How has your life turned out differently than you imagined it would when you were a child?
My imagination is fertile, but no matter how much I may have stretched it while young, I could never have imagined how many unexpected turns my life would take, beginning at age 18.
I had a placid youth, was not athletic, my respiration seemed to be less effective than most of my friends, my right leg tended to point out slightly, nevertheless I could run fast for short distances, enjoy playing baseball and was not bad at it, until one day, when I was about 12, my mother took me to Optica Atlantic, they refracted my sight and diagnosed me as having 1.5 diopters of myopy and some astigmatism. I remember that after I got my first eyeglasses I sat on the front porch of my house and marveled at the detail and vivid green of the leaves of the guanábana tree in the front yard. Unfortunately, wearing glasses impacted on my ability to play baseball, I began to involuntarily protect my face while fielding.
My school years were placid, I had to exert little effort to be an average or below student, while obtaining a passing grade each time, I am sorry to say that, except during third and fourth grades, I was never motivated to excel in my studies, a passing grade and a title of having completed secondary school were enough to be admitted to the University of Havana, which at that time cost only $55 a year and, if you stated that you could not afford to pay it, they would wave it on your word. The problem most poor students had was that the textbooks were expensive, most science books came from the US, so whomever could not afford the books would study at the library or in tandem with another student. The classes had about 200 student each, were small auditoriums.
I finished secondary school at Trelles in June 1958, just after turning 16, but unfortunately, the University of Havana had been closed since the previous year due to political unrest. There was a Catholic school, University of Loyola, but it was expensive and nobody thought the University of Havana would remain closed for long, so I, who had just gotten my driver's license, went to work at La Selecta Furniture, that was then run by Manolo Sánchez, my father's partner and life-long friend, Manolito his son also worked there, he enjoyed taking care of customers, while I enjoyed driving our trusty 1952 Mercury woody wagon, running errands for Manolo and for my father, who ran the factory at Lawton, as well as for Alonso, his accountant.
Fanny my sister had been sent to Miami to live with Manolo Porto, where she had married Mario Guevara and lived at SW 2 Street at 59th Place, so to get me out of Cuba and the expected worsening of the unrest at the end of December 1958, I was sent to spend a few days with Fanny in Miami. I had a great time, Mario gave me a Ford Anglia to drive and sometimes his 1957 Chevvy, my cousin Nandito Porto and friend Keith Hernández were also in Miami and accompanied me on 31 December 1958 when we visited several parties on New Year's Eve; when I got home to Fanny's house at about 2 AM, the phone rang and somebody told Mario that Batista had left; he thought it was a prank, but soon the phone kept ringing and that morning the feeling in the streets was euphoric. Little did we know!
I returned to Havana on 11 January 1959, Fidel had already arrived by motorcade from Santiago, because he had sent Camilo Cienfuegos ahead but remained behind, in case it was a trick.
Back to work at La Selecta, but during the summer the university reopened and I began my first year of the 5-year Electrical Engineer career I chose.
Since the President of CompañÃa Cubana de Electricidad was SerafÃn GarcÃa-Menocal, cousin of Lolita, Miriam's mother and one of the people I most admired, I most likely would have worked for that company, with albeit named "Cubana" was a whole-owned subsidiary of American Foreign Power, based in New York. The future was something I, as well as my friends, never worried about. None of us had unbounded ambition, were sure to make a comfortable middle class living, it was not a concern, we were sure of ourselves. Exile changed all that suddenly, you lose your contacts, access to places and people, feel displaced all at once.
Things began to go wrong in early 1959, first there were public TV trials of purportedly military war criminals, prosecuted by Comandante Humberto Sorà MarÃn --later executed himself-- where many were summarily judged, condemned and executed. Later there was a trial of some pilots in Santiago, accused of bombing the rebels, were found not guilty, but Fidel did not accept the verdict and, even though a lawyer himself, went against the well-established legal principle and had them tried again, when they were found guilty.
The government began expropriating businesses and real estate, first "bienes malversados" or ill-gained wealth by members of the previous regime, then "latifundistas" or holders of very large amounts of land, large corporations, soon smaller businesses, right down to the shoe shine chair at the corner bodega.
During 1959 my parents and I came to Miami twice, while we were still allowed to take out $500 each, --later reduced to $5-- because a millionaire friend of Pep and another friend of Nenito paid for our tickets, --at that time $43.05 round trip-- to Miami so we would deposit the $500 in their respective bank accounts. At that time, we did not suspect we would live the country later on and they were a couple of weekend vacations free of cost.
In June 1960 I accompanied Alfredo to Miami and Portsmouth when Mariana gave birth to the twins, then we both returned to Havana.
By mid-1960 only one employee had to complain to the Labor Ministry for the government to "intervene" or hold a meeting with all employees to express their grievances, then take over the business without compensation and in a nasty manner.
It had happened in 1959 to large and foreign businesses, when they showed up to "intervene" CompañÃa Cubana de Electricidad, the TV cameras were filming live, including than when SerafÃn GarcÃa-Menocal, after being denied the opportunity to take even the personal effects from his desk when to take the elevator to leave, someone kicked his butt, live on TV.
In the case of my father's modest furniture factory, rumors began, so he decided to leave, go to Miami for a few months, --which was what we all thought at the time that the regime would last-- until things changed in Cuba. He, my mother and I had tourist visas; we thought of applying for resident --working-- visas but the problem was that when you applied, it was automatic that they would void the tourist visas at the beginning of the process, a big risk in case we had to leave in a hurry. It so happened that a good friend of Miriam's mother worked at the U.S. Embassy and she did us the favor of convincing whomever could do it, to start processing our resident visas without voiding our tourist ones. I did all the paperwork, went to the different government offices to obtain the necessary official documents, then all three of us went to have our photos taken, to a medical examination by an Embassy-approved physician and finally to a personal interview with the Consul. He was very nice, we explained and he understood perfectly, issued the visas.
Then on 13 October 1960 my father came home for lunch as usual, changed into a suit, we took the three suitcases he had made out of rattan, because there was no luggage any longer in Havana's stores, --luggage I still keep-- something that should be in a Cuban museum, we went to the airport with $5 each and came to Miami on a Pan American Airways flight.
A few days after, when they realized my father was not returning, the employee that had been there the longest, nicknamed “Cucho” asked the Labor Ministry for “intervention” and they held a meeting, during which several spoke against my father, but to his credit because it took guts to say so publicly a the time, the upholsterer named Gastón defended my father, saying he was an upright, decent man. They took over the business and even came to my sister's house to see what he had left behind.
As it turned out, having been a permanent resident at the time the government took over his business, was a blessing, enable my father to deduct his capital losses from his income tax, so that he was returned what he had already paid so far and did not pay income tax for years.
Upon returning from military service, I first went to work for Del Rio Finance, a small loan company, then Tom Taylor recruited me to work at Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, a Cincinnati company with two offices in Miami. There I made good friends, notable Tom Taylor, Gene Gust, both from Lima Ohio, Jim Hemphill from Covington Kentucky, Gary Quintilio and others. Then Chuck Reynolds recruited me to work at The Travelers Insurance Company in Brickell Avenue; it was driving to its office at Brickell from Hialeah, down I-95 in 1970, when the vision of my right eye suddenly blurred, the beginning of my uveitis.
My mother died in 7 August 1972, a little later I quit my job at The Travelers and became a Travelers agent in the building owned by ZacarÃas ElÃas at 2060 E 4th Avenue, Hialeah. In 1980 opened a second office at 2562 SW 27th Avenue, Miami, possible because both Miriam and I were licensed agents.
Policy financing was very competitive and obviously profitable, Paul Fraynd had a finance company, came to ask me for business, was impressed that we had a neat office with a digital computer system installed by Bert with three terminals. He created Orion Insurance Company, operated by Indalecio Patallo as General Agent, since Paul knew nothing about insurance, he at first just wanted the finance contracts, but soon opened his own office, ended his relationship with Patallo and contracted us as General Agents, probably because he thought he needed a Cuban presence.
Paul and I always got along well, understood and respected each other, not so his younger brother Saul, who resented us. We had rough times, but at the end, we had a very profitable General Agency. Paul eventually had financial problems, probably helping his father, because I thought his company was profitable, but He bought us out in 1999, which saved us from his bankruptcy a few years later.
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