1^st Christmas Letter - Our Year 2001

Lolita & Rodolfo Stusser

(We have taken this pretty tradition of the CL from our cousin Ulises and Jane Giberga from NY)

We went to Cardenas to our daughter Vera’s house and celebrated the eve of the year 2001 with her, her husband Patricio and our loved grandson Jose Javier. It was a very special family party, the beginning of a new millennium and the last year that they celebrate the eve of a new year in Cuba.

Vera had won the International Diversity Visa of the United States, which allowed her to go to live to the States with her family. My godmother Mercy (a very real godmother) from Tampa helped Vera to obtain the immigration papers with the State Department, sending her an express deliver. Without her kindness, Vera would have lost the opportunity of going there. She had the interview in the US Interest Section at May 17, and the official papers sent by the snail mail arrived to Cuba at the end of the month.

Our daughter Vivian continued alone in Caracas, Venezuela, working very hard, but not as psychologist. She discovered that is good writing stories. She is working as editor in a bulletin, teaching, and in university projects.

The first five and last four months of the year Rodolfo continued giving a welcome talk to the American groups of doctors, nurses, administrators, scientists of the People to People Ambassadors Program, and I also attended two group of engineers. With most of them we had dinner and talked a lot either in the Melia Habana Hotel, in a paladar (home restaurant) or in the Havana Club (before the Havana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club).

This has been a great experience for us, because independently of having the opportunity to meet many good people (about 700), to make very wonderful friends, and to go to places that we can never go, we feel that we are doing a great social work to joint the two countries, a very long and hard work.

On May, Rodolfo was found in the web by his US classmate Ignacio Emilio Fiterre, and through him he could contact also his classmates Ismael de Cárdenas & Alex Clemente, from our Cuban-American Cima School at Havana.

I spent all the year without working because in my work center (CANEC Consultancy) they say that Cuba “doesn’t have targets for Marketing Research or Marketing”, specialty that I studied in the 1990s by my own initiative. They also hasn't work for me as Architect. But that, in a certain way this was good, because, then I could assist Rodolfo with this non-official work with PtPAP.

Rodolfo was invited to go and exchange in June by Vicki George, Robert Kriel & John Vener to Milwaukee-Minneapolis/Saint Paul-Rochester, but our government didn’t give him the authorization to go. We celebrate my 58^th birthday on June with our family in Cardenas. This month helped by Bob Milligan, Rodolfo was accepted as 1st Cuban international member of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

I applied again in July for a Visa at the US Interest Section to go to visit my cousins & sister Gloria in USA, and they denied it for the second time, because they thought that I was going to stay there. This is a great opportunity that I have, invited by my cousin Ruth Hargis. I will see if I could have an opportunity to ask for help to Mary J. Eisenhower, Executive Officer of PtPI on next January 6, as René Miller suggested us.

Vera and family went to Hollywood, Fl in August 24^th, and they have received a great support from her father in law and my cousin Purita Alvarado and family in Fl. At Sept 11, I was in Varadero Beach with a group of Engineers of PtP, and in that place after lunch we knew the tragedy. Rodolfo wrote an article for the BMJ about this.

Rodolfo was invited to go to Forum 5 by Louis Currat from the GFHR Found. to Geneva in October, and for that destiny they let him go. He went to push forward his last two projects of his Integration Science Program. For this, he received an extraordinary support from Cindy Tryniszewski and many friends of the PtPAP.

He was invited in Nov. by Margee Rogers & Verle Headings to exchange in New York-Washington, DC, and his superior didn’t let him go again, and by Haile Debas to an exchange in San Francisco, Ca and, again a no.

We had the privilege to have a merry Holy Night & Christmas Day with my mother & aunt in law Fifí, & Delia, brother in law “Dickito” and family. Here, most of the people can’t do this. Thanks to God, we could, so we gave him thanks in the last mass. Today, Dec 27 we celebrate Rodolfo’s birthday (56).

As you can see, if you analyze this new year of the century & millenium with the optic of a normal person in the world, it has been a normal or little bad year, but analyzing it with the optic of a Cuban, it has been our best year in the last 42 ones. So we are happy and hoping to have many more years like this and even much better.