Fair Haven Fixer-Upper Dies At 56

By Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — Grand Avenue booster, neighborhood real estate investor, business owner, and community champ Wilson “Porky” Reyes has now left Fair Haven. But Fair Haven has not forgotten Porky.

Reyes died at the age of 56 on Monday from complications stemming from an infected cut.

His funeral is scheduled for this Friday, June 21, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Washington Memorial Funeral Home in North Haven.

In social media posts and phone interviews, some of the many people Reyes helped over the course of his foreshortened life expressed just how much he meant to the Fair Haven community, and to New Haven at large.

“Porky touched so many people’s lives. He was such a giver, a caretaker. He was just a good, jolly soul,” said Mildred Melendez, a lifelong Fair Havener who knew Porky for more than three decades and thought of him as a “big brother.” “He was the peacemaker,” she said. “He tried to be the mediator.”

She praised him and his brother Angelo for working hard over decades to clean up and build up Grand Avenue into the vibrant commercial corridor that it is today. Porky coordinated with contractors, set up bulk trash pickup days, organized free food drives and neighborhood cleanup efforts.

When his bar Porky’s, which is now on State Street in Cedar Hill, was on Grand Avenue, “one of his employees had been really hooked on drugs. He picked him up off the street and cleaned him up” and helped him turn his life around, Melendez said. That’s just who Porky was.

Melendez and her husband helped lead a fundraiser for Porky at his bar on State Street this past Saturday. They thought they were raising money to “help him get out of some financial difficulties” he had developed due to his illness. Instead, that money wound up subsidizing the cost of burying their dear friend.

The bar was packed. People from so many different walks of life in New Haven showed up — a true testament to Porky’s wide reach.

“He really did see everybody in the neighborhood as his family,” said Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller, who posted on Facebook earlier this week about how Reyes offered — and then helped install — a jungle gym in her family’s backyard when his kids had outgrown it.

“Fair Haven will never be the same. But we will work to carry his spirit of community-as-family forward.”

Former Fair Haven Alder Joey Rodriguez agreed. If you grew up in Fair Haven sometime in the past 30 years, Rodriguez said, “you certainly knew Porky, or of him.”

Rodriguez said he met Porky when he was growing up in Fair Haven, going to different neighborhood festivals and community management team meetings. When Rodriguez was young and volunteering on local political campaigns in Fair Haven, for former Mayor John DeStefano or for Reyes’s sister Maria, a former alder, he would see Porky everywhere.

“He treated his neighborhood as if it were his own backyard, and his residents as if they were his family,” Rodriguez recalled. “Grand Avenue was his driveway.” Everyone would recognize him driving his truck up and down the avenue, looking to help. “If he knew you, he’d pull over and chat.”

Another current Fair Haven alder, first-termer Frankie Redente, Jr., said he too grew up in the neighborhood with Porky. “He was always just a big brother to me, just an uncle, always looking out for me. … Many times in my life, he was the word of wisdom, he was the inspiration to keep me going.” Last year, Reyes worked alongside Redente as his alder campaign’s treasurer.

Redente said he and Reyes had similar backgrounds: getting in trouble in their youth in Fair Haven, turning their lives around, dedicating themselves to community service and bettering the neighborhood they love. He credited Porky and Angelo for “the rebirth of Grand Avenue years ago,” and praised Porky for keeping up that community service for the rest of his adult life.

Porky was a firm believer, Redente said, in “taking care of those around you.”

He was also a “very savvy real estate investor,” said State Rep. Juan Candelaria. “Porky took that knowledge and passed it on.” He shared his experiences and knowledge about investing in and fixing up Fair Haven real estate, and shared that to make sure that his neighbors could own and improve their own homes. “He took the time to educate,” Candelaria said, and his community loved him for it.

See here for Reyes’s full official obituary.

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.