Good afternoon. First I’d like to thank each and every one of you for coming here today to pay respects to my father. Your presence here speaks of your love for Enrique’s family as much as it does for Enrique himself. We are extremely grateful for this gesture.
I met my father here in Miami when I was 9. I say this because, unlike my brother Henry and sister Yoli, who do remember him from Cuba, I was only two when he went to prison in August of 1959. Then we were forced to leave him behind in jail in 1962 after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Communism had at last engulfed Cuba.
Finally, the day arrived in the fall of 1966. This stranger called “my father” was coming home…to live with us. Who was this Enrique Ovares? We went to pick him up at a dingy hotel on Miami Beach. I recall the wild celebration that awaited us back on the Key. Friends, neighbors, family! Everyone rushed out screaming Enrique, Enrique!!! Who was this man that brought so much love, emotion and hysteria to all these people???
My father’s life reads like a detective romance novel, a veritable Dick Tracy meets Dr. Zhivago epic. His father, a military career officer, was a strong figure in Enrique’s early years, whose influence would aid him later in life. His years as a three time university student president and activist would soon take him around the world smack in the middle of political and social hot spots; from Havana to Prague, to Mexico City to Bogotá, founding student unions, leading university conferences, speaking out against injustice, championing the common man, and the rights of individuals.
Realizing the dangerous turn that his island nation had taken in 1959, he set out to join clandestine opposition groups hoping to save his fledgling democracy from the strangle hold of totalitarianism. They failed and his heroic efforts cost him 7 years in a prison gulag system replete with torture, firing squads, disease and hunger. My father never spoke to us about those years. It’s as if they never happened.
Somewhere between Prague and gulag, Enrique met Yolanda. They were both university students and upon his graduation in architecture they married and had three “awesome children!”
What I cherished most about my father was his love of abstract thought, political and social concepts and ideals. He was a constant thinker. And after keeping silent for almost 25 years regarding his revolutionary past, he decided to talk and began to receive international attention for his knowledge, participation and first hand accounts of mid 20th century Cuban history. He was interviewed by French, British and Spanish writers, journalists and film makers, top American biographers, PBS Boston, Miami talk radio and the list goes on.
This is a part of Enrique Ovares most of you know little about. We remember a successful local architect, whose projects included many houses here on Key Biscayne, constructions all over South Florida, the Keys, and even Saudi Arabia. My father was a great provider, prudent, modest, intelligent and wise. He was a joyful and gregarious, spontaneous man, warm and friendly – simpatico y carinoso - ! Y tremendo bailador!. He loved his family and especially his beloved grandsons who he adored and spoiled perhaps partially as a result of the years he spent in prison unable to love and spoil his own children. All the kids on the island knew him as “Aba!” His friends were everything to him. He spent hours at the yacht club, Versailles and La Carreta restaurants with his university buddies debating and arguing in rapid fire Cubanese about politics and Cuba, Cuba and more Cuba!
He lived a life most of us read about in novels. He’s in the history books. He’s in documentaries. But we here are the lucky ones. We got him up close and personal. He’s in our thoughts. He’s in our hearts. And so, he’s with us now, alive and forever.
Thank you