September 19, 2009
On Feb. 6, 1962, a dark-haired teenager checked his duffel bag at José
Martí Airport near Havana, Cuba, and boarded a flight for Miami.
He had never been on an airplane before, but that was just a small part
of the unknown that lay before him.
Gazing back at his mother, young Melquiades Martinez saw the pain of
good-bye etched on her face. Perhaps Gladys Martinez feared she might
never see her 15-year-old son again.
It's all described in the book A Sense of Belonging, a memoir by former
U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez of Orlando.
Just a few weeks after his farewell speech in the Senate, Martinez will
be at the Orlando Public Library on Saturday to sign copies of the book
and share stories from his life, including that flight from Castro's
Cuba in 1962.
Martinez left Cuba as part of the historic program now called Operation
Pedro Pan (or Operation Peter Pan). It was the largest recorded exodus
of unaccompanied minors in the Western Hemisphere, according to the Web
site Pedropan.org.
From December 1960 to October 1962, more than 14,000 Cuban youths
arrived in the United States as part of a covert airlift spearheaded by
the Roman Catholic Church in Miami, with support from the U.S. State
Department.
Parishes all over the U.S. accepted and resettled the children,
including some in Orlando, where the young Martinez lived with two
foster families before being reunited with his parents in 1966.
The early chapters of A Sense of Belonging offer insight into what these
young refuges faced as strangers in a strange land.
On the plane, Martinez remembers sitting next to an 11-year-old girl who
was extremely anxious, so he talked to her the whole flight, trying to
keep her mind busy.
But all alone at the Miami airport, he too was overcome by fears,
dispelled briefly by the appearance of his second cousin Manuel.
Soon, Martinez was in a van with several other teens, headed toward Camp
Matecumbe in Miami-Dade County, the point of entry for older boys in
Operation Pedro Pan.
The camp was so crowded that new arrivals slept on cots in the
cafeteria. Their welcome was a carton of milk and one oatmeal-raisin
cookie – Martinez' favorite ever since.
Each of the 40 days he would spend at Camp Matecumbe was a hard day,
Martinez recalls, and he credits his faith with getting him through. "It
was the sole antidote to the overwhelming feelings of homesickness,
loneliness, and confusion," he writes.
Finally, he was sent to his next stop, Camp St. John at Jacksonville,
where things were better: Instead of more than 400 boys, there were only
70. Now the boys were able to play pickup baseball and basketball, and
even go to a game of the Jacksonville Suns, the area's minor-league team.
"We banded together," he writes, and became a brotherhood. During three
months at Camp St. John, he formed friendships that have lasted
throughout his life.
In June 1962, 12 of the boys headed to Orlando on a Greyhound bus to
meet the families who had signed up to be their foster parents,
including the family of Walter Young and his wife, Eileen, who would
nurture Martinez "through the agonizing days of 1962 and 1963. It was
Eileen Young who would christen Martinez "Mel."
There's much more to the story of Martinez and of Operation Pedro Pan, a
significant episode in Florida's past. He'll talk about it at the free
program Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Orlando Public Library. For details,
go to ocls.lib.fl.us or call 407-835-7481.
A firsthand account of a child's flight from Cuba -- OrlandoSentinel.com
(19 September 2009)
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/orl-livjoy-dickinson-history-092009092009sep20,0,348314.column
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