Kleiman family of five spread their love from Miami to Puerto Rico
The Kleimans, a tightknit Puerto Rican-Cuban family, were back together.
Jay Kleiman had flown into Miami from his home in Puerto Rico to attend the funeral of a friend. He stayed with his mother, Nancy, in the Champlain Towers in Surfside. His brother, Frankie, and his newlywed wife, Ana, along with her son, Luis, lived on the same floor.
Deborah Berezdivin, a student at George Washington University in Washington, related to the Kleimans, was also in town with her boyfriend for the same funeral and staying in the building.
Just before 2 a.m. on Thursday, their condo tower came crashing down, leaving a mass of rubble, ruin and splintered shards where the tower previously stood. Seventy-two hours later, all five of the Kleimans who were in units 702 and 712 are still missing, among the 152 people missing in the Surfside condo collapse. Berezdivin has not been found either, nor her boyfriend, Ilan Naibryf, a student at the University of Chicago.
Interviews with friends of the family paint a picture of a warm, loving family that is active in the Jewish community and lives with one foot in Puerto Rico and the other in South Florida.
Nancy Kress Levin, 76, is the family’s matriarch. Nancy fled Castro’s government in the mid-20th century and moved to Puerto Rico. She married Saul Kleiman, and the couple had two children, Jay and Frankie. After she and Saul separated, Nancy took her two sons to live in Miami in the
1980s.
She later remarried Lawrence Levin, who died in 2011.
Rosin Hernández, who says she worked for the family for over 20 years, pleaded to God that they be found.
“Frankie and Jay Kleiman … and their mother Nancy at the center, a beautiful human being,” she wrote. “The last thing we lose is hope.”
EXPECTING HIS FIRST GRANDCHILD
When Frankie Kleiman’s high school friends saw the 55-year-old father for the last time at a Fathers’ Day get-together last Sunday, he couldn’t stop smiling. “His eyes shone” as he spoke about becoming a grandfather for the first time. His daughter — he has three boys as well — is expecting a baby girl.
“A joy, an energy so positive,” said Bruno Rodriguez, one of his former classmates.
Frankie’s classmates from Saint John’s School in Puerto Rico are devastated since word of his disappearance following the collapse. Several friends described him as a person who is so joyful, his happiness is infectious. At a reunion about 15 years ago, his classmates nicknamed him “a man with an eternal smile,” Rodriguez said.
For many high school classmates, like Alex Garcia, Frankie is a cornerstone of important milestones and fondest memories.
“Frankie was my best man. Frankie and I partied in Vegas. We have so much history together,” he said. “It’s impossible to say that I was Frankie’s best friend, but Frankie is a best friend. He’s the guy that you can count on.”
Garcia described Frankie as a “happy-go-lucky” guy who “never complained,” even when the family business faced financial difficulties.
It was Garcia, who joked Frankie was a “lady killer” when they were young, who set up Frankie with Ana Ortiz, a 46-yearold single mom he has known for over a decade and a half. The two met on a blind date. Ortiz, a hard-working professional, adores her 26-year-old son, Luis Bermúdez.
“She’s a rock star. And gorgeous, and she worked, [she is] an independent woman. And on top of that, a super mom,” said Garcia.
“To call him unforgettable is an understatement,” wrote a teacher from Bermúdez’s high school, who called him a “champion survivor.”
Bermúdez, nicknamed Luiyo by his loved ones, ran a clothing business called Saucy Boyz Clothing.
Many of the shirts, socks, and hats are sushi and food-themed.
“This SBC line has really been a dream come true for me,” he posted on Facebook in November 2018. “I love sharing my art with the whole world.”
FRANKIE AND ANNIE JUST MARRIED
Frankie had been a “great” stepdad to Annie’s son, said Garcia. Three weeks before the condo collapsed, after years of building a life together, the couple had
married, he added.
Garcia last saw the family of three at the Father’s Day party in
Boca Ratón, where a group of diasporic Puerto Ricans congregated for a lechonada, an open-air pig roast.
At the party, the couple spent hours chatting and laughing with friends and spoke about a new business they had recently set up together.
“New beginnings,” Frankie wrote on his Facebook about the venture, a postal office that offered business services in North Miami.
JAY WAS THE MUSICIAN
Like his older brother, Jay was described as someone filled with love and positive energy by friends.
“He always has a smile on his face. I appreciate his wonderful sense of humor and extraordinary compassion. My heart aches with what I fear he’s experienced,” said Mark Eiglarsh, a South Florida lawyer who has known Jay since childhood.
Through his friendship with Frankie, Garcia became close with Jay. The two explored setting up a food truck park in San Juan together. He called his friend a “forwardthinking, straight-shooting” doting father who has an “admirable” relationship with his two sons and daughter.
“What a chip off the old block. They were just partners in crime with their dad,” he said. “He was so freakin’ proud of those kids. And they loved each other. It was a lovefest.”
A gifted musician, he released an acoustic-filled album in April — in Spanish, English, and French — titled “All the Voices in My Head.” His voice carries smoothly over the slow, breezy melodies tied with lyrics about love and being loved.
Garcia plans to travel to Miami this week to await news.
He holds out hope that his cherished childhood friends, and their relatives, will be found among what’s left of the Champlain Tower.
“I’m praying I’m going down there to see my buddies in the hospital,” he said.