Herald Staff Report

 CARDENAS, Cuba -- If there can ever be such a thing as an ideal divorced
 couple, the parents of Elian Gonzalez were such a pair.

 Elizabet worked full time as a waitress in the tourist district but she could count
 on ex-husband Juan Miguel to take care of their son.

 He was known around town as the kind of divorced dad who didn't just look after
 his son on weekends, but drove him to school, treated him to lunch, and brought
 him along to work on school holidays.

 Whether it was his father's place on Sixth Street or his mother's apartment above
 an open air pharmacy, Elian was home. Two sets of grandparents adored him.
 Both parents cherished him. The timid little boy in the middle kept them all glued
 together.

 ``You couldn't tell they were divorced, said Regla Garcia, principal at Marcelo
 Salado primary school where Elian was in the first grade. ``His paternal
 grandmother brought him to school most days, but then again so did his mother,
 father and godmother.''

 She added, ``You could see they all loved him. You could see he was the center
 of that family.

 Elian was a quiet youngster from Cardenas, a town on Cuba's northern coast, a
 two-hour drive from Havana, where most people get around on a bicycle and the
 less fortunate take mass transit: a horse and buggy.

 CAUSE CELEBRE

 He is now the town's cause celebre and the reason bus-loads of his neighbors
 and his family attended a rally Friday afternoon in the nearby city of Matanzas.

 Last month, his schoolhouse was as rundown as the other buildings on the block.
 Now that the whole world is watching, it has been painted a pretty shade of pink.

 But Elian hasn't been to Marcelo Salado in weeks. The week before the
 Thanksgiving holiday was celebrated in the United States, his mother told school
 authorities that her son would miss classes Nov. 22nd, a Monday, because he
 had a doctor's appointment in Havana.

 Then he missed school Tuesday and Wednesday. Everyone started to worry.

 ``When that boy missed two days of school, the father was frantic, said Juan
 Miguel's neighbor, Eugenia Gonzalez, 88.

 Elian's teacher asked his godmother where the boy was. She didn't know, and
 neither did Juan Miguel.

 ``He has been here several times and you could see his pain, the principal said.
 ``He could barely control his tears.

 Garcia said everyone at the school was surprised when news reports began to
 feature Elian, a boy whose paternal grandfather often brought him to school on a
 bicycle and whose carefully coiffed mother always attended parent-teacher
 meetings and volunteered at school.

 The school and Juan Miguel want Elian back.

 CARING FATHER

 ``That was a father who cared for his boy, said Alba Rodriguez Garcia, who works
 at the pharmacy below Elizabet's apartment. ``Every weekend he was here to
 take the boy. Days during the week he was here to take the boy. At parties, he
 was here to see the boy.

 Rodriguez said Elian was a quiet boy who could not run around much on his
 mother's block because there was too much traffic. Instead he enjoyed watching
 television and playing Nintendo.

 He was able to roam more freely at his father's on a quiet unpaved street where
 Elian romped with the neighborhood children.

 ``That boy got a tremendous amount of attention, said Gonzalez, Juan Miguel's
 elderly neighbor. ``He ate at his father's house, slept at his father's house. He
 spent his life there. It was like his second home. No, it was his second home -- it
 was LIKE his first.

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald