Fulgencio Batista was an historic figure in Cuba. He played a major role prior to World War II and thereafter. He was president of Cuba twice, the second time beginning in 1952. When he ran for president in a three-way race, right before the election, being supported by the Cuban Army, he staged a coup and seized power. During his rule in the 1950s, he had a star-crossed administration, friendly to the United States but had various political backings including that of organized crime.
On December 31, 1958, Batista told his cabinet and top officials that he was leaving the country. He knew that his presidency was over. On January 8, 1959, Fidel Castro and his army captured Havana and became Cuba's leader.
Prior to Castro's insurgency, honorable people, very disappointed in the totally corrupt, and crime ridden Batista administration, supported Castro. However, shortly thereafter, Castro showed his true colors, as he became a communist dictator. He nationalized all the banks and took over many other private farms and establishments.
Castro established an alliance with communist Russia and started rounding up all of the Cuban children to send them to Russia for indoctrination of the communist way. José Infante, a former supporter, did not support the Castro government and was ordered to appear before revolutionary, Che Guevara, who was supporting Castro. Che Guevara advised José that he needed to support the Castro government or be assassinated. At this point he sent his two sons, René and José, out of the country to a location known as Camp Kendall in Florida. Shortly thereafter, the entire Infante family left Cuba. José Infante’s father-in-law was extremely wealthy, owning 26 banks in Cuba and had many other assets as well. The government confiscated all of these. The entire family became by and large destitute.
Catholic Charities is an organization that had been established by the Catholic Church throughout America and internationally to support those who had fallen on hard times. Camp Kendall was basically a way station to house Cuban refugee children until they could be placed with families throughout the United States.
A man named Joe Gibboney was the head of the Catholic Charities program in Central Ohio. My mother and father were both active members of the Catholic Church in Central Ohio and, because of this, were contacted by Gibboney for assistance with this program. As it turns out, quite a number of Cuban children were going to be sent to the Columbus, Ohio area so a fairly large number of families needed to be recruited to accept these children until they could be repatriated with their parents, wherever they may be.
One night at dinner our parents told my sister, Jane, my brother, John, and me, about the situation and asked for our input as to whether we would be willing to accept a child in our home until the child would be able to return to his parents. Mr. Gibboney had advised my parents that he had selected a boy to come to live with us if we agreed. The boy was about my brother's age, which was about 16 years old at that time. This occurred in late 1960 or early 1961.
All five of us agreed that we should participate in this program. However, after Mr. Gibboney was notified that we would participate, he said that the boy that he had selected to come with us had a younger brother and it was the wish of the parents that the two boys be kept together. So we had to have another meeting but it was a no-brainer. We agreed to accept both of them.
Accommodations would be somewhat of a problem since we had a three-bedroom house. My parents occupied one bedroom, Jane had a room to herself and my brother, John, and I shared a room. So we were running short of space and had to decide how to accommodate these young boys. We had a finished basement but did not have furniture to accommodate a bedroom situation. Also there were no toilet or shower facilities in the basement. We had some time to get organized before the boys would come to us so we were able to construct a bathroom, finish a shower facility and obtain furniture.
One day in May 1961, the two boys showed up. One was named René, age 16, and José, age 10. René spoke very little English but was able to get by but José neither spoke nor understood English at all. Of course, my mother was freaking out, scared to death that they would not be happy with us and so she thought up all kinds of activities for that first night and the next day to get the ball rolling. My memory tells me that they went to play miniature golf that evening. The boys called it golfito.
I had taken two years of Spanish in high school so I knew some of it. I checked my Spanish dictionary and looked up butter and mustard, for what reason I don't know unless both of those would be on the table at dinner. I also told them that they were los dos Pilotos, which were words that we used in the Spanish stories that we read in class. To this day, I am ribbed mercilessly about “the two pilots.”
All of us kids drank milk at dinner and that first night my mother poured milk for both of the Cubans as well. There was a large amount of dialogue between the two boys, all in Spanish of course. We had no idea what was going on but were told later that Jose’ did not like milk at all and did not want to drink it. Rene’ ordered Jose’ to just suck it up, drink the milk and keep his mouth shut about not liking it. From then on, however, we always had chocolate milk for Jose’ which he gulped down without hesitation.
My mother took immediate steps to enroll the boys in school, René at St. Charles and José at Our Lady of Peace. There was only about one month left before summer vacation so the two of them kind of struggled to get through, but everyone was giving them plenty of leeway recognizing their situation. There was wide acceptance of them by all of their peers. All the kids at Our Lady of Peace, within a day or so, had Spanish dictionaries so that they could communicate as well as possible.
Of course, the friends that José had made in school remained close to him during the summer. By the time school started in the fall, José was extremely proficient in English and, as it turned out, José's English was better than René. It goes without saying that this was a great experience for the entire community on many fronts. Also, both of the boys were assimilated into our family quite nicely, although some of the other families who took children in did not have the same success that we had. To this day, we have maintained a close relationship with the two boys as well as with other members of their family. While one would assume that this was a charitable act by our family, all five of us felt that we received a great reward by having these two Cuban boys in our lives.
Renée was a big hulking giant whereas José was a skinny little guy with a big smile. I think it was probably due to his young age of 10, his facile mind picked up the English language very quickly. He would entertain us all with his hilarious explanations of any event that he would describe. Many of these events would've been something that had taken place in Cuba but many were also things that happened in the daily lives of all of us.
José spoke with his mouth but also with his hands and the overall gyrations of his body. Story after story came out even before he could speak well in English. He would pantomime whatever it was he was trying to tell us and asked René to assist him if he needed a word that he could not otherwise play out. Because of the greatness of these two boys and the greatness of our family as well, it did not take any time at all before we were one complete family.
There was one kind of a hiccup in the situation but I think it is an important part of the story. The boys joined us in May 1961. About five months later, in October, we got a call from Blanca, the mother of the two boys. She was in Florida and wanted to come to Ohio to see the boys. My mother was very upset about this because she thought that Blanca was coming to spy on us to see if we were treating the boys properly. Of course, that was not an issue at all. You can just imagine a mother being separated from her sons for such a long time and wanting to see them if for no other reason then just to be close to them for a day or so. My mother, as wonderful as she was, was insecure. This obviously was in play when she was concerned about Blanca spying on her.
Blanca did come to see the boys and stayed at a bed and breakfast type facility in our neighborhood. But, as always happened with our mother, she became fast friends with Blanca and remained so until she died.
When it was time to go back to school in the fall, I asked José if he felt comfortable with our language so that he would not be embarrassed in front of his classmates. He looked me right in the eye, waved his hand, and said: "Danny, I know ALL!" While that may have been a little overstated, it was nevertheless reassuring for me.
The boys had a nickname for everyone and every thing. Because my brother was really white and tall and skinny, they used a Spanish name for him, which translated as "a long drink of milk." Because my right ear is bigger than my left ear, they constantly made fun of that, holding their right hand up against their right ear, waving it like it was so big that the wind could blow my ear around like a kite. They also had a Spanish name for "big ear," which they enjoyed using with glee. I do not remember the name they had for my sister, but they had one. They were both very observant and as they picked up various idiosyncrasies of all of us, they joked about them.
They came from a very wealthy family and they lived an extravagant lifestyle in Cuba. Their grandfather owned 26 banks and, in addition to their beautiful home, they had servants to take care of their needs. It was hard for them to believe that our mother did the cooking. After they had been here a short time, they saw that a nice meal was on the table every evening, but they could not figure out how it got there. They never saw a cook other than our mother to prepare the food. So they questioned: "Where is the cook?" But, because of their accent, the word "cook" came out as "cuk,” pronouncing oo like u. They were quite astonished that our mother was, in fact, that cook.
Part of the time that they were here, José had a paper route. My mother drove him around to assist in delivering papers. Quite often, my mother would pick José up at the school and take him to lunch at a small restaurant nearby. At first, Jose’ was happy about this but he started pushing back because he wanted to stay at school during lunch hour to play with his friends. My mother had her feelings hurt about that but you can understand José's desires and it also exemplifies the fact that he had established warm friendships in the short period of time that he had been with us. Every kid at Our Lady of Peace had in his back pocket a Spanish Dictionary. And by the time that the boys left us, his friends had at least a working knowledge speaking and understanding Spanish.
My brother played football at St. Charles and René went with him to practice every day. In the early days of the practice where they were not scrimmaging hard, Renée was very upset and kept asking as to when are we going to: "smash?" Before the first game, the school submitted an application to the Ohio State Athletic Association to waive Rene’s ineligibility due to the circumstances. In Ohio, if you transfer schools, you could not participate in athletics until you had been at the new school for at least one year. We felt this did not apply to René at all and certainly had extenuating circumstances. However, they turned us down so he was not able to play. To this he was apoplectic. There must have been some significant politics involved here as this was turning out to be a major screw job.
I heard stories, however, from his classmates that he was a bodyguard for everyone. If the students in his class were being bullied in any way by the upperclassman, they would call upon René, this hulking giant, to handle the situation, which always put an end to it in short order.
My brother drove to school every day and, of course, René went with him. In those days, all cars had seats that were like a bench in both front and back. So three people could sit on either the front seats or the back seats. No bucket seats like there are now. The Cubans had never dealt with cold weather before so this was a new experience for them. One day in the middle of winter, René, who normally sat by the window on the passenger side, slid into the seat and moved over right next to my brother in the middle seat. Kind of like a boyfriend and/or girlfriend would do. Well, my brother was a little put off by this and asked René why he was sitting so close to him. Well, they were going to pick up another person who would sit in the front seat by the window. So Renée typically would start out in the seat by the window and then move into the middle seat when this other kid got in. Rene's explanation as to why he started out in the middle seat was that he was tired of sitting in the window seat and warming up that cold seat and then the other passenger would get to sit in a warm seat by the window and René would have to sit in a cold seat in the middle again and warm it up. We got quite laugh about that.
As I previously indicated, our dinner table each evening was a real treat. The boys would tell us many stories about their lives and would have a unique spin about their daily activities, which also were enjoyable to listen to. One thing that really aggravated the boys that they refused to accept was my father's proclamation that they would never return to Cuba. They both insisted that they were determined to return to their homeland. This was a typical prediction by my father who seemed somehow to have a significant ability to see into the future on many issues. While I, as a 22-year-old college student, would expect to do everything the boys could do in order to get back to their homeland just as I would have had I been displaced. But my dad somehow knew that 60 years later, 2018, the boys are still here in America.
Both my brother and Rene’ had quite an interest in girls. Interestly, their respective cultures game into play. Girls that John thought were significantly overweight, Rene’ thought they were quite attractive. At first, we did not understand this but, upon examination of the topic, in the Latin American culture, a heavyset woman was indicative of a family that was well settled financially.
For Christmas, 1961, we went to Florida for the holiday. Because there were seven of us, we had to take two cars. We traveled together the entire time until we got to North Carolina. Somewhere there José exclaimed that he had to go to the bathroom. I told him just to hold it until we stopped. He was almost screaming that he really had to go and we had to stop as soon as possible. In those days we had no cell phones to communicate with my mom and dad in their car. Jane was with them and my brother and the two Cubans were in the car that I was driving. So we pulled off at a rest stop for José to go. As soon as he was finished, I jumped back on the road and was traveling at a high speed to try to catch up with my dad. Well that never happened but I got arrested for speeding. Any chance that the police officer could just write me a ticket? Absolutely not. He told me that he was arresting me and my only choice to be released was to post bond. So I had to follow him to some police station where they had to call in a justice of the peace to decide what my punishment should be. They did not make a final determination but they did make me post bond of $60 which, as I recall, was all I had. So I paid the money and then got back on the road. In the meantime my parents had gotten off the road when they realized that we were no longer with them. They contacted the police somehow and asked that some sort of a plea be put over the radio with a message to us to meet them at some location. When they got there, we had not heard the message so we were nowhere to be found and we never did hook up until we got to the hotel in Florida. It was not a good scene.
While we were in Florida, we had an opportunity to meet the father of the two boys, José Infante senior, a handsome man with a brilliant mind. He had obtained employment as a professor at a college in North Carolina. We also met Blanca again and were able to spend some time with her. The boys also had a sister whose name I cannot remember and I am not certain as to how she was handled. I do not think that she was sent to Camp Kendall. Perhaps since she was a girl, the parents felt they could keep her with them.
As I indicated before, René was the more mature and more common sense person then José. But José was the life of the party at dinner every night, which is when we all had an opportunity to get together and discuss the events of the day. José had the habit of sticking out his little finger daintily whenever he was drinking something. This looked like a dainty way of drinking the beverage. So we ridiculed him a little bit but then we started sticking out our little fingers when we drank something as well. Not to be outdone, José started drinking with his index finger pointed out rather than the small finger. This was typical of the interplay among all of us, which was clearly enhanced by the presence of the two boys.
José loved oysters. They came in a jar which was a long narrow tube filled with them. The entire family as I recall did not care for oysters at all as they were kind of a slimy type of seawater animal. But José would have the jar of oysters sitting before his plate when we would sit down for dinner. A beaming smile would appear on his face when he saw them. He would pick one up out of the jar, tilt his head back, drop it in and simply let it slide right down his throat. Then he would squeal: "S’Connor, I just love these." (S’Connor was how it came out when he meant to say, “Ms. Connor).The rest of us at the table would simply cry out: "eewweee, gross."
Once I asked José about his understanding of the Spanish language. In particular I wanted to know if, like English, the vocabulary was virtually unlimited. Undaunted, José said he knew every word in the Spanish language. So I got out our dictionaries and started firing complicated words at him. He was no match for the dictionary and we had a lot of fun about his so-called lack of knowledge of his own language. All in good fun, of course.
There were some TV programs that we all watched as a family. I can't recall any of them now but it seemed like among all of us, we would imitate various characters on the TV shows and, of course, the boys certainly played a role in that, more José than René. John and Jane both had a more intimate contact with the Cubans then I did because I was six years older than John and René and about 12 years older than José. So there are probably a lot of details that did occur of which I had no knowledge.
There was a family down the street who was the direct opposite of our family. They had two children and, including the Cubans, we had five; they were ardent Methodists, we were Catholic; we were Republicans, they were Democrats. With respect to the religious aspect, the father was very much anti-Catholic and ridiculed our faith or criticized it when he chose. He was so anti-Catholic that, when his daughter became engaged to a Catholic boy who was a law school classmate of mine, he refused to invite anyone to the wedding and refused to walk his daughter down the aisle. In our household, we mused about the father being torn between voting for John Kennedy, a Democrat, who also was a Catholic. When he went into the voting booth, his soul had to be torn between his faith and his politics. We never knew.
Our parish priest, Father George Foley, who I have referred to in other essays, was very close to our parents. He probably came to dinner at our house once every two or three months and, even during my high school and college years, I would still serve Mass for him when possible. One day, Father Foley contacted my mother and asked her to come to the rectory so that he could talk to her. He gave her something like $50-$100 in cash. Father Foley said it was to assist with the support of the Cuban boys with us. My mother thought that was the end of it but it turned out that every month, Father Foley gave her a similar amount of cash for the rest of the time that the Cubans were with us. My mother thanked him profusely and asked Father Foley why he was doing this, as our family was capable of supporting the boys. Father Foley would only say that this was not of his doing but there was an anonymous benefactor who was offering this support. Since we did not know the identity of the benefactor, my mother gave Father Foley a picture of the boys so that the benefactor would be able to see that the boys were being taken care of and the money was being put to good use. My parents were humbled by this whole event.
In April 1962, almost one year after the boys arrived, I left home for Navy Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island. I was not home again until Christmas 1963. I probably had some information about things that were going on at home but I was plenty busy on my ship so kind of lost track of what was happening with the Cubans. Within a month or so after I left home, the Cubans returned to their mother in Florida where they have resided ever since. They have both had very successful careers and families. Congratulations to them.
Roll the calendar forward about 20 years from when the boys left us, sometime around the early 1980s. My parents were invited to take a vacation with other couples to take a cruise on the Great Lakes. My parents rarely vacationed so this was a little unusual for them. As it turned out, the couple that lived down the street that were ardent anti-Catholic and also Democrats were on the cruise as well. One day my mother was sitting out on the deck sunning herself and the husband of the couple came out and joined my mother on the deck. They talked for a while and then he handed her a photograph. She could see instantly that it was a photograph of René and José. Mom asked the man how he got that and he said he had received it from Father Foley years ago. This was a man who would walk across red-hot coals rather than spend time with a Catholic priest. Yet he traveled to Our Lady of Peace monthly with money that was given to my parents to help with the boys. This was a demonstration of true charity and unconditional love. He had kept quiet all those years without any thanks, without any applause, without any boasting, but saw what he thought was a need and came to the rescue. While we had judged this man as someone who was highly prejudiced, virulently anti-Catholic, here was a man with a heart bigger than all the gold in Fort Knox.
Father Foley, my mother and father, and the benefactor down the street have all passed away. But all of them played a significant role to come to the aid of these children and their family at a critical time in human history.
In 1962, the Infante family was well settled in Florida and René and José returned to live with them as well. Nevertheless, we have maintained a close relationship with them down through the years. They have come to visit us from time to time, especially when my parents and sister, Jane, passed away. I met with them twice in the late sixties and early seventies when I traveled to Florida. My brother, John, has traveled annually to Florida and met with both of the Cubans and other members of their family while there. True to their heritage, Rene’ and Jose’ both have been enormously successful in building their families and also in their respective careers. Their success in business is quite remarkable. It is a great tribute to them and their family that in spite of the displacement of their state of life, personally and economically, they have been so successful.
This essay it is a mere snippet of the things that occurred since René and José entered our lives. It would take thousands of pages to provide a true representation of the enrichment brought to our family by them. Hopefully, the reader could get a semblance of the greatness of this relationship between René, José and our family.
There was another factor here. Mom and Dad showed their community leadership, both professionally and personally, by stepping up in the time of others’ need. This was one example of those great qualities which were evident throughout their lives.
It is truly hard to believe that our family was chosen out of the blue to have these two young boys sent to us and have them become members of our family ever since. While outsiders perhaps have looked at our family and admired us for welcoming Rene’ and José into our home, the exact opposite is true. Our family is the eternal beneficiary of having these truly wonderful young boys in our lives.
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