Published Sunday, August 27, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Bequest names Elián's family
Suicide victim drops her own kin from $500,000 will
By Ana Acle. aacle@herald.com
In the moments before she put a gun to her chest and killed herself, a 57-year-old church woman in Oklahoma rewrote her will to bequeath her $500,000 estate to two highly publicized families she never met: the Miami relatives of Elián González, and the Amiraults in Massachusetts, a
family accused in a sordid child-abuse case.
Anne Katherine Abernathy signed her will at 10:55 a.m. one day last month -- just hours after her 91-year-old mother died of natural causes in a grand old home they shared in the town of Shawnee. Police found their bodies the next day, July 21.
Abernathy, a gracious lady who belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution, left her dog, Mai Ling, to the president of the University of Oklahoma, David Boren, and her notes and photographs to a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz.
In a four-page note written just prior to her suicide, Abernathy deleted from her will 12 individuals -- mostly relatives, including an uncle and several cousins, and friends -- and praised the Gonzálezes because they ''treated him [Elián] with such love.''
She wrote: ''To give away freedom for power is hollow and tragic. . . . May God, such as He is, bless and care for America -- what's left of it.''
In Miami, Manny Diaz, an attorney representing Lázaro González, Elián's great-uncle, said the family would not discuss the matter publicly, but were checking hundreds of letters to see whether Abernathy had written to them.
Whether the Miami or Massachusetts families will ever see the money -- from an estate valued ''in excess of $500,000'' -- is a different mat
ter. Abernathy's relatives are contesting the will, claiming she had been mentally incapacitated for years.
A first hearing is slated for Monday.
''This is a painful, sad and difficult situation,'' said second cousin Robert Abernathy of Oklahoma, the main petitioner. Relatives from Nevada, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Texas are named in the petition. ''The death of a loved one usually is. But on the advice of my attorney, I can not
comment on this.''
Cousin Jack Abernathy of Rockwall, Texas, echoed the sentiment: ''I can't say anything, I'm sorry.''
Anne Katherine Abernathy was the unmarried daughter of Kenneth and Katrine Abernathy. Years ago he was a justice on the Oklahoma Supreme Court. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma, where she was named ''Outstanding Senior Woman.''
Max Shumacke, pastor of the United Presbyterian Church of Shawnee, said Abernathy lived for years in Houston.
There she was in the Junior League and active in civic affairs and political campaigns. She served on a water board.
''She was a very artistic person, involved in fine arts and several museums down there,'' Shumacke recalled. ''She was an excellent calligrapher and a home decorator. But I don't know if you'd call that a business. She was just very good.''
Two years ago, Shumacke said, Abernathy moved back to Shawnee to care for her ailing mother, and they lived together in the family's prominent home on Broadway, the town's main street. The mother, lying in a recliner chair in a small room just off the living room, died early the morning of July
20.
That's when Abernathy picked up a pen and jotted down the time: 6:36 a.m. ''My mother was the kindest person I ever knew and my dad the hardest working. I am grateful for my childhood even though I had no friends.''
Then she wrote about Elián and the Gonzálezes, the working-class family thrust into the national spotlight during their seven-month battle over the fate of the Cuban rafter boy. Federal agents removed the boy from the Miami relatives -- Lázaro, Angela and Marisleysis -- in a
dawn raid in April. Two U.S. courts ruled that at age 6 the boy was too young to decide for himself whether he wanted political asylum. He was returned to communist Cuba with his father.
Writing clearly, Abernathy referred to another notorious case that set off a national debate on children's testimony in sex-abuse prosecutions. The Amiraults -- mother, daughter and son -- were charged in 1984 with raping and assaulting children at a day care they ran in Malden, Mass. Child
witnesses testified that robots spoke, animals were tortured, and that they were hung naked on trees in front of classmates. A ''bad clown'' sexually assaulted them in a ''secret room,'' they contended.
A jury believed the children and convicted the Amiraults in 1986. Insisting they were innocent, the mother and daughter served a decade in prison before an appeal freed them. The mother, Violet Amirault -- the oldest prisoner in the state's prison system at the time -- died of cancer in 1997 at
the age of 71.
A pardons board will decide Sept. 20 whether to commute the 30-year sentence for the son, Gerald Amirault.
Abernathy described the Amirault case as a ''scam.''
Amirault's attorney, James Sultan of Boston, wasn't available for comment. Neither were two others mentioned in the will, the columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the university president.
At 10:55 a.m. that morning in July, Abernathy picked up the family handgun, a .22 Magnum. She lay herself on a sofa next to the body of her mother. She fired once.
Police forced their way into the house through the French doors. Shawnee police Lt. Conny Clay inspected the self-inflicted wound. ''It was point-blank,'' he said. ''It made a fairly large hole in her chest.''
Herald researcher Elisabeth Donovan contributed to this report.
He pushes free trade, backs Cuba embargo
By Mark Silva. msilva@herald.com Published Saturday, August 26, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, promising a "century of the Americas,'' selected this gateway city Friday to frame his vision of free trade throughout the hemisphere, loans for struggling businesses in Latin America, charitable aid and a new exchange program for students of American democracy.
Campaigning in a community offering overwhelming support for the Republican presidential nominee, Bush also reiterated support for the United States trade embargo against Cuba.
Bush, distancing himself from Republicans who have waged anti-immigrant campaigns, underscored his empathy for a growing bilingual culture in the United States, a nation of "many accents.''
His speech at Florida International University is the newest stake in his claim as a serious contender in foreign affairs, his 27-minute address delivered to an adoring crowd of 400, with Bush backed by flags of the Western Hemisphere.
"This can be the century of the Americas,'' said Bush, promising to promote "free trade from northernmost Canada to the tip of Cape Horn.
"Should I become president,'' Bush said, "I will look south not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment to my presidency . . . Those who ignore Latin America do not fully understand America itself.''
Bush asserted an American morality in the hemisphere: "Respect is not unconditional. It must be earned. We will respect those who respect the rights of their citizens.''
Some welcome Bush's spotlight on Latin American relations, and point to a lack of detail from the Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore. Others suggest that Bush offered little new, reflecting American policies in place, in some cases for decades.
"Frankly, I didn't see anything in terms of content that was significant,'' said Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at FIU, who attended. "My reaction as a Latin American is that this was just another instance of patronizing.''
Other experts were more enthusiastic.
"I see a lot of promise in it,'' said Jerry Harr, senior research associate at the Dante B. Fascell North-South Center of the University of Miami. "Here, at the gateway of the Americas, a presidential candidate has come and made an address on foreign policy for the region that is
refreshing.
"If anything,'' Harr said, "it whet the palate for the debate in the campaign.''
Bush's speech comes as national polls suggest a tightening race. In Florida, too, state Republican Party chairman Al Cárdenas concedes that Bush's apparent advantage over Gore has slipped. Cárdenas expects his next poll, after Labor Day, to show a 3-4 percentage point lead for
Bush, "a quasi-comfortable margin.''
LITTLE DIFFERENCE
There is little difference between the two candidates on Latin American issues. Gore is an outspoken supporter of free trade yet is just as adamant as Bush about maintaining an embargo against Cuba. Gore agrees with Bush's positions, an aide said Friday, and soon will deliver his own speech on "a
community of democracy for the Western Hemisphere.''
Bush, with a Reaganesque rhetorical flourish reminiscent of a president's words for the Berlin Wall, framed his Cuban policy in 12 words: "My word to you, Mr. Castro: `Let your people live in freedom.'''
Gore, campaigning in South Florida this week, said: "I've made my position abundantly clear. I don't want anything to do with Castro.''
"Bush is talking about issues that Gore has been working on for some time, and has better experience with,'' said Doug Hattaway, a Gore spokesman. "The main question is who is more capable of delivering.''
For Bush, a second-term governor, the FIU address is part of a strategy to appear more presidential. By that measure, it satisfied supporters.
"He sounded very presidential, very authoritative,'' said Manny Rojas of the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana. "It's a nice change to have somebody saying Latin America is going to make a difference.''
FIU President Modesto "Mitch'' Maidique made his own, highly public announcement that he and his entire family would vote for Bush. Maidique, who had arrived at a $2 million Republican Party fundraiser in Cocoplum the night before in his Mercedes that sported an "FIU 1'' license plate,
calls himself an example of the entrepreneurial spirit Bush promotes.
"I am, I told the governor, the American Dream,'' he said.
Bush reaffirmed his acceptance of a multilingual nation, first signaled in an address on education in Los Angeles last fall. "America has one national creed, but it has many accents,'' Bush said here Friday. "By nominating me, the party has made a choice to welcome the new America.''
"Siéntate,'' Bush gently told a standing and applauding audience at the start of his University Park campus appearance.
Striking a theme he started cultivating at his party's nominating convention in Philadelphia, Bush insisted that the Clinton-Gore administration has "squandered'' opportunities.
Since passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Bush said, the administration has missed chances to achieve broader trade. As president, he said, he would secure congressional approval for "fast-track'' powers to negotiate trade agreements with other countries, something denied
President Clinton by the Republican-run Congress.
"We were promised a Free Trade Area of the Americas, and it never happened,'' Bush said. "The promise of that moment has been squandered.''
Bush says the next U.S. president should arrange a summit with Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox in November, before the inaugurations. He left Miami on Friday for a meeting in Dallas with Fox, heading home from a White House visit.
FELLOWS PROGRAM
Bush has proposed an "American Fellows'' program, modeled after the White House Fellows, enabling young people throughout the Americas to spend a year in various government agencies. Bush, who wants to give all taxpayers a right to deduct charitable gifts from their income, says churches
and charities can "adopt'' churches in Latin America.
"We can be charitable beyond our borders,'' Bush said.
As president, Bush says, he would ask Congress to provide $100 million for "micro-loans,'' credit without collateral for small-business start-ups.
"The future of this hemisphere lies with the creation of small business,'' he said.
Gamarra, hailing the fellows program as novel, calls the micro-loans an inadequate example of supporting something already in place. Congress has funded such loans through the U.S. Agency for International Development.
"One hundred million dollars is not going to go real far,'' Gamarra said. "One hundred million dollars is a drop in the bucket.''
"It's a start,'' Harr said. "At least he went to the mat.''
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