Posted 11/10/2009 on Florida Catholic
BY LYNN RAMSEY
Florida Catholic Correspondent
Lynn Ramsey
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ORLANDO – Imagine you’re a teenager. You live in a nice home, have a strong Catholic-school education and enjoy a great family.
Then your country’s government becomes communist, threatening every freedom you’ve ever had. You discover that you can have freedom — only if you leave your family and go to a foreign land. You have only a few days before you go.
Many Cuban parents made that decision to send their children to the United States — 14,000 children between 1960 and 1965. The exodus taxed a Miami welfare system beyond its capabilities, so the only avenue left was the Catholic Church.
What resulted was Operation Pedro Pan — an effort that started in Miami and eventually blossomed into a nationwide out-pouring of aid for these orphaned children. A group of Pedro Pan alumni came together for a mid-November reunion in Miami to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charities project.
PROTECTING CUBA’S TRUE FUTURE
Before Fidel Castro took over the Cuban government in 1959, the Catholic Church played a major role in the lives of the Cuban people. Families attended church in their parishes, but the major vehicle of education came from Catholic schools. There they learned not only the major subjects but also their love for the faith.
But communism is a jealous ruler, and the party saw the Church as a threat. As a result, communists took over the schools and turned some of them into barracks’ for the soldiers.
“The long-term plan was to take all the children Monday through Friday and send them to sugar fields to cut sugar cane, then home to their parents on Saturday and Sunday,” said Rosie McCaul, one of the 14,000 children assisted by the program.
Many parents fought this. Instead of allowing their children to become laborers in the fields, they sent their children to the United States to escape communist rule. Most came as a result of blank visas that were sent to Cuba, where officials filled in the children’s names and sent them to the U.S.
Miami became the first destination for nearly all of them.
But Dade County was not prepared to handle this exodus. According to a research paper “The Miami Diocese and the Cuban Refugee Crisis of 1960-61” by Dr. Francis J. Sicius, the children could not get county assistance because of Jim Crow laws and Dade County rules requiring welfare recipients to live in the county for five years.
Enter the Centro Hispano Catolico at Miami’s Gesu Parish. The parish had already been providing aid to Cuban refugees, but the local Catholic Charities was being spread thin because of the exodus. The U.S. government offered its assistance, but then-Catholic Charities director Msgr. Bryan Walsh wanted a social agency to take full care of the children upon their arrival before he would accept federal help.
Thus began what became known as Operation Pedro Pan.
It began as several camps run by Catholic Charities to house orphaned children in Dade County — Camp Matecumbe for boys, Kendall for girls, among others. Then it spread to several other parts of the state — including Camp St. John just south of Jacksonville and Camp San Pedro in Winter Park.
Eventually, the effort spread to 130 Catholic Charities offices nationwide with children going as far west as Oregon and California. Some children stayed only a short time in the program because they had relatives or friends who could take them in. Others stayed in the program all the way through high-school graduation. The program took care of the children’s needs — food, shelter, clothing, education, and medical care. But all offices took their lead from Msgr. Walsh and the Miami office.
The program not only challenged the children — it also challenged those who worked in it. Tom Aglio, who led the Camp St. John operation in 1962, said it opened the U.S. church’s eyes to what service could become.
“In some ways, Operation Pedro Pan was before its time, almost,” Aglio said. “Now in 2010, there’s a lot more ink given to issues like that. There’s a lot more awareness; there’s a lot more understanding about why the Church would play a role in that. If you go back 50 years, it was innovative, it was daring, it was different, it was certainly necessary, it was breaking new ground.”
Carmen Baricevic, who now works as head of refugee resettlement at Catholic Charities in Portland, Ore., had an agency already working with children in Oregon. Pedro Pan just became an extension.
“I think we all felt it was very appropriate that we do something,” Baricevic said. “The mission of our agency was to help those in need, and it was obvious these kids needed to have a home. It was no question that the agency would fulfill this mission.”
Most of the seven camps in Oregon had Cuban house parents who led each of the homes. That enabled them to retain some of the culture.
The journey still wasn’t easy.
SOME HAD FAMILY, FRIENDS WAITING
Elena Muller Garcia left the Port of Havana July 4, 1961, on a ferry bound for the Port of Palm Beach. The then-13-year-old had gotten a spot on a ferry with a visa waiver.
“When the ferry left, I looked at the Morro Castle — a famous structure in the Port of Havana. I wanted it to stay in my memory because I didn’t know when I’d come back to Cuba. I wanted it ingrained in my being.”
She got to the Port of Palm Beach 24 hours later. Her brother had tried to exit Cuba a couple times. The first time he was confused with a cousin who was in the resistance movement who was already imprisoned. He eventually made it.
When she arrived, she then rode with a friend of the family down to Miami. After visiting an aunt and uncle, she stayed with the family of her best friend from Cuba, Ofelia Villamil. Villamil’s family had been one of Garcia’s neighbors. “Her mom told my mom that if she needed, I could stay with them.”
That was only a temporary stop, as Garcia ended up going to the Ursuline School in Dallas, Texas. After a year in the boarding school, William and Jane Bret offered to take Garcia and another Cuban child into their Dallas family with their four children. “I was the youngest in my family,” Garcia said. “I was used to being with older brothers, but this was a totally different experience. They were very good to me.”
After high school graduation, she went to college at Western College in St. Louis before transferring to Barry College in Miami. It was in 1964 when she was reunited with her parents Carlos and Augusta Muller, who traveled through Mexico and Colombia before ending up in Miami.
Her dad gave up a law career to move to the U.S., becoming a proofreader for Diario las Americas Spanish-language newspaper. Her mom left a job as supervisor of kindergartners in Cuba and worked at a dress factory. They supported Garcia through college.
“It was a great reunion when the time came,” Garcia said. “When I was in Dallas in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, I thought I’d never see my parents again.”
OTHERS DID NOT
While Garcia saw familiar faces upon her arrival in the United States, Cesar Calvet, Rosie McCaul and Carmen Valdivia went into camps set up for the orphaned children. Valdivia stayed at the camp in Florida City for three years. “One of the things that made the experience a lot better was that we were in the same boat,” Valdivia said. “We were all suffering the same thing. How come there was never any infighting or jealousy? That’s why — we were all suffering the same thing.”
Having her sister join in the journey helped Valdivia when they journeyed to the U.S. Aug. 8, 1962. Valdivia was age 12, which made her able to comprehend what was happening. “I really wanted to go,” Valdivia said. “We were very aware of the situation in Cuba — all the things they were doing. My sister and I were getting into trouble. We had a small school that had been very good to us (but) we were hiding (and) not going to school.”
She said she saw the desperation in her parents when they made the decision to send their daughters to the U.S. Valdivia didn’t see her parents again until they came through Mexico to the U.S. in 1965; she never saw her grandparents again.
Meanwhile, Calvet emigrated from Cuba in June 1961 at age 15, spending a couple months in Miami. He then went to Camp St. John for a couple weeks, moved to Camp San Pedro in August 1961 then switched back to Camp St. John in December of that year. He was there until Camp St. John closed. Then Aglio placed Calvet in a foster home with June and Jim Berkmeyer. He attended Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville before graduating from Orlando’s Bishop Moore High School.
For Calvet and the others, the time away from Cuba was intended to be short. “The positive side of leaving your country and parents was the feeling that in six months we’ll be back in Cuba because Castro would be overthrown,” he said. “The negative things started sinking in when it was six months and we were still here. It became an unknown when we’ll go back.”
Orphanage life at Camp St. John was a little rough because they were often secluded from other areas. “When school was over, we loaded into a GMC bus that took us back to the camp,” Calvet said. “In Orlando, the only time we came out was on Saturday or Friday night. They’d put us in the back of a pickup truck and cruise us through downtown Orlando. Sometimes they’d drop us off in Maitland at a basketball court; there’d be music and we’d spend some time dancing. That was the only entertainment we really had.”
But the orphanages were held at summer camps, so Aglio planned to put the children in foster homes. Aglio even took one of the children into his home. “I had a very good foster home,” Calvet said. “Other kids were not as fortunate at home. The Berkmeyers were in a nice home. I had my own bedroom.”
MIAMI WASN’T ONLY LANDING PLACE
McCaul also came to the U.S. with familiar people, but that didn’t last long. She had come to the U.S. at age 15 with friends from school. She flew into the U.S. on a Pan Am flight to Miami on Aug. 29, 1961. While she stayed at a girl’s camp in Kendall, her friends were sent to Nebraska. “Literally the day after I arrived, I knew nobody again except for my little sister,” McCaul said.
The Kendall camp closed because of security reasons, and McCaul moved to Homestead Air Force Base. She was there for six months before she and her sister also left south Florida.
She ended up at Holy Family Academy, a boarding school run by the Sisters of the Holy Heart of Mary in Beaverville, Ill. “When we were there, there were about 100 Cuban girls,” McCaul said of the school, about 80 miles south of Chicago. “The population of the town was about 200, and 100 were at the school.”
In 1968, through an agreement with the Swiss embassy, she eventually rejoined her parents in Chicago. Her mother was an American citizen, but her parents remained together until they could emigrate to the U.S. McCaul eventually worked for United Airlines.
Being in the U.S. was enough culture shock. Imagine someone from a Caribbean nation having to survive a northern winter.
“Being kids, it was cold but it was OK,” McCaul said.
Bertha Ferran, who came to the U.S. in Feb. 3, 1961, also got a frozen introduction to American life. After a short stint in Miami, Ferran, Soussie Proenza, Saraileana Flores Dion and a fourth friend all were sent in March to Portland, Ore. She admitted seeing snow that April was a shock, but that wasn’t the biggest shock she expected.
“When we were in Miami and we were told we were going to Portland, people thought the west was the Wild West,” Ferran said. “But I didn’t see a cowboy until maybe 10 years ago when we went to the Pedro Pan rodeo.
“If you compare what Portland was in 1961, it was a very small city. For us, coming from Havana, which in 1961 had over a million people, it was very interesting. It’s a beautiful place, and the people were extremely nice to us.”
Ferran stayed with U.S. families in Salem and Portland until her parents came to Miami, then moved to Portland in December 1961. She admitted she was afraid that the Bay of Pigs invasion was going to make things worse on her family.
“One thing I do remember is that when my mother saw me, she said, ‘I left a child and found a woman,’” Ferran said. “A lot of us feel we lost our teenage years. We grew up very fast, because when we were placed with families, it was a different culture.”
PEDRO PANS CONTRIBUTE BIG
But assimilate they did — many in a big way. Probably the most well known Pedro Pan alumni in Florida are Miami’s Auxiliary Bishop Felipe Estevez and former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, but many others have made their mark in other fields.
Calvet, after a stint in the Marine Corps, is now president of the Latin Banking Group at CNL Bank in Orlando. Luis Navarro and his wife, Leonor “Nenita” Bretos, were both Pedro Pans who went to Omaha. Navarro now owns his own electronics consulting company in Beaverton, Ore., after earning several patents working for other companies.
Ferran is now a branch manager and mortgage consultant with Windermere Mortgage Services in Portland, Ore. She also played a part in founding Portland’s Hispanic Metro Chamber of Commerce. Ferran admitted that while at the Pedro Pan reunion she thought of what Cuba was missing.
“I’d never experienced seeing so many Cubans together. To me this is like saying, ‘Wow, this is like a microcosm of what my generation would’ve been,” Ferran said. “To see a group with that talent, vibrancy, accomplishments, to me it was awesome.” “I always say that only in America can a person arrive as a refugee and be appointed by the mayor to be on the Portland Development Commission. If you look at those 14,000 kids, we’ve left our mark.”
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