Have you ever given or been the recipient of a random act of kindness?

Leaving aside family and friends I grew up with, as favors given and received would be too many to relate, I will start this chronicle in 1960, when I was 18 years of age.

First thing that comes to mind was a big favor, inconceivable in today's environment, that happened on 14 June 1960. Miriam was already my girlfriend and had been for a while. She and her mother were in Portsmouth Virginia helping Mariana who was about to have a baby, or as it turned out, twins.

We knew that she was going to the hospital on the morning of 14 June; as the day wore on, so did the nervous state of my father-in-law Alfredo Torralbas. Repeated telephone calls to their apartment in Virginia were unanswered as the afternoon wore on. Suddenly, Alfredo asked me to accompany him to Virginia, ordered two airline tickets from the travel agency they always used, Guiteras Travel near the United States Embassy in Havana, which they told us would be waiting for us at the Cubana de Aviación counter at the José Martí Airport.

I went home, packed a small bag, got my passport, told my parents and my brother-in-law Mario Guevara drove me to the airport. When we got there, passenger were already aboard the aircraft and it was being held waiting for us, I suppose due to the influence of Guiteras Travel. Alfredo had not yet arrived.

The Cubana personnel was nervous, I never found what excuse they gave other passengers, I imagine they faked some necessary check of the airplane or control tower delay, although I think it was the last flight of the evening.

The minutes passed, after a while, Alfredo arrived running, left his car idling on the driveway. I asked Mario to take care of Alfredo's car and we boarded the aircraft.

When we arrived at Miami Airport there were no more flights until morning, as was usual then. I called my uncle Manolo Porto, he came to the airport, picked us up, we slept at his house and since he got up early to run a catering service, dropped us back at the airport at 6 AM. National Airlines had a direct flight to Norfolk but all seats were taken, we could not go on it. We then flew to Jacksonville; from there we caught a flight to Charlotte North Carolina, where Alfredo knew a motel owner who, when we could not get a flight to Norfolk, picked us up and took us to the Greyhound Bus Station. We caught the bus and arrived at Portsmouth at 2 AM. Mariana had twins, Theresa was in the incubator, Miriam and her family were very nervous because it happened that the National Airlines direct flight from Miami to Norfolk had crashed. The airline, as is always the case, would not release the passenger list, Charles was calling his Senator... thus was the situation when we arrived on Greyhound.

After we returned to Cuba troubles with the revolution were getting worse. The confiscation of La Selecta of Calle San Rafael 712 and the Lawton factory of Calle 14 entre Tejar y Pocito, absolutely without remuneration of any kind, loomed ever closer.

A friend of my mother-in-law Lolita who was related to Guiteras Travel worked at the United States Embassy and did me the great favor of getting them to allow me to process all the paperwork to get a resident visa or green card for my father, mother and I without cancelling ipso facto the tourist visa each of us possessed, as was the normal procedure, enabling me to obtain all the necessary paperwork, my parents had to go only to the medical exam, hence enabling us to keep it secret until we did obtain the resident visa, got our airplane tickets and on 13 October 1960, when my father came home for lunch as it was his custom, we went to the airport and travelled to Miami for the last time.

Miriam and her mother came two days later, on 15 October 1960. A few days after that, the government took over my father's business. Being a legal resident of the United States at the moment of takeover of his business by the government qualified him under the recent law that permitted Americans to deduct the Cuban losses from income tax, so when we returned to Florida in 1965 I went to the IRS to ask about it and had the good luck of talking to a crippled IRS agent, veteran of the Korean War, who helped immensely with the process, guided me through it, probably because I had just returned from military service and was asking candidly, seeking only what was allowed, probably refreshing to him.

As luck had it, when he asked me for some proof of ownership of the factory building, its value and value of all the equipment within it, I wrote to the Latin American representative of the Otto Gerdau & Company, the big New York exporter from which my father's business imported rattan from Indonesia, who used to visit the factory in Havana. It happened that by then, he was President of his company and wrote us a letter saying that he knew my father well, that he had visited the building in Havana many times, all around a glowing endorsement of the cause.

The IRS agent further helped me when it came to the equipment; he had me make a list and look up their approximate cost in catalogs; I did so and when I went to give it to him, he said that the equipment had a useful life of 10 years and since the factory was 11 years old, it was fully depreciated by then. After thinking a moment, I asked him if it was not reasonable to assume that if their life was 10 years, they had been replaced by new equipment that was then 1 year old; he liked it and helped me by presenting it that way. A very charitable and friendly gesture on the part of an IRS agent.

When we arrived in Miami in October 1960, my father went to seek employment at a furniture factory in 46 Street owned by a Jewish man who immediately recognized his abilities, so that he and his foreman hired him right away, albeit at much lower wages than he deserved, but treated him excellently, had him not in production but in a separate room making patterns at his own pace, smoking cigars, without rush.

My mother began work immediately too, as a seamstress at the factory where her sister Margot -Tía Maño- worked, as did I at the catering service ran by my uncle and godfather Manolo Porto, delivering canteens at Little Havana.

That enabled us to rent a house right away, at 620 SE 6 Place, Hialeah, not far from Tía Maño, Cuco Landa, Vilma and Bernie's house. Soon, my cousin and godmother Elena Villamil came, with her husband Nenito De la Osa, my second cousins Ada y Pepucho, children of her brother Pepe Villamil, all part of my very close family. Soon thereafter, neighbors such as Celia and Enriquito Suárez, also teenagers, joined us at the 3 bedroom 1 bath house. Manolo's catering service made sure that a daily canteen for two-and-half people, which I paid each week, provided enough food for all of us at the house; I brought it home after delivering my route each day.

A few years earlier, when I first visited Miami at age 12 or 13, the impact of segregation was great, something I had never experienced, things such as the back of the bus, Colored and White separate water fountains, etc. In late 1960, a 1951 Plymouth we had bought and that I used in my canteen delivery, in which later I was helped by Pepucho, quit on me on LeJeune Road. I stood there for a while, not knowing what to do, the battery was dead, nobody stopped to help, when suddenly a very nice black man in a 1957 Pontiac stopped, helped me, had jumper cables, got me started, very friendly fellow.

When I enlisted in the Army, went to the recruiting station, took a battery of tests and a thorough physical, it must have surprised the redneck processing my papers, or else he really not understand my broken spoken English, because he listed me as having a ninth grade education, when I already had one year of Electrical Engineering at the University of Havana, had taken Calculus I and II, Physics I and II, Chemistry I and II, Technological English, etc. -which I did not find out until the VA much later- while thanks to my excellent English reading and writing skills, I had qualified for Officers Candidate School OCs, had an IQ of 137 and had a mistaken concept of what it meant being granted my request of Engineering School.

They flew a group of us to Jacksonville, then bussed us to Columbus Georgia, by the Alabama border, where Fort Benning is. There we went through Induction, i.e. further tests, , issuance of uniforms, mailing back home the civilian clothes and anything else we arrived in, etc. after which, in about two weeks, we were bussed to Columbia South Carolina, to Fort Jackson, for Basic Training.

Fort Jackson was at capacity, recruiting had stepped up after the Berlin Crisis of 1961 -when they built the wall- and they had brought our instructors from OCS to cover the overflow, this meant we had excellent training.

Our platoon had a contingent from Florida, another from Texas; when in 1961 you put together a bunch of rednecks with latinos and Negroes, it was bound to be some friction. The only other Rodríguez was a Mexican from San Antonio, born and bread there, who spoke perfect English, but was not very friendly. Two other Cubans in my platoon, a guy named Fernández who probably had been born in Florida, for he had no Spanish accent either; the other Cuban was named Durán, said he was a cousin of my classmate Laureano Pequeño, was short, fat, meek, a natural target for bullying. Some blacks started picking on him, but by then I had made friends with a Negro named Patterson, who said he was a cousin and second of Floyd Patterson the boxer, so I spoke with him and asked him to speak to his people and ask them to leave Durán alone; he did and they did, so it allowed us, as I told Patterson, to concentrate on dealing with the real enemy, the drill sergeants.

After certain difficulties, especially with a blond second lieutenant who was sure I was faking not understanding him, a sergeant who did his best that I did not go to OCS and other minor incidents, we finished our excellent training, I went to Portsmouth, got married, had a week-end honeymoon in Virginia Beach, and reported for duty at Fort Belvoir Virginia, near Alexandria and D.C.

When I got there I told the first sergeant I had gotten married, he processed my papers without comment, although technically i should have asked for permission before marrying, and was so graceful and nice to me that he granted me a week-end pass each week I was there, so that on Friday afternoons I took a Greyhound bus to Portsmouth, returning on Sunday evenings to Fort Belvoir. I had brought a big suitcase with civilian clothe, so I normally wore civvies on weekends.

I had thought that after receiving orders at the end of the course for maintenance of the equipment of a Hercules Missile Site, I would be able to return to Portsmouth one last time before reporting to my new duty station. Not so; when five of us from that course, Roger Schumacher, Paris Laws,John Wilson, Dan Danford and I received our orders, it was for immediate departure. So it was that I found myself carrying not only my duffel bag, but also a big, heavy suitcase, while hurrying to catch transportation for Fort Dix New Jersey for Embarkation. When I lagged behind with my heavy load, Roger Schumacher kindly helped me carry it for a while, we were a team of five.

After the vicissitudes of a transatlantic voyage on the rear deck of a troop transportation trip on the North Atlantic in January wearing only fatigues and a field jacket without lining, sleeping like cattle on four levels of side-to-side bunks hanging from two poles, almost touching the fellow next to you and without enough vertical clearance to turn sideways, able to sleep only due to exhaustion after spending all day freezing on deck, we finally arrived at Bremerhaven.

There an Army truck awaited us five, drove us to the barracks at Bad Kreuznach and there they billeted us at the Headquarter Building of the Eighth Signal Battalion of the Eighth Infantry Division. We were technically not assigned to it, but to a Seventh Army support point for third echelon maintenance of radio and telephone equipment, SP-753, commanded by a very friendly W4, attached to the Eighth Signal Battalion.

There we met several friendly people, first of all Sergeant John Slagle, who was the first to take me off-post and showed me the town, in his Volkswagen Karman Ghia. Then Sergeant Ira Cooper became a good friend, as did others,, including Sergeant Fitzsimmons, and Crosby, First Lieutenant Vento, to cite some.

After I bought Miriam an airline ticket from American Express on monthly payments and she came even though there was a dependent travel ban at the time, Germany wanted to deported and the compromise was that she reported to the police station each week, our priest, an Army Chaplin kindly solved that problem for us using subterfuge, thanks we were still occupying forces; I already related this episode in answer to a previous question.

What I had not related was that my first sergeant, named Gratz and brother to Kitty of Gunsmoke fame, helped me through this difficult process; He had married a girl from Eastern Europe that had no papers or passport either; he had a German notary make a paper saying she was stateless, that this document established her identity and asked the countries through which she may transit in the future to accept it as such, it was written en German, English and French and he said it worked for them, so we did it and tried it going to Brussels to visit Enrique Almagro for the first time. At the border they waved us on in our trusty 1953 Mercedes with USA plates, all the care for was the green insurance card, but we stopped in the hope they stamped her document. Soon we had to backtrack, for the almost did not let us in. We could not get the Belgium stamp, but they finally waved us to go ahead.

After a year or so I was sent to Bavaria, to a little town called Murnau close to the Austrian border, to take a course of keypunch IBM cards and an entire system to run my parts inventory of SP-753. It was a great course, but in the middle of it SP-753 had a great anniversary party on a weekend. I had liberty, that is I could go off-base at any time I was not in class, but in those cases one is restricted to a 90 mile radius, so I answered Lieutenant Robert Vento that I could not drive to Bad Kreuznach for the party, to which he answered without my asking, to do it anyway, that if I had an accident he would issue orders to cover me.

We got along like a happy family, including the four men who accompanied me from Fort Belvior and others I met in Bad Kreuznach, but since all good things must come to an end, when I already had been granted government quarters and Miriam, Beto and I were comfortably installed there, when I still had more than a year to go before rotating back from overseas, because I had extended my enlistment six month in order to complete my three years of foreign tour to enable me to receive the benefit of the government paying dependent travel and moving expenses, SP-753 was either dissolved or reassigned elsewhere in Seventh Army, single personnel or those without government quarters or those with more than two years to go on their tour were reassigned. I was not.

For a while, all I did was go in post only to visit the Post Office and pick up my mail. However, Lieutenant Norman Ramírez, an ROTC officer from the University of Mayagüez that had been there only a few months less than me, was an engineer but lacked military bearing, had been made First Lieutenant and assigned as S4 or Supply Officer of the Eighth Signal Battalion was in a bind. He and I had become friends, as were Miriam and his wife, he also had a little boy.

It happened that the S4 Sergeant, who was named Gibbons, who was Sergeant First Class or E-7, two ranks above mine, had rotated home, a replacement was requisitioned but had not arrived or there were no indications it would within a reasonable period. So Lieutenant Ramírez went to see the Battalion Commander, Major Harris, and told him that he knew somebody that could do the job in the meantime; he gave him my telephone number and Major Harris called me, asked me to go see him.

Major Harris was a hero, a survivor of the Battan Death March of the Philippines, soft spoken, easy going. He asked me to please help Lieutenant Ramírez in S4, to which I answered Yes Sir!

I took over my desk, starting reading feverishly the pertinent manuals, because the Army has detailed manuals for everything, and promptly knew what to do. It was not easy, I was 21 years old, only two years in the Army, had my Cuban accent and was supposed to command a group of about 15 men, some with a dozen years in. They resented at first, took me a while to gain their respect and be able to function as a coherent unit.

After returning to Miami while working for Western & Southern Life Insurance Company, several people like Jim Hemphill, Gene Gust, Tom Taylor and Gary Quintilio befriended and helped me, while I helped others like Aniceto Abascal, José "El Niño" González and Juan "Tiki-Tiki" González.

From there I went to work for The Travelers Insurance Company, where Chuck Reynolds and Joe Cook befriended me. Then I became an independent agent with an important contract from The Travelers in 1972 It was a bad year, my mother had died on 7 August 1972. My eye trouble had begun and I was been treated by Dr. Mary Lou Lewis at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

As years went by, several people helped me, like Pepe Alvarez of Associated Insurance Brokers, Indalecio Patallo of Guardian Insurance and Paul Fraynd of Orion -later Aries- Insurance Company. We went through very rough times, during which my son Beto helped Miriam and I very much, he first worked at Select Insurance selling automobile policies, later in Business Insurance Consultants did our accounting and computer work. We finally reached a considerable level of success, were making nice profits when in 1999 Paul Fraynd, President of the companies we were General Agents for, bought us out. In retrospect, I think he did so to help us, because a few years later his company went under and he was prosecuted.

We had bought the apartment at 5701 Collins Avenue in 1998, right on the beach, where we intended to spend summers. We had been renting cabins at the Barceló hotel where our friend Luis Felipe Ponce was General Manager the previous summer and had enjoyed it very much. After a couple or three years of my forced retirement, since I could not get my business going again, we moved there and sold our fine Kendall home. We had a great time there, Miriam at the beach much more often than I, a nice group of friends, playing dice and poker. I made the mistake of becoming President of the Condominium Association, something I should have avoided, then Pablo died in 2005 and we had a rough period, I feel that only our faith saved us.

Beto had moved with Lourdes, Laura and Betico to Fort White in Columbia County and we had remained in Miami Beach, with easy access to Beto By automobile, to Pablo in Costa Rica and Daniel in San Diego by plane, but now we decided to move to Fort White as well. We bought the house at 2624 SW Newark Drive, Fort White, in 2006, moved there at the beginning of 2007. Our church was Saint Madeleine at High Springs, where we made many good friends, like Mike Wilson, Jim and Barbara Fogarty, Bill and Gloria McCarthy, many others. Mike took me to Knights of Columbus meetings and many other places, always trying to help. A group of Knights cut down and removed some sick large trees from our property, Father Sebastian was always available for anything we needed.

We were still in reasonable good health, but living at 13 highway miles from Church, 20 from the VA Hospital at Lake City and 29 miles to the larger hospital at Gainesville, with only Miriam able to drive in a town without public transportation, we after Beto had moved to Ocala, in 2019 we decided to also make the move to be near him and in a city environment, close to stores and doctors. We were lucky to find this house where we now live at 411 NE 40 Terrace, Ocala.

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