Howard Isaacs' Obituary
RIP Howard Isaacs
Howard Isaacs, 82, of Boca Raton, FL, Passed away on Tuesday, February 18, 2025.
Howard was born in 1942 to Samuel and Eva Isaacs and spent his early childhood “a couple blocks from Yankee Stadium” in Bronx, New York, developing a lifelong passion for the team and the game of baseball. He had a younger brother named Carl who sadly passed at the age of three.
He lived his formative years in Miami, where his father worked as a film operator and his mother a cashier in famous Miami Beach hotels, and where he would become completely fluent in Spanish, a skill that would mark his life.
An outstanding student from the outset, Howard won many awards in school, especially in math, before becoming a National Merit Scholar and attending Tulane University in New Orleans to study accounting. It was there that he met and married the former Eileen Rosenbloom, a Spanish-speaking linguistics major at Newcomb College, and after he graduated with an MBA and the highest of honors, the couple briefly returned to her native New Jersey, where in 1966, their son, Steven, was born.
Howard soon accepted a job with IBM and the young family moved to Boca Raton, Florida, the location of the newest IBM plant which would go on to develop the Personal Computer. At IBM he worked on many important projects, including V-Net, an early precursor to email. For fun, he became the founding treasurer of the IBM SE Employees Federal Credit Union (now iThink), a position he would hold for much of his life.
Eileen and Howard divorced in 1970, but Howard soon met and married his second wife, Bonnie, and the couple moved to a suburb of Rochester, Minnesota near the IBM plant there.
After spending several years in Minnesota, Howard and Bonnie returned to South Florida, where they ultimately split. In 1977 he wed his third wife Libby, taking in her two children, Michael and Wendy, and raising them as his own.
In his younger years, Howard enjoyed model trains, throwing a ball with the kids, reading Science Fiction, playing softball with his work friends, and became an avid Miami Dolphins fan and season-ticket holder during the team’s glory years in the 70’s and 80’s. He also made a mean tableside Caesar Salad and did amazing things with cheap cuts of steak on the grill.
For a time he had a sleek yellow wedge of a Fiat sports car, a cool beret hat, smoked a pipe, and was known to friends and family as Big H. His kids were playing Pong on the living room floor before anybody knew what video games were. He was shameless in his puns and a wizard with timeshare points, trading across the globe and regularly taking the family to Sanibel Island, Orlando, Daytona, the Keys, and the beaches near Hillsborough Inlet.
In the early 2000s, Libby lost her lifelong battle with diabetes. After a brief period of mourning, Howard went on a date with Liselotte, a family friend and school interpreter also recently widowed. Spoiler alert: the date never ended.
The new couple never parted after their initial meeting , instead staying together and eventually marrying in 2007, and were affectionately known throughout their time together as “Romeo and Juliet“. Clearly some of the happiest years of his life, Howard and Lisa traveled extensively, including a months-long “cruise of the Americas“ starting in Eastern Canada and hugging the coast all the way south near Antarctica and up the West Coast to the Pacific Northwest. They also traveled often throughout Latin America and to Lisa‘s native Dominican Republic, and were frequent hosts to many visitors from these countries.
After a terrifying accident in 2015 where Howard spent 2 1/2 hours crushed under the steering wheel before being rushed by helicopter to the trauma unit, Howard and Lisa spent more of their time at home, focusing on family and friends. In recent years, health challenges became increasingly difficult for him to overcome.
Howard was known for his sense of humor in both Spanish and English, his huge heart, generosity and kindness, his lightning fast math skills and overall genius, and the many lives he touched along the way.
He is survived by his wife, Liselotte, his children Steven, Michael, Wendy, Ginger, Karen and Terry, his grandchildren Matthew, Carl, Kyle, Vivian and Aaliyah, a large, loyal and loving extended family, and a vast network of friends which spans the globe.
Today we celebrate Howard Isaacs, a fabulous and beloved son, husband, father, grandfather, and friend to so many. We love you!
A funeral service will be held at Beth Israel Memorial Chapel (Boynton) Location at 1pm, on Sunday, February 23, 2025. Burial will follow at Eternal Light Memorial Gardens Cemetery.
Those wishing to honor Howard with a memorial contribution are kindly encouraged to consider a donation to: the American Heart Association at:
https://www.heart.org/
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