Magali "Maggie" Garriga Drake

At daybreak, the sun arose on a day of mourning for Maggie Drake. Although she was known by her numerous friends as “Maggie,” her birth name was Magali Garriga y Rosado. She was born on Sunday, January 22, 1939, in Havana, Cuba. Until 1959, when Fidel Castro descended from the mountains with his army of brigands and seized control of the government, Maggie and her younger brother Luis and their parents had lived prosperously.

Like thousands of others, they were forced to flee Havana and settled temporarily in Miami until Castro would be ousted and they could return to their home and resume their lives. But Castro remained in power, and Luis and Isolina Garriga, after being re-trained and certified as teachers through a government program at Indiana State University, relocated with their daughter and son to the Atlantic coast of Florida.

They lived to see their daughter marry Carlos R. Balado, the son of a Cuban hotelier and a formidable baseball player who earned a doctoral degree and became a sought-after professor and mentor at the University of Central Florida. They had two daughters, Magali (now Dr. Magali Balado Skeldon) and Kristie (now Kristie Doucet).

Daughter Magali, known by friends and family as “Maggie” (as was her mother), gave my wife her greatest treasure: her granddaughter Natalie Gisele Feller, a highly successful sales executive with an international medical-equipment company and the fiancée of Christopher J. DeLeo, M.D.

Maggie Drake had not one but two successful careers—first in banking, and subsequently as the business manager of a major medical practice. Her work life had come a long way from trudging through the snow to and from a factory in Indiana, earning the minimum wage and trying to learn English while her parents were being trained to become teachers.

Those who are fortunate to have birthdays in January can begin the new year with the hope for a better one than the previous year. Sadly, the ever-beautiful Magali Garriga Drake departed this life twelve days before what would have been her 86th birthday.

She is survived by her spouse, Dr. James A. Drake; daughters Dr. Magali (Timothy) Skeldon and Kristie (Russell) Doucet; granddaughter Natalie Gisele Feller; sister-in-law Eleanor Garriga, and former son-in-law David M. Feller. She was predeceased by her parents, Luis Antonio Garriga and Isolina Rosado Garriga, her brother Luis Antonio Garriga, Jr., and her former spouse Dr. Carlos R. Balado.

A public visitation for Maggie will be held at Blessed Sacrament Church in Cocoa, FL on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 10:30AM with Mass to follow at 11AM. A graveside service is scheduled at Florida Memorial Gardens in Rockledge, FL at 1:30PM.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Blessed Sacrament Church at 5135 North Cocoa Blvd., Cocoa, FL 32927.