Marcel Goasdoue was born on September 15th, 1937 in Manhattan, NYC. He lived in the Upper East Side on First Ave when it was an immigrant community. He was the only child of Jeanne LeGoff and Michel Goasdoue. Both immigrated to the United States from the province of Brittany in France. They were, along with my father, proud Bretons. Marcel loved his three first cousins, Aline, Annette, Albert, as if they were his brothers and sisters and spent a lot of time together growing up.
Marcel attended NYU engineering school and earned a mechanical and industrial degree. One of his first jobs after college was at Republic Aviation helping to design and manufacture military planes like the FB-105. Soon after, he enlisted in the US army and served for several years actively and in the reserves. He was honorably discharged in 1966.
His happiest single moment is when he first met Aspasia Sarafides at a house party in the Bronx. Within a couple years, they were married in 1967 and were happily married for 55 years until her passing in 2023. In 1972, they had twin boys, Charles and Alexander. By 1975, they moved to the Riverdale section of the Bronx on the Yonkers border.
Marcel moved on from engineering to a relatively new field at the time, computer programming. It was there that he got a job at Texaco, Inc. located at the Chrysler building and subsequently moved to Harrison, NY. He worked as a programmer there and retired as a business information systems manager in the information technology department 26 years later in 1994.
Marcel loved retirement because he got to travel more frequently. He always loved to travel but since he retired about the same time as Aspasia, they traveled all over the world to many exotic places. They also spent a lot of time in their Catskills house as well, gardening and cooking the best meals. Marcel was sociable and loved to share good food and wine with anyone that came over.
Even in his last years, as his medical issues became more pronounced, he still remained sociable and never lost his sense of humor. As a good Breton, he was very stubborn and he fought his severe medical problems with everything he had, without complaint, to the very end. He passed away peacefully in his sleep on May 6th. He is survived by his two sons, Charles and Alexander as well as his first cousin Aline (LeGoff) McKenna.
Please come to celebrate his life on Saturday the 17th, from 2-5 pm. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Alzheimer's Association https://www.alz.org/ or to the New York Botanical Gardens https://www.nybg.org/join-support/.