THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 17, 1995 TAG: 9505180202
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: FIRST PERSON
SERIES: UNDER THE BANYAN TREE
[Guantanamo Bay]
Part One
SOURCE: BY SUSAN DORSEY BOLAND, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
DATELINE: U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO BAY LENGTH: Long : 286 lines
In early September of 1994, 850 American families were evacuated from the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, due to the Cuban refugee crisis. This is my family's story as I remember it. However, it is as much each family's story as it is mine. I wrote this for them.
September 4, 1994. A Boeing 727 is loading passengers. The Caribbean stretches off to one side of the runway; a dusty piece of land flanks the other. It is 8 a.m., but it is already hot.
A line of men, women and children stretches from the open door of the hangar, snakes across the tarmac and up the airstairs. They are dressed in T-shirts and shorts and carry an assortment of belongings - dolls, Gameboys, purses stuffed with papers and knapsacks serving as carry-on baggage.
As one family reaches the foot of the stairs, they say good-bye. The man starts out with a hug and a kiss for each child. Then he and his wife caress, their heads fall and they bury their tears in each other's shoulders so the kids won't see. But the kids do. So they reach for their children and draw them into their embrace. The embrace lasts but a moment. They pull themselves apart and get the kids going up the stairs. A 2-year-old child looking over the shoulder of her mother, who is carrying her, reaches out a dimpled arm for her father's hand, her tiny fingers curling in good-bye.
The plane is finally loaded, and the pilot starts the engines. The men in T-shirts and shorts watch from behind a chain-link fence. One man stands alone on the tarmac. He is wearing one of those khaki-colored uniforms. As the plane begins to taxi toward the runway, he faces the aircraft and comes, smartly, to a full salute.
Virginia Beach, spring 1994
We had bought a Jeep and a dog because we were moving to Cuba. The 45-square-mile Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is on the arid southeast tip of the island. It is not your typical lush semitropical setting. The northwest mountains get all the rain, leaving sandy, rock-strewn hills and beaches to the southeast - more suitable for iguanas and banana rats than the 6,000 Americans living there. The roads are not good, especially to the rocky beaches, which wash out after the rare but tumultuous rain. We were told four-wheel-drive would come in handy.
The dog is another matter. My husband had been given command of the base. He would become the mayor of this isolated community of 4,000 workers and 2,000 dependents. I was moving to Small Town, USA, but this town has a gate, locked on both sides, and a fence flanked by minefields - some Cuban, some American. U.S. Marines and the Cuban Frontier Brigade patrol the fence on their respective sides. I was going to need a good friend. Kerry is a Chesapeake Bay retriever, a living reminder of home.
Our ``pack out'' dates were three days early in August. The ritual is always the same. Our house becomes home to three or four people who work for a moving company. They arrive very early in the morning. The leader quickly assigns a room to each.
They proceed to wrap articles in newsprint and put them in boxes. Once a box is full, they tape it shut and write in magic marker, ``Linens,'' ``Misc. Papers,'' ``Lamp,'' ``Books,'' etc.
The first morning, I always stand guard in the dining room. My breakable roots are there. Once the packer is finished with my paternal grandmother's china, my maternal grandmother's crystal, my mother's silver and a small delicate Irish Belleek basket, which my father gave to me on my 16th Christmas, I lose interest and become lost in thought. I try to envision when I would lay my hands on these things again. I allow myself to embellish this fantasy with as many good images of Cuba as I could find.
On the third day, a new team arrives in a flatbed truck with 12 shabby plywood crates. The leader of this team does inventory. With stickers, he numbers each box and piece of furniture.
Our household inventory came to 310 lines.
They take these 310 items onto the front lawn and pack them into the crates. Then the leader writes your surname in black magic marker on the side. The crates have been used before, so other names are scrawled in magic marker.
Aug. 23, 1994, Norfolk
There were only two flights a week from Norfolk Naval Air Station to Guantanamo Bay. Tuesday's left at 6 a.m., so my sons, Brian and Brendan, and I had to be at the airport by 4 a.m. Friday's left at 4 a.m., so my husband would have a 2 a.m. check-in. We were not traveling together because he had some briefings in Norfolk. But I wanted the boys registered for school before the weekend so they could settle in and maybe make a friend or two before starting classes the following Monday.
When I first heard about the flights, I asked my husband about the strange departure times. In Guantanamo, the prevailing winds in the morning are westerly. Later they are easterly. With a westerly wind, pilots can land on Runway 28 with a normal approach. A plane landing with easterly winds must use Runway 10, which demands a very sharp turn. At the approach end, there is only a quarter of a mile to forbidden Cuban airspace, and a field of landmines underneath it.
Brendan was already suffering from a nervous stomach. He does not like to fly. I held his head on my lap, and we watched CNN. The newscaster was explaining that the refugee crisis started Aug. 5, when hundreds of young Cubans rioted over the suspension of a Havana Bay ferry that had been hijacked three times to Florida.
Castro responded by announcing that his police would no longer stop Cubans fleeing by sea. Discontented Cubans set about building rafts, and Castro got Washington's attention.
This was not the first time Castro had used his people as pawns. The Mariel Boat Lift in 1980 dumped 125,000 refugees in Florida and other southern states. The then-Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, believes he was defeated for re-election because the Cuban refugees sent to Arkansas' Fort Chafee rioted.
So on Aug. 17, President Clinton reversed the 35-year-old policy of welcoming Cuban refugees with the proclamation that Castro wouldn't ``dictate American immigration policy.'' The human wave of refugees was not stopping. Coast Guard cutters had picked up 4,000 Cubans in one day. Guantanamo, already home to 14,000 refugees from Haiti, would by Saturday hold 14,000 Cuban refugees as well. The president was told Guantanamo could hold up to 65,000 refugees. For how long? ``Indefinitely,'' the president decided.
CNN was now showing a film clip of refugees arriving in Guantanamo and lining up for the bus that would take them to the camps. Brendan raised his head and asked, ``Is that where we're going?''
``Yup. That's where we're going.''
U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay
Jim Newton was waiting for us as we got off the plane. He is a big man with broad shoulders and enormous hands. When you shake hands with a person for the first time and look him in the eye, you can tell quite a lot. I knew I was meeting a very good friend. He spoke easily, with the accent of someone who had grown up in the South. Wherever he had grown up, he had not forgotten what it was like to be a kid. He immediately got the names and ages of my sons. He chatted with them about what a typical day in Guantanamo Bay would be like for a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old. Jim, the command master chief, was doing a very good job of meeting us.
After waiting about a half hour for Kerry and our luggage to be taken off the plane, we went to the ferry landing, where a gig picked us up to take us across the bay to the base.
Jim casually pointed out landmarks as the boat made its way into the bay. On our right was the town and a working waterfront area with cranes, piers, ships and shacks. On our left was a long stretch of flat land that led to low, rolling hills.
``Those hills, Jim, are not part of the base, are they?''
Jim explained that the ``fence line'' was between us and those hills. The fence wasn't visible, but he helped me pick out a half dozen guard towers.
``The black towers are American, Mrs. Boland, and the red ones are Cuban.''
A few minutes later, Jim put his hand on Brendan's shoulder, and directed his gaze to a magnificent white house on the end of Deer Point, which stretched into the middle of the bay.
Jim's blue eyes were already laughing as he said to Brendan:
``That's your house.''
Brendan, in disbelief, said ``What?''
``That's where you're gonna live.''
``There?''
``Yes. Right there.''
I could tell the crew was enjoying this too, as their faces were glued to Brendan's to see how he would react to the terrific news. For a moment, I think they were all 10 again and had slipped into his shoes.
The crew tied the gig up at Flag Landing, the T-shaped pier serving residents of the house. The boys and Jim took the luggage, I took Kerry on her leash and we walked down the pier to a very long cement stairway that led up the hill to the house.
Brian was quietly taking all this in. He had a sense of wonder in his eyes that I had only seen once before, when his Little League coach told him what he had to do to score the winning run to give his team the pennant. Every parent in the stands leaped up with joy as Brian crossed home plate. This same sense of wonder - is this really happening to me? - was in his eyes now.
Brendan was more verbal. He was repeating and repeating, much to his brother's annoyance, ``I do not believe this,'' ``This place is great.'' ``Is this really mine? ``Can anyone else use this dock?''
I was lost in my own thoughts. How many other women had walked this pier for the first time with their children in tow? What kind of women were they when they arrived? When they left? What would my story be - for I was sure that there would be some sort of story here.
I found out later that the wife of the commanding officer during the cold war brought her family here in December of 1963, a year after the Cuban missile crisis. Castro still was not cashing, nor has he ever cashed, the $4,000 annual rent check for Guantanamo that the U.S. sends to Havana. Each check is put in a safe deposit box in a Swiss bank while Castro maintains that the base is illegal.
There were routine death threats on the commanding officer, Adm. Bulkeley, who had two Marine sentries posted at the house. A machine gun was positioned just on the other side of the 3-foot-high rock fence in the back yard. For several weeks, Bulkeley would stand watch on a hill overlooking Cuban territory for 12 to 18 hours a day, wearing ``Big Iron,'' a .357 Colt magnum. I couldn't imagine the Bulkeleys sitting at the end of Flag Landing, he after a day with Big Iron, she after a day of telling the kids to stop jumping over the fence in the back yard. But it was easy to visualize my husband, Capt. James F. ``Bookie'' Boland, and me there. I knew we would pass many a sunset drinking our cold Heinies on Flag Landing.
The magnificent white house was intimidating. That first morning in Guantanamo, the doorbell rang at 10:30. A man and a woman from the base Housing Department had arrived to check me in. The woman had a clipboard with a page for each room. There were 13 pages - lobby, living room, library, dining room, kitchen, pantry, master suite on the first floor, garage, and upstairs four large bedrooms with an adjoining family room, windowed from floor to ceiling on three walls and overlooking the bay. As we entered each room, she read off her list of furniture that the Navy had provided until those rickety plywood crates full of our stuff arrived in about six weeks. I signed the last sheet. The man then proceeded to walk me around the grounds and familiarize me with the underground sprinkler system as well as the switches for all of the outdoor floodlights. When we were done, we chatted under the shade of the banyan tree in the back yard. When I first walked into this shade, I seemed to be in a grove of trees. But when I looked up, I realized it was just one. Each branch of a banyan tree stretches out and sprouts a vine, which roots and forms yet another supporting trunk.
About two hours later, they left me with some paperwork and four keys. I smiled because I would not need these keys. No one locked their houses in Guantanamo Bay. No one even took their keys out of the ignition of their car. If you owned a personal weapon, you were told to leave it in storage in the States. There was simply no crime in Guantanamo Bay. My children would have this experience for two of their most formative years.
I then quietly walked through the house. I mentally went through the rooms of our house in Virginia Beach, as they had been, and with each piece of furniture I came across in my mind, I decided where it would go in this house. At the same time, my husband was doing a walk-through of our house in Virginia Beach for our new tenants, and would hand them two sets of keys.
The boys ran around the house with Kerry yelping at their heels.
When they tired of playing with her, they would retreat into their rooms to dream alone. The day after tomorrow, Dad would arrive, and he would be with us every day for the next two years. We were mesmerized by our new station in life. . . in this beautiful home, where from each of 75 windows, all you could see was the blue water of Guantanamo Bay. Surely we had died and gone to heaven.
Later, Brendan and I went to the stables. As we drove along Sherman Avenue, we passed the Navy campus, where folks could pursue a college degree. City College of Chicago held the contract to teach the 100 and 200 level courses, and Troy State University taught the 300 and 400 level courses. I had been hired to teach freshman composition for City College and a survey course of Western literature for Troy State. I was anxious to have a look around and meet my new colleagues, but I knew I had to take care of the kids first.
Brendan had read in some literature about Guantanamo that kids could ``rent'' a horse monthly. The stable would provide the food and stalls, and the child was to provide the love and exercise. Brendan and I rented two horses, and spent a quiet hour or so following a trail that took us over some low hills. He was unusually quiet. He rode ahead of me, and I was enjoying the view. The back of Brendan's head is the same shape as his father's. Inside that head was a 10-year-old, dreaming and scheming about horses, trails and possible adventures he would have here. Brian had walked into ``town'' to get a burger. He was doing a 13-year-old thing - scouting the place to see what the other kids looked like. We were all back at the house around 5, and decided to take cold drinks down to Flag Landing. The wind had changed, and from the ripples on the water, you could see that a nice breeze was blowing down there.
We had been sitting there for about half an hour when Jerry Rea appeared at the foot of the stairs. Jerry had stopped by the house the day before to introduce himself. At the time, he was the XO, or Executive Officer. In the chain of command, he was right under the CO, which meant that Jerry would be my husband's right-hand man. Yesterday we had chatted for a while, then he told the boys to get into his white pickup `` 'cause we're goin' to MAAACDonalds.'' When he returned with the boys, they had obviously had fun, and Jerry had left the truck with us to use until our Jeep arrived in about two weeks.
Jerry sat down and asked us what we had been up to. We told him about our day, and then he said, ``I sure wish I was just here for a social visit. But I'm not.
``I am here to inform you, Mrs. Boland, that an evacuation is imminent.''
Thursday, part two: The evacuation. MEMO: Susan Boland is a free-lance writer and adjunct faculty member at TCC
and ODU. ILLUSTRATION: Drawings
JOHN EARLE/Staff
The commanding officer's quarters on Deer Point, which stretches
into the middle of the bay.
U.S. Naval Base
Guantanamo Bay
Graphic
GUANTANAMO UPDATE
Today there are 19,957 Cuban refugees and 444 Haitians at
Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, down from a high of 40,000 earlier
this year. They are being overseen by a 6,000-member joint service
force.
Plans call for returning all of the Haitians to their country and
for bringing about 500 Cubans a week into the United States over the
next 30 to 40 weeks. About 9,900 Cubans already have come into the
United States.
When that is completed early next spring, the Navy will consider
allowing dependents to return to the base. Navy Secretary John
Dalton said last week that could start as early as January or
perhaps as late as September 1996.
by CNB