Carl DerGarabedian, ex-owner of Baldwin Cycle shop, dies at 86

At 86 years old, Carl DerGarabedian was still doing the bookkeeping for his son’s Oceanside bicycle shop.

His family said that was typical for a man who for decades ran his own business by day, worked a full-time union job in the overnight, helped his wife raise their three sons and still found time to unwind with a Scotch and a cigar.

The hardworking Bronx native and longtime Baldwin resident died on March 20 at Mount Sinai South Nassau after a hospitalization that followed a stroke several years ago, according to his sons.

A first-generation American born to Armenian immigrants, DerGarabedian spent years commuting on the Long Island Rail Road into Manhattan to work an overnight shift as a photo engraver.

He would sleep for three or four hours when he got home, then open the doors at Baldwin Cycle, the bicycle shop he started with his father-in-law in 1968 and kept running until 2002.

But DerGarabedian — who fueled himself with black coffee and plenty of it — never fully retired. After he closed his shop, he kept working at Oceanside Cycle, the bicycle business he helped his youngest son, Scott, get started three decades earlier.

“He was with me until the end,” said Scott DerGarabedian, 56. “He didn’t go to college, but he was just a smart, smart businessman.”

Carl DerGarabedian’s family said he was well-known in Baldwin, between decades of running his own bike shop, first on Church Street and then on Sunrise Highway, and attending the Baldwin High School wrestling matches of his three sons.

Born on Feb. 8, 1936, DerGarabedian attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx before serving four years overseas in the U.S. Army.

He married the former Roxi Chrovian in 1957, about four years after the two met in the Catskills. It was an occasion during which she immediately sensed the direction her life would take.

“I was 15 when I first saw him and I said ‘I’m gonna marry him,’ ” Roxi DerGarabedian, 84, told Newsday. “I hit the lottery when I married him almost 65 years ago.”

She became a stay-at-home mom and, after about five years of marriage, they moved their growing family into her Baldwin childhood home, a Victorian with a wraparound porch.

That was where their sons grew up and where they hosted countless Sunday dinners and holiday meals for a clan that now includes 10 grandchildren.

DerGarabedian’s wife said the things she will miss most about her husband will be dancing with him — they had to stop after his stroke — and his sense of humor.

He was a gregarious guy who would make regular trips to local cigar bars even after walking became difficult for him, said his son Michael DerGarabedian, 59.

Carl DerGarabedian also was a sports fan who for years held season tickets to the New York Giants, followed baseball — Mets over Yankees — and liked to play cards, his family said.

Other close survivors include his oldest son, Dean DerGarabedian of Baldwin, and his only sibling, Anita Alpuche of upstate Pearl River.

The family held a service on Wednesday at Cecere Family Funeral Home in Baldwin to commemorate the life of DerGarabedian, whose remains were cremated.