My sister and I often joke that we have such a unique family story we should write a book. Why don’t you be the judge?
My parents were married on June 16, 1958 in La Habana , Cuba. My Mom was 19 and a native Cuban from the tobacco rich region of Pinar del Rio. She moved from the countryside to Havana with her older sister because her sister had severe asthma and needed medical attention that was only available in the city. Teenage sisters on their own living in Havana in the 50’s, I can only imagine. My Mom was one of 12 children born to very humble means and I think the move with her sister was an expression of her independent and adventurous nature. It also reflected her compassion and love of family. My Father, I just called him Pop, was an only child born in Hannibal, Missouri a small midwestern town nestled on the banks of the great Mississippi River. This town is also the birthplace to Samuel Clemons better known as Mark Twain. I think the first hand exposure to Twain’s literature was a large influence on my Dad. Pop was born in 1931 during the height of the Great Depression and was drafted into the Army at the age of 18. These two events had a profound impact on shaping how my Father conducted himself as an adult. He had a very cerebral nature with a drive for knowledge. His true passion was for independent thought. Not what you would expect from the son of a professional prizefighter. My Grandfather was a boxer and as we were told a pretty good one. He fought at 119 pounds and apparently qualified for the 1936 Olympics. He was not chosen for the team because of his German heritage, in 1936 the Olympics were held in Hitler’s Berlin. So by day he would work at the cement factory and by night he would hone his craft fighting on riverboats or whatever venue paid the best. After his fight career he became very involved with refereeing boxing and the Golden Gloves youth boxing organization. My Grandfather died in his sleep at the age of 65. He and my Grandmother had semi-retired and were owner operators of a small motel in rural Indiana. My Grandmother went on to run that motel for the next 15 years on her own. Strong and independent my Grandmother would turn out to be a true survivor. My Dad for some reason was dissuaded from boxing and really was more of an intellectual. I don’t think he was ever very comfortable with his persuasion for intellect, in some ways he wanted more to be blue collar or common and his intelligence was a differentiator that got attention. Pop did love sports, and actually was an accomplished tennis player. Go figure, the boxer’s son playing tennis. He and I played tennis regularly until he was in his 50s. After the military my Dad graduated from the University of Missouri on the GI Bill and headed off to Cuba to experience life like his hero, Ernest Hemmingway.
My Dad met my Mom poolside at his hotel in La Habana. He proposed to her 5 days later. They were married the next year in a courthouse in downtown La Habana emits turbulent political times in Cuba. Castro and his troops were changing the political landscape for Cuba and in the process determining our family’s future. My parents made a decision as newly weds to relocate to Toledo, Ohio where my Dad’s parents lived. They like all the other exiled Cubans would wait for this “Castro thing” to blow over. My Mom’s sister also married in 1958 to a Cuban that was astute enough to realize they too had to leave their native country. This must have been a very difficult time for my parents the decisions they were forced to make had to be very hard for them. Later my aunt and uncle would relocate to San Juan, Puerto Rico. My Mom and her sister remained very close and only returned to Cuba together one more time in 1979 for a two week visit. I remember my Mom returning from that trip, she was very sad. Not sad for her life or the decisions she made 21 years earlier, but sad for the fate of what she left behind. This weighed on my Mom’s heart a lot. I am sure it is only her strong belief in God that got her through that grief. My Father found work at Toledo Scale as an Export Manager utilizing his education and mastery of languages. They bought a house at 7136 Grenlock Dr. that would be our address for the next 40 years. My sister and I were born at Toledo Hospital, my sister in 1959 and I came along in 1962. We settled into a very midwestern life style, except for the fact that we were a bilingual multicultural family in Toledo in the 1960s.. We were a very close family doing everything together. My sister and I were my Mom’s translator while my Mom was the glue that kept our family together. My Dad was home every night at 5 and we ate dinner at the dinner table. There my Dad shared his passion for independent thought and intellect. Our discussions are family lore, at least between my sister and I. It is amazing what can be taught and instilled in a child’s mind at the dinner table. My Mom’s sister had two boys that became like brothers to my sister and I. As the years past and Castro became entrenched it was important for my Mom and her sister to stay close and maintain their culture and pass it on to their children. Toledo and San Juan were unique destinations for two Cuban sisters but they made the best of it. Life was good for us for many years.
At 45 my Mom contracted breast cancer and died of that disease seven years later. My aunt was flying in to be at my Mom’s side when she was very ill and unfortunately my Mom passed before my aunt arrived. I picked her up at the airport and as she approached me she must have been able to read my face, she hugged me and said in Spanish, “ your mother is gone, isn’t she?” I replied, “yes” through teary eyes and was expecting my aunt to breakdown. My aunt was strong and her relationship with her sister was even stronger, she would miss her sister but survive on the love they shared for one another and their faith in God. That was a lesson in love I will never forget. Ironically 20 years later my sister would contract breast cancer in the same breast at the same age as our Mother. Because of my Mom’s battle with cancer my sister had been proactively screening for breast cancer and caught the cancer in stage zero. My sister’s prognosis is a 99% survival rate. I look at it this way; my Mom was such a good Mother that she saved her daughter 14 years after her own death. I realized that my love for my sister was as strong and similar to the love between my Mom and her sister. My Dad was devastated, they had been married for 32 years and had been through so much. My Dad retired six months before my Mom passed to spend more time with her and care for her while her battle with cancer worsened. He also needed to learn how to manage a household because for the past 32 years that was something my Mom had done. He struggled with filling his time with anything other than beer and sorrow over the next several years. He stayed in our home on Grenlock and passed the time with books and helping a mentally handicapped friend of the family, but it wasn’t until he got cancer that he found life again. Six years after my Mom passed my Dad walked into a hospital and admittedly did not expect to leave. He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Both my Mother and Father were life long smokers and both of them paid the ultimate price for that habit.
Two weeks after my Mom’s funeral my sister was married. Her wedding had been planned for months and I cannot imagine how hard it was for her to move forward with her plans but she was right in thinking that that is what my Mom would have wanted. It was an awesome outdoor wedding in downtown Orlando with the reception in an area of downtown going through an urban renewal. She married a great guy with a strong sense of family. It gave us all a chance to celebrate at a time that we all really needed it, but my Mom was not far from any of our minds. My sister and her husband made there home in Orlando and soon after started a family. When my Dad got sick I flew home to be with him in the hospital but could not stay for his lengthy treatment. Quite frankly I didn’t think he was going to opt for treatment. Without hesitation my then pregnant sister flew to Toledo with her 4 year old daughter to be with my Dad. This is the part of my Dad’s illness that offered him life again. My sister, ever the humanitarian, was willing to care for my Dad through his radiation and chemotherapy treatments with her daughter in Toledo. She was pregnant, a thousand miles from her home and husband but her love for family drew her home to care for our Dad. What happened over the next 3 years was an emotional rollercoaster but was the most meaningful time my sister ever spent with our Dad. After the 30 weeks of treatments we devised a plan to move my Dad and Grandmother to Florida where they could be closer to my sister and her family. It was not easy to convince two hardheaded Germans to leave their homes and move to Florida and share a home, but they did. Once they got to Florida with my Dad’s cancer in remission, my sister’s family got to know our Dad. The irony to the story is that prior to the cancer beer and cigarettes were a big part of my Dad’s daily routine but as a result of the treatment my Dad had no desire for beer and because the cancer had made him realize how much he had to live for he had no desire for the cigarettes. Without those two things my Dad and Sister were able to connect on a level that was unattainable earlier in life. Those three years were very enriching for my Father and a nice way for him to be able to end his life. Unfortunately he sircame to the cancer in April of 1999 and left my Grandmother to bear the burden of out living her husband and only child. That was too much for her to handle, she quickly developed Alzheimer’s and died in 2002.
My sister still lives with her husband and two girls in Orlando. She teaches Art and Spanish at the school her girls attend. She lives with the satisfaction of caring for both our parents while they were ill and surviving her own illness. My Aunt and Uncle still live in San Juan and parlayed my uncle’s passion for the auto parts business into a very successful family business that my two cousins rescued in the 90s and built into a very large and respectable family business that will feed their families for generations to come. We are all still very close and love one another without condition the way our parents wanted it. As for me I am just glad I can stop and take the time to write this history. My story is not as rich with sacrifice and selflessness as the rest of my family. I cannot think of a better history to be a part of and just capturing it in writing puts a smile on my face and warms my heart. I look to my families past with envy and the future with hope, and consider myself fortunate to be able to recognize how blessed I have been.
That was an excellent story, Mano.
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