What was one of the most romantic moments in your life?
The most romantic moment was on 3 October 1961, the day I married Miriam. We began dating in 1957, then Miriam returned to Belmont North Carolina, her boarding Catholic school; after she returned to Havana we again dated, always chaperoned, of course, Mariana got married in August 1959 at Corpus Christie Church in Havana, by that time our dating was serious, I visited her every evening, she and her mother came to Portsmouth Virginia to assist Mariana when she was having the twins in June 1960, I accompanied Alfredo to visit them when they were born, we all returned to Havana, only to later come for good in October 1960. We continued our dating in Miami, even though both of us were working, but then Alfredo was offered a position as a pharmacist at Norfolk and they moved to Portsmouth.
On 28 July 1961, right after the Berlin Crisis when the Berlin Wall was built, I joined the U.S. Army after a promise by the recruiter that I would be sent to Engineering School, which I indeed was, albeit entirely different than what I thought, a technical rather than professional school.
I then was sent to Fort Benning Georgia for induction, Fort Jackson South Carolina for two months of Basic Training, a very rough training that put me in the best shape I have ever been, then I got 15 days of leave before reporting to the Engineering School at Fort Belvoir Virginia. My parents came to Portsmouth a few days after I did and after a little trouble getting the marriage license because our passports did not specify our race and Virginia still would not marry people of mixed races, Father Hammond married us at Miriam's church, Holy Angels.
We had bought nothing, had no money, Miriam had asked the priest for a very simple ceremony, no music, no flowers, but Father Hammond had music, flowers, two altar boys whom he forbade to accept any money from us, as told us by one of them who we met entirely by chance in a flight from Jacksonville to Dallas many years later.
At the wedding were both Miriam and my parents, Mariana and Charley, the twins as babies, Charley's cousin and Douglas, a Cuban boy who was in the Air Force at the time stationed nearby and whose aunt was a good friend of Lolita, so he came to their apartment on weekends bringing Coca Cola, to eat great Cuban food.
The reception was very modest at home, then we borrowed Charley's 1959 Edsel and went to Virginia Beach, to a motel, for our honeymoon. After that, my parents returned to Miami and I reported to Fort Belvoir in Northern Virginia, close to Alexandria, when I reported to my First Sargent that I had married, did all the paperwork, after being reprimanded that I should have asked for permission before doing so, so Miriam could get her ID card and the benefits as a dependent. I asked and received a three-day pass every weekend I was there, so I took a Greyhound bus every Friday afternoon and returned every Sunday night, spending every weekend with Miriam at her parent's apartment in Portsmouth.
I was shipped without warning at the end of January 1962 directly from Fort Belvoir to New Jersey, for embarkation aboard an MSTS (Military Ship Transportation Service) troop carrier from New York to Bremerhaven, Germany, with four class mates, Roger Schumacher, Paris Laws, John Wilson and Dan Danford.
We were well received, Sergeant John Slagle helped me quite a bit, --he later became a helicopter pilot and was shot down twice in Viet Nam-- my First Sergeant Gratz --brother of Kitty of Gunsmoke-- oriented me and I was able to go to American Express and buy a one-way airplane ticket on TWA from New York to Frankfurt, on twelve monthly payments.
Another very romantic day was 18 March 1962, when Sergeant Day took me to the airport in Frankfurt to pick up Miriam after her flight from New York. We stood at the gate and everyone but Miriam came out. After a while, an MP came and told me there was a problem with Miriam and the German authorities. It happened that, although before Castro a Cuban passport was as good as an American passport as far as travelling in Europe without the need for visas, things had just changed and Cubans now needed visas, they wanted TWA to take Miriam back to New York.
Luckily, TWA resisted, saying that they had not been notified and were therefore not responsible, otherwise Miriam would have been sent back before I paid for the one-way airline ticket.
The major problem for German Immigration was that Miriam was pregnant, as told them by her cousin Nestor when he took her to the airport in New York, so the Germans were worried she would become an expense for the State; I assured that she was my wife and would be having the baby at the U.S. Army hospital. They finally relented, not knowing what else to do, but demanded that Miriam went every week to the German police station in Bad Kreuznach to tell them that she was still married to me and would have the baby at the Army hospital. The boxes she had sent by freight took a long time to get there, she was on high heels and winter clothing on a spring day, when she walked uphill toward our rented room and decided to stop at the chapel to pray.
The interdenominational chapel was empty, she knelt down and began to pray, when suddenly she cried in frustration and, unbeknownst to her, our priest was in the loft. He asked her what was the problem, she explained, and he took care of it, as already previously explained.
When we came back to Miami my son Humberto was 2½ years old, Pablo was 6 months old and we soon found out Miriam was pregnant with Daniel, I began working for Del Rio Finance Company and we rented a small frame house at 360 E 12 Street, Hialeah. Soon my parents left us their house at 464 E 10 Street, Hialeah, after they bought and moved to a small house at 3145 NW 96 Street, Miami. I went to work for Western and Southern Life Insurance Company and some time went by, Daniel was born, before we were able to drive our little Volkswagen to Virginia to see my in-laws.
The romantic moment came when Miriam and I, leaving the children with my parents, went one weekend to Naples Florida, where we stayed at The Golfing Buccaneer Hotel, our second honeymoon.
Miriam and I have never been separated from each other for long, other than the trips I made to New Mexico to take first Humberto and later Pablo, to see Enrique Almagro and to enroll them in New Mexico Highlands University and New Mexico State University respectively; training trips where The Travelers sent me, to Dallas and to Hartford, a trip to Nassau where they sent Joe Cook and me to enroll the employees of the Sonesta Hotel in the newly installed payroll-deduction plan with The Travelers and finally, the time I spent at Blind Rehab in the V.A. Hospital in Birmingham.
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