Cuban Roots came about because I learned about Cuba and the trauma its “Revolution” caused my wife of 38 years and her family. I was in my twenties when we married, and I never knew much about or even cared about Cuba or anyplace else.

It’s funny that my classmates from elementary school in the 50’s and early 60’s have told me in recent years how we had to get below our desks to prepare for the Russian Missiles to attack.  Some even told me we had actual dog tags in my elementary school. I generally remember everything from the past including the faces and names of every teacher, but I don’t remember that.

I remember that the teachers brought televisions into our 6th grade classroom the day the John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

After we married, especially when her parents would come to visit from Venezuela, they would talk about what happened in Cuba after Fidel Castro took control in 1960. I vaguely knew that in 1961, she and her brother, ages 7 and 8, had been sent to Spain to live in Catholic boarding schools.  Many other Cuban children of 6 to 8 years of age were sent alone on the ‘Peter Pan Flights’ to the United States, to live in foster homes all over the country. Why? Because there had been a rumor spread throughout the streets in Cuba that kids in that age range would be sent to Russia for indoctrination.

Although I wasn’t sure who started that rumor, I am now convinced after much study that the ‘rumor’ really happened and that it was the United States’ CIA that spread the rumor. My wife’s mother and the two younger daughters, ages two and four, remained in Cuba, and the entire family reunited 7 years later in the Andes of Venezuela.

I met my wife because I was a professor of English to Speakers of Other Languages at the University of Florida.  She came to study for a Master’s Degree in Microbiology on a scholarship from the Venezuelan government (that’s when it was rich with oil).

Over the years I had also met a cousin of my wife who lived in Miami. I learned that he had escaped Cuba by raft, from a city in southeast Cuba to the U.S. base in Guantanamo. That’s the first time I realized that under the ‘wet-foot, dry-foot’ rule, a Cuban could stay in the U.S. upon touching its soil, including touching the coil of the base in Guantanamo because it was U.S. land.

Also, in the 1970’s, we were in Miami one time and had to stop at the house of one of her relatives to pick up something. There was a party going on, and my wife informed me that all the people there, gray-haired and blue-haired elders, had been in Cuban prisons together. I couldn’t believe that these calm old smiling people could have endured that.

I became quite interested in the history and started writing a book, although I knew very little. I would travel to Miami and meet with her cousin and have him draw me maps showing the bay at Santiago de Cuba and the mountains that surrounded that city. I had learned of an attack initiated by Castro, in the same city in 1953, and I would ask him to describe for me whether they could hear the sound of gunfire from their home. My wife had lived in the same neighborhood where he did, but she was born in 1953.

I would use internet aerial maps to locate places in Cuba, but this was in the 80s, and the internet wasn’t that good; AND supposedly the Cuban government did not share what was where, and where Fidel and his family really lived. In fact, when I first visited Cuba in 2010 I was warned not to take any device with GPS because it was illegal. (I don’t know that it was true, but the Cuban people were afraid, just like they were afraid to say anything negative about the government, even in private.)

After learning much from my vast collection of books on Cuban history and interviews with the relatives, I learned in 2010 that President Obama was opening the door for Cubans to return home to see their families without violating U.S. laws.  This was before other general citizens of the U.S. were allowed to go there (without having to sneak by going through Canada, the Bahamas, or other countries).

So, I said to myself, I need to go, to visit the real places that are part of the story I was writing, and learn the view of the people who still resided there. And I also determined that even though my wife didn’t travel with me (because she did not want to return to that country), her family was my family.

On the return from my first trip in January 2010, on what they called Charter Flights at the time, I came into Miami International Airport. Arriving in immigration, a man who looked to me to be of Cuban heritage, stood in uniform in front of me. “Where were you visiting?” “Cuba.” “You cannot go to Cuba.” “Yes, I can. I traveled under the Family Visit rule.” “You obviously are not Cuban.” “My wife is.” “Where is she? Why is she not with you?” “Her family is my family. She doesn’t have to travel with me.”

After glaring at me for a few moments, he called over a non-Cuban officer and told him the story. He told the other officer that he intended to arrest me for having visited Cuba illegally. I again explained that I visited on the Family Visit rule, and being a lawyer, recited the law that permitted that.

Finally, he almost viciously waived me past.  Two months later I returned from my second visit and the same immigration officer stood in front of me, glaring. He recognized me, didn’t ask me anything, and didn’t look at anything; with a fiercely aggravated facial expression he waived his arms to permit me enter my country.

I fell in love with Cuba, mostly because it was or could have been beautiful, but it was in decay, and I loved the people, the old cars, the strange rules. In those years the only restaurants were government owned and operated and the food was awful. Beef was illegal to have or sell. The Cuban people survived on $20 to $30 dollars a month (they still do), and the ration books were had many more items than they do now. And even later as beef became legal, it was so tough one couldn’t eat it.  The only private food establishments were called Paladars, and they were little places inside people’s homes.  But they had to get their food from the government, so it was awful.  I got food poisoning quite a few times when I first started visiting.

On my first visit to Havana, my wife had arranged for a second cousin of hers in Havana to take me all around the city, walking for 7 days.  The law had just opened up that would allow a Cuban to stay in a tourist hotel. I wanted to go to the city where my wife had been born, Santiago de Cuba, which is far away from Havana, and it was where many historical battles had occurred.  So, the cousin took his first plane flight with me and stayed in the first hotel he’d ever been in (I had to explain everything including how to use the plastic key card to open the door). Then, we walked seven days around Santiago de Cuba and finally found where my wife’s cousin still lived, in the same neighborhood where she had lived.

I met another relative there, who has actually been my book editor ever since. She and her boyfriend introduced me to historians, gave me multiple books and photos, etc.Later, when I was finalizing my book, Cuban Roots, I was invited to a meeting at the Instituto de Historia de Cuba, where I met very interesting people.  They were sincere about their beliefs, like many who had always lived on the Island and loved their country. I learned what they believed and researched the different points of view.  I believe strongly that our CIA did start the famous rumor about kids being sent to Russia and found that it was similar to many other acts it took to counter politics in South American countries. But there were other beliefs that I took as propaganda of Cuba and thus did not find real.I do not take sides in Cuban Roots. I try to show how some people, like the ‘exile community’ in Miami and their descendants, are totally against anything involving Cuba, including the fact that they consider the people who were born and raised and still live in Cuba as being socialist or communist. I also try to show the beliefs of other Cubans who remain on the Island, who are usually younger and have left or tried to leave Cuba in recent years.

Another major reason for my interest in Cuba is that the former President / Dictator, Batista lived in Daytona from about 1943 until the day he had to leave Cuba and tried to return here. He had purchased two large houses on the river in Daytona from race car driver Ransom Olds. He was very popular here and the recipient of fancy dinners, parades and other love from the people of Daytona Beach.

He brought a trove of most would call stolen art, which is now in the local museum.  He invited the entire city commission, city attorney (my father’s law partner) and the Mayor to Havana and feted them to a banquet in the Presidential Palace. He gifted one of the houses and its contents including the art to the City of Daytona during that banquet.  I have a copy of the deed, which was acknowledged in the presence of the U.S. Consul during that feast.

My book has received some bad reviews, generally from those who believe that one should never support or help anybody in Cuba and should never travel there.

I was invited twice to present my book at the Instituto de Historia de Cuba in Havana, and appreciated their acceptance of the book. It is fiction but based upon many historical facts.

But the government of Cuba began worrying about my intentions because I put money on people’s cell phones every two weeks for years. I suppose it thought that my giving them access to internet meant I was promoting dissidents.

The government began interrogating me every time I returned and also began ordering some of the recipients of the phone recharges to go to the military police department for interrogation. I was actually only helping people communicate. Therefore, I have not returned to the Island for almost three years now, and do not intend to visit again.I did use my knowledge of Cuba again in my newest book, Giga Trouble, but it is not historical although the suspicions of the U.S. government and the Cuban government even today are played out in that book also.