LI church takes song to Havana
by Martin C. Evans, Staff Writer. Newsday.com - 05/28/2000 - Sunday - Page A 8
Havana - Beryl Thompson carried a silvery cannister with an ivory-colored top to a secluded stretch of Cuban sand on the outskirts of this city. Then she bent toward the waves and cast the flask of her husband's ashes adrift.
It had been Victor Perry's dream that he and his wife would return from Uniondale to their native Cuba together. With tears wetting her cheeks, she watched as the tiny urn disappeared toward the horizon.
"Victor, you're at home now," she said. "I've brought you back. Go, Victor. Go in peace, rest in peace. Goodbye." Thompson, 71, was one of 50 people from Roosevelt's Memorial Presbyterian Church who traveled to Cuba last week for a choir festival. About 30 of them came to
Havana to sing. Others came for medical treatments unavailable at home, where regulation is stricter. Still others came merely to see the country that the United States has tried so hard to isolate since the Communist revolution 41 years ago.
But for Thompson and Cynthia Diaz-Wilson, the journey was a trip home of sorts.
Thompson came to say goodbye to a husband; Diaz-Wilson to meet an uncle she had long revered but had never seen.
"It was very emotional for me," said Diaz-Wilson, 44, an assistant provost at Hofstra University. "What struck me the most was the similarities between him and my father. He has the same voice and uses many of the same expressions.
They both love to read, love music and can't dance." While most of the members of the group busied themselves with visiting museums, hunting for curios at a busy flea market or strolling along Havana's famous harborfront, the Malecon, Thompson and Diaz- Wilson got closer glimpses into the
lives of ordinary Cubans.
For Diaz-Wilson, the trip afforded her a chance to meet Geraldo Diaz for the first time. Diaz, her father's brother, was born in Cuba, grew up in Spanish Harlem and returned to Cuba in 1957, never having met his first-born niece.
Diaz-Wilson visited her uncle's home in a crumbling barrio, a 10-minute walk from Havana's Central Park that took her past posters demanding the return to Cuba of Elian Gonzalez.
A treasured vinyl played on Diaz' Soviet-made phonograph, sending the 1950s voice of Louis Armstrong from his balcony window and into the tumult of the streets below.
Diaz, a retired lighting technician at Havana's Grand Theater, shares an airy four-bedroom flat with his wife, two sons, their wives and a new grandchild. A stairway that serves his upstairs neighbor cuts comically through his living room on its way to the street.
Diaz said the country's lack of building supplies has left him unable to repair the roof, so water drips from the 20-foot ceiling, menacing his beloved books whenever it rains.
And the government-issued ration coupons, which entitle him to about six pounds of rice, a little meat, black beans, tobacco, sugar and other staples, never last the entire month. He said many families get by on help from relatives abroad or by bartering among themselves.
"Everyone survives here because they invent," he said.
But he told Diaz-Wilson he is happy with his life in Havana and has no desire to return to the United States.
"I fell in love with the revolution," said Diaz, who said he had become disillusioned with America when, while in the Army, he was forced to serve in race-segregated units. "Here, everybody is in the same boat.
"Do I have any regrets?" he said of his decision to return to Cuba 43 years ago. "I'd like to see Broadway, Spanish Harlem, the Bronx, the barrio. I've been offered the opportunity. But I've told people I won't go. If I did, I might not return." Diaz-Wilson, a Bronx native
whose father was Cuban and mother was Puerto Rican, said the trip awakened in her an appreciation of her Cuban heritage that had been mostly eclipsed by her Puerto Rican background.
She said her uncle's daily routine, one that blended daily prayer, reading, close family involvement and jovial banter, reminded her of values held by her father, who died 10 years ago.
"One of the things I came away with was, for the first time in my life, I felt so tied to Cuba and the Cuban people," she said. "Growing up, I didn't have the sense that I was Cuban. But I had that sense very much in Cuba. I found them to be rich in spirit, thought, faith and
intellect, all these things." Thompson, who was born in Cuba but moved to Jamaica, West Indies, when she was in grade school, said she felt a connection with the island's Caribbean rhythms. The pace is slower. People stop to say good morning. And at night, live salsa explodes from the
ubiquitous nightclubs.
"I had fond memories of growing up in Cuba," she said. "My mother was always singing Spanish songs." Her mother had been a domestic worker there, before returning to her Jamaica homeland. Her husband's father had been a mechanic, a passion her husband took with him when he
settled in Jamaica in his mid-teens and took a job operating a locomotive on a sugar plantation. He moved to New York City in 1960.
"My husband was thinking of going back [to Cuba] to stay," she said. "I guess he liked it because he remembered growing up there, how he'd learned the Cuban songs and how his mother used to dress him up in knickers. And he was always talking about Cuban cooking. I think he missed
it." She still has family ties there. Three of her nephews live near Havana. One is a medical student. Another is a mechanical engineer. A third, Leslie Thompson, a pediatrician, brought his sons to see the choral performances.
He invited Thompson to his home.
"I didn't sleep all night because we had such fun," she said. "They had me cracking up laughing with tears streaming down from my eyes." She said, "I think it's about time they lift this embargo. It's hurting a lot of people, not only my relatives. Things are so
expensive, and the government can't get things they need." But she said her relatives are happy, in spite of the economic sanctions.
"I tell you the truth, when I landed in Cuba there was a connection, a bonding," Thompson said. "I had the feeling that this was where I belong."
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