.

He was a blue-eyed blond in an English class when another student, Rosalba Cubillos, wondered why a “gringo” was in the class, family members said. The two were opposites, she a churchgoing immigrant sponsored by a Colombian coffee association official and he a troublemaking charmer, the fourth of 16 children from a poor family. But they clicked — she called him “Rafico” — and he quit smoking as a condition to marrying in 1961.

Rojas took multiple jobs to support his family here and in Colombia — as a restaurant worker, landscaper and caretaker for city and Hamptons homes, relatives said. He was also a doorman at The Harmonie Club, a private Manhattan social club, they said.

He went to night school, getting his eighth-grade diploma in his late 30s and using it to emphasize the importance of education and work.

“He would always say to us, ‘Without hard work, you will not get anywhere in life,’ ” said his granddaughter Taylor Kenrich, of Boston. “The fact that he was able to build a stable family in the U.S. coming from nothing ... he was proud of that.”

Once a week, he would take the family to Central Park and restaurants, recalled his daughter Elizabeth Silva, of Aquebogue, and if they were in the Hamptons, they would eat ice cream or ride ponies after Mass, then spend the day at Albert’s Landing, a beach in Amagansett.

“Every Sunday was dedicated to us — the family,” Silva said.

Upon retirement, he and his wife were regulars at the East Hampton senior center. His popularity turned him into a “fabulous storyteller” whose eyes mesmerized as much as his tales, and he opened his life especially to his grandchildren.

“That’s when he allowed more of the true Rafael Rojas coming out, where there was both the humor and the seriousness,” Carmen Kenrich said.

In retirement, Rojas enjoyed growing vegetables, watching "Jeopardy!" and time with his wife.

Besides his daughters and granddaughter, he is survived by siblings Isabel and Luis Rojas, both from the Bogota, Colombia, metro area; and four other grandchildren. His wife died in 2016.

A graveside service was held Jan. 17 at Most Holy Trinity Cemetery in East Hampton, followed by burial.