Paul Raymond Farrell

Paul Farrell, 77, died at home in Brooklyn on Sunday morning, September 28. He had suffered for many years with Parkinson's disease, about which he rarely complained. To the very end, he was a sweet and loving husband to Denise Rinaldo and an adoring, doting father to his son, Benjamin Farrell. He also treasured his four siblings Barbara McTiernan, Mary Farrell (1950-2018), Rita Farrell, and Peter Farrell, as well as his many nieces and nephews and their children. He was as lovingly connected to his in-laws—Jay Rinaldo, Charlie McTiernan, Michael Broad, and Gene Harkless—as he was to his own siblings. Paul's many friends were a joy to him throughout his life. He stayed in touch with classmates from Amherst College (Class of 1970) too numerous to list. There was Joe Gordon, with whom he shared a deep friendship as well as a subscription to the Metropolitan Opera for more than 40 years. (Lunch with Joe at Shun Lee Palace before or after the Saturday matinee was almost as important as the opera itself.) He also loved Amherst alums John Lamb, Kenneth Martin, and many others. Paul was so interested in the life stories of those close to him—from college classmates, to work friends and beyond—that he could (always with empathy) tell tales about their childhoods, their relatives, their failed romances, that were so vivid it felt as if Paul had experienced the events himself.

A New Yorker through and through, Paul neither lived nor wanted to live anywhere else in his adult life. He never tired of chatting about neighborhoods, subway routes, Robert Moses, classic sixes, or little-known public tennis courts in Brooklyn where you could just ride up on your bike and find a court to play on.

Though modest sometimes to a fault, Paul knew a remarkable amount about seemingly everything. He constantly sought out nuggets of information on topics that fascinated him. Literary figures (Samuel Johnson, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Frost) and New York City arcana (from the poisonous pre-gentrification Gowanus Canal to the luxe art deco apartment complex on the Upper East Side where, Paul would tell you, Madame Chiang-Kai Shek lived) topped the list of his passions. He especially loved when he and Denise could visit a physical locale related to one of his interests. In London, there were the homes of Dr. Johnson, Dickens, and Sigmund Freud. In Bennington, Vermont, Frost's house and grave. In Milan, La Scala (even though no opera was playing). Of course, he visited the Gowanus many times, usually on his bike, and dropped by 10 Gracie Square (Madame Chiang's abode) at least once.

Paul spent his professional life, and much of his leisure time, in the world of words. Mainly, he worked on the editorial side of book publishing; his first job was with Macmillan Publishers, where he began as an editorial assistant. In the 90s, as the Internet was beginning to explode, he became a trade computer book editor at John Wiley & Sons, where he published several top-selling books, including "Applied Cryptography" by Bruce Schneier, which became a classic in field of computer security. It remains in print to this day. Paul then moved to Henry Holt & Company, where he was editor-in-chief of the computer imprints and was named a vice president. His final book job was as editor-in-chief of Copernicus Books (an imprint of Springer-Verlag), where he worked on science-themed books for the general reader. He finished his career at Barron's, the financial newspaper, where he had the pleasure of working alongside his dear friend of many decades, Gene Epstein.

Paul was born in Oceanside, New York, where his parents, Maude and Paul V. Farrell had settled after World War II, both having grown up in Long Beach, New York. It was in Oceanside that Paul learned to play tuba and string bass. He became a lifelong jazz fan and an accomplished jazz bassist, performing in high school, college, and beyond. Ben inherited his father's passion for music as well as his love of the movies. Sitting on the couch with Ben and watching "The Godfather," "Chinatown," or one of the Jason Bourne thrillers brought Paul immense happiness. Paul's mother's family owned lumberyards—Whitbread's Sons Lumber Company—in Oceanside and Long Beach. As a teen, Paul worked at the yard (as they called it), absorbing many lumber and hardware facts that he prized forever and would drop into conversation whenever he could. He found pleasure in experimenting with building and woodwork and, among other projects, installed a fence in the backyard of the home at 180 Argyle Road in Brooklyn where he and Denise lived from 1997 (along with Ben once he arrived in 1999).

Paul loved food, cooking, and traveling with Denise and Ben, and found delight in small details of each undertaking. Did you know that a phenomenon called "laddering" is necessary and responsible for popovers to rise? In his quest for the most delicious, crisp, and airy popover, Paul experimented with various pans and flouring techniques. He would get up early in the morning and bake popovers to serve to Ben's friends when they awoke after nearly-sleepless sleepovers. The popovers were perfect. Always.

Paul's friends and family were a blessing during his illness and they demonstrated true love in action. If he could, he would express his unending gratitude to Denise and Ben, his siblings and their spouses, his brother-in-law Jay, and his steadfast friends, among them Joe Gordon, David Sternlieb, Nancy Rosenberg, Ragan O'Malley, Eva Zasloff, Rosalie Fisher, Eliot Nolen, Tim Bradley, Joni Powers, Miriam Bird, Gene Epstein, and Irene Tsatsos, as well as his incredibly devoted caregiver, Indru Walter.

Paul was a generous, gentle, and kind human. We will all miss him deeply.