Pikeville woman remembers fleeing Cuba
By News-Argus Staff
Published in News on December 3, 2016 5:37 PM
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News-Argus/SETH COMBS
Fe Finch of Pikeville recalls growing up in Cuba when Fidel Castro came into power and her father, the late Dr. Jose deVarona was appointed General Director of Public Health before resigning when the political tide turned. The former director of O'Berry Center, deVarona moved his family to the U.S. in 1961.
When Fe Finch learned of the passing of Fidel Castro, she spent most of the day crying.
But not because he died.
Memories of her early life in Cuba -- where her father and uncle had both been appointed by Castro as minister of public health and secretary of labor, respectively, only to later resign from the communist regime and wind up on in dire circumstances that included being on a "list" and ultimately fleeing from their homeland -- flooded over her.
"We were some of the Peter Pan group of kids," she said. "We were sent over (to the U.S.) before my parents came. There were five of us.
"There are six of us but the baby was too little to send. So the five oldest were sent over with the Peter Pan (flights). It was July 24 or 25, 1961."
She was six years old at the time, the fourth in the lineup, when she boarded the plane bound for Miami.
"Operation Peter Pan" was a mass exodus of over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors to the United States between 1960 and 1962, when Castro took over the presidency.
Read more of Fe Finch's story in the Sunday edition of the Goldsboro News-Argus.