The Toledo Blade
January 5, 1959. p. 1.
Mother Says Son’s
Love Of Adventure Lured Him To Cuba
An adventure-minded Toledo man, who joined the Cuban rebels a little more than a year ago, has been named army chief of the Fidel Castro forces in Cienfuegos, Las Villas Province.
He is William A. Morgan, 30, son of Mr. and Mrs. A. W. Morgan, 2909 Collingwood Blvd. He left Toledo just before Christmas of 1957 to throw his lot in with the now victorious Castro guerrillas.
“I’m just so happy to know he’s alive,” his mother said today when told of her son’s appointment by Mr. Castro.
She had not heard directly from her son since a letter from him, mailed in Florida, arrived here Nov. 5. He did not reveal his whereabouts or his exact duties at that time, but told of the gathering strength of the Castro rebellion.
“We are waiting for the soldiers to come up the mountains and fight,” he wrote, referring to the approach of some troops of the since-ousted Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista. “We are much stronger now, for many rebels have come here from (name of town illegible).
“The Cuban press last month sent out word that I was dead, but as you can tell, I am not.”
Young Morgan continued that the Castro forces had eight schools, five hospitals and two churches.
“I am more or less in charge of everything as chief of organization,” he added.
In his Nov. 5 letter, he also told his mother that she would receive word from a man who would be passing through Toledo. This promise was fulfilled last month, his mother related today, when she received a telephone call from an unidentified person who assured her that her son was well.
Mrs. Morgan described her son as an adventurous young man “who always had to be where there was excitement.”
It was during a three-year stay in Florida that he first met Mr. Castro and other leaders of the revolutionary movement in Cuba, she said. They persuaded him to join their cause and, after a brief return to Toledo, he did so.
“I tried to advise him against it,” his mother added.
Left behind in Toledo were his wife, Theresa, whom he married in Miami on May 11, 1954, and their two children, Anne Marie, 3, and William A. Morgan, Jr., 16 months.
In his infrequent letters of the past year, Mr. Morgan revealed little, but his parents here did learn that he had been promoted to the rank of major by Mr. Castro.
He never spoke much of political sympathies, but “he liked the Cubans very much,” his mother related.
One of the few things she knows of his activities is that he had charge of training young men to fight for the rebels, she said.
Cienfuegos, where his is now Mr. Castro’s army chief, is near the key city of Santa Clara, recently the scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the Cuban revolt.
Mrs. Morgan said her son was born in Cleveland, and the family moved here when he was 1 year old. He attended Rosary Cathedral School and for two years was a student at Central Catholic High School.
Then the urge to visit distant places got the better of him, and he left home to join the U.S. Merchant Marine. He spent a year as a merchant seaman and the enlisted in the U.S. Army, a new career that took him to Japan.
His army service finished, he went to Florida, where he met the Cuban rebel leaders.