Ramon Grau, organizer of Cuban kids' flight, dies

By CAROL ROSENBERG
Herald Staff Writer

Ramon Grau Alsina, a Pied Piper of the 1960s Pedro Pan movement who was jailed in Cuba for more than two decades for plotting to kill Fidel Castro, died Tuesday at Miami's Mercy Hospital.

Days short of his 76th birthday, he died of complications from pneumonia.

Grau, known to friends as ``Mongo,'' was the nephew and then the adopted son and personal secretary of Ramon Grau San Martin, who was elected president of Cuba in 1944.

Several years after Cuba's communist revolution, Ramon Grau and his older sister Polita, who lives in Miami, used their uncle's Havana home to secretly distribute thousands of official U.S. visa waivers to Cuban parents -- signed by Roman Catholic Monsignor Bryan Walsh. The visas were the transit passes that permitted unaccompanied children to flee communism to South Florida in the underground movement called Operation Pedro Pan, Spanish for Peter Pan.

Grau's role in the underground activity both haunted him and honored him for years.

Grau and his sister were sentenced to 30 years in jail both for plotting with the CIA to assassinate Castro and for their role in the Pedro Pan movement, Walsh said Tuesday, after his old friend died. Polita Grau was released in 1978; her brother came to Miami eight years later.

Before Grau's release, Walsh said, he was taken before a Cuban intelligence officer in Havana, who told him, ``Grau, we should have shot you years ago.''

Grau asked: ``Why? For trying to kill Fidel Castro?''

``No, for stealing our children,'' the officer responded.

``Grau was very proud of that accolade,'' Walsh said, remembering him fondly.

``Parents were afraid of communist indoctrination and they wanted to send their children to a safe haven until the situation was stabilized,'' recalled Elly Chovel, who was sent here on the program. Grau, she said ``was recruited by Penny Powers, a British nurse, who was head of Pedro Pan in Cuba. After the Bay of Pigs invasion she asked if he could help and then he and his sister got involved.''

Walsh described the Graus work as ``clandestine,'' saying they distributed the U.S. visa waivers to parents and helped them assemble the documents and other materials the children would need once they reached the United States.

He was arrested in January 1965 and released in September 1986, having survived what his daughter Pilar of Pompano Beach described as ``the Black Prince,'' a black-painted subterranean prison cell that was too small to stand up in -- and caused countless Cuban prisoners to go mad or die.

Grau flew into Miami on Sept. 15, 1986, on a chartered jet filled with 111 Cubans -- 65 of them longtime political prisoners -- and emerged as an elder statesman of exile and human rights politics, in part, his daughter said, because he spoke excellent English.

He visited Ronald Reagan's White House soon after his release for a ceremony marking Human Rights Day. He later attended a human rights conference in Geneva.

Born in Havana on Nov. 7, 1922, Grau was one of four children of Paulina Grau and Francisco Grau San Martin and adopted by Ramon Grau San Martin after his father's death.

Grau spent his childhood in Miami Beach, because his family opposed the regime of Cuban President Gerardo Machado. He attended St. Patrick's High School, and later returned to Cuba. In 1948, he was elected to Cuba's House of Representatives in Oriente province.

He married Avelina Castro in 1946 and had two sons, Pedro and Ramon, and a daughter, who left for South Florida in 1960. Grau and his sister stayed behind to care for their elderly uncle and engage in counterrevolutionary activities.

Visitation will be held today from 8 a.m. until midnight at the Rivero Funeral Home, 8200 SW 40th St.

A Mass will be held Thursday at 1:30 p.m. at St. Dominic's Catholic Church, 5909 NW 7th St. Monsignor Walsh will officiate, along with other Pedro Pan priests.

No cemetery service will be held.

He is survived by his sister, ex-wife Avelina in Pompano Beach and three children, all of Pompano Beach.

The family requests that, rather than send flowers, mourners make donations to Operation Pedro Pan Group Inc., 161 Madeira Ave., Suite 61, Coral Gables, FL 33134. The charitable organization helps needy children in Miami.