300 attend wake for man killed by pick-up truck
300 attend wake for man killed by pick-up truck
Linda Rodriguez
Raul Matos, the Lower Roxbury resident who was killed Aug. 3 after being struck by a pick-up truck on Tremont Street, was a beloved family man and longtime denizen of the South End, his family and friends said.
A 73-year-old Puerto Rican native, Matos lived in the South End and Lower Roxbury for more than 45 years. He spent most of that time in Villa Victoria, though he moved to the Smith House in Lower Roxbury eight years ago.
Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1934, Matos came to the United States in 1954. Settling briefly in New York City, Matos soon moved to the South End of Boston. He worked for most of his life in construction, partly as a licensed pipe fitter, and later as the on-staff painter for ETC Corporation, the development company that owns Villa Victoria.
“He was just looking for work and a better life,” said Carmen Matos-Morrell, one of Matos’s five children, about why her father left Puerto Rico. In the South End, she says, he found good friends and a community in which he was well respected and liked. Matos-Morell remembered her father as a man who loved playing softball and who played in so many local leagues she couldn’t keep track of them. He loved to spend time with friends and neighbors in the Plaza Betances of Villa Victoria and enjoyed visiting with his fellow “old retired guys.” He also cooked traditional Puerto Rican dishes, she said, and was “old school.”
Hector Rivera, Matos’s best friend, and fellow softball and Plaza Betances dominoes player, described Matos as “an old-fashioned Puerto Rican guy.” While Matos had not been able to return to Puerto Rico in more than 17 years, he was intensely proud of his heritage, Rivera said.
“He was so proud about any Puerto Rican,” said Rivera. “He said, ‘You see this guy on TV the other day?’ I say, ‘No, I don’t know him, I don’t watch,’ and he say, ‘He’s Puerto Rican.’”
Matos also loved his family, Rivera said. “Always, he talking about the daughters, the granddaughters, this and that … He always told me, ‘Hector, this coming weekend, I’m not going to be with you guys, I’m going with my daughter’ … He was very concerned about his family, he was so proud.”
Matos-Morell remembers her father as a man who loved to play with his grandchildren and who was a constructive influence on the young people around him.
“He was always a positive role model, always trying to find the good within the bad,” said daughter Matos-Morell. “I knew the type of person that my father was because he was a good, good father, he was good man to me, he was there always he was a good grandfather.”
Matos was also a good role model, said family and friends, to people to whom he wasn’t related. Gladys Centeno, a lifelong friend of Matos’s, said that Matos, her father’s best friend, was like an uncle to her. “We were like family,” she said. “He knows everybody, was always giving everybody advice.”
He did seem to know everybody — at his wake, held Aug. 8 at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, more than 300 people signed the guestbook. “I knew how well-known and how well-liked he was, but not until his wake on Wednesday that I knew how he truly impacted so many people,” said Matos-Morell.
Matos was 73 years old when he died, but most in the community who knew him thought he was much younger, Matos-Morell said.
“Nobody knew, none of his friends knew how old my dad was,” she said. It wasn’t until Matos’s wake, she noted, that many people found out his true age, when they read it on the baseball cards featuring his image that his family had made to commemorate the event.
“People were shocked that he was that old … He wasn’t the typical 73-year-old,” she said, describing a man who loved to bike, walked everywhere he didn’t ride, and who coached softball for a women’s league in Mission Hill run by Rivera.
Around 10 years ago, though, Matos, who had high blood pressure, had two mild strokes. “He was very fit, but he was old school, old time Puerto Rican — ‘No doctors, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine’ … He let it go so long that he had suffered two mild strokes,” said Matos-Morell. “After that, he decided to retire to take better care of himself.”
Matos remained an active man who treasured his independence so much that people offering him rides home from the Plaza Betances would often lie to him and tell him they were going in his direction any way, just to get him to accept, his daughter said.
Matos-Morell said that on the day he died, Matos was riding his bike and running errands, before meeting some friends in Plaza Betances. She had recently gotten him a cell phone, she said, because he was so frequently away from his home and because she had begun to worry about him, out on the streets.
“He’s 73 years old. I was always afraid that something would happen,” she said. “And my worst fear did happen.”
According to witnesses and the Boston Police, the truck that struck and killed Matos was traveling the wrong way down the one-way driveway in front of the Castle Square Apartments. The woman driving the black Ford Ranger pickup appeared to have lost control of the vehicle and hit several other vehicles, as well as Matos, police said. Matos was found by police lying face down in front of 482 Tremont St. His bicycle, which had been dragged by the truck, was found in front of 496 Tremont St. (see “Man Killed After Being Hit By Truck,” Aug. 9).
The circumstances around Matos’s death are still under investigation, Boston Police Media Relations said Tuesday. The woman driving the truck that killed Matos has not been arrested or charged with a crime in connection with the incident.
Matos is survived by his five children, Digna Velez of Castlebury, Fla.; Lourdes Matos of Puerto Rico; Carmen Matos-Morell of Rockland, Mass.; Raul Jr. and Juana Elizabeth of East Boston; seven grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews. He is also survived by his brothers, Luis and William of Florida, and Gilbert of the South End.
