A little more of the story.
These scribblings are my memory of the facts and events, and sometimes might not be totally accurate. I have tried to tell it all as best I can.
It is all my true memory, as I recall it. I don’t have Susana here to proof and correct me if I perhaps have the details of her education or other things for which I wasn’t present, slightly off, but essentially what’s important is all there.
This part of the story is about two parts. First, there is a little about her high school, college and work through our early days. Then I write about us and how our journey together began.
When we met, Susana was working at the Miami Herald. She was a columnist, writing a column called ‘Working wisdom”. I was studying for my Masters degree in mental health counseling, administering neuropsych exams, and teaching T’ai Chi. I came to the Herald to teach the employees T’ai Chi. Susana was my student.
In 2008 she left the Herald and went to work at what was then the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC), and later became Americans For Immigrant Justice, where she was the Policy Director until 2013. She then went to work in the office of the president of Miami Dade Community College, which was and is the largest community college in the country, until about 2015.
During all the time I knew her, she also volunteered and administered interviews for The Harvard Admissions program, and also did interviews for the Silver Knight Awards (Scholarship) program.
A small sample of some of the awards she received are, the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA)’s Opinion Award (1998), the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center’s Building Bridges Award (1999) at their first annual awards dinner, where she was one of the three Honorees, and the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children’s ‘Voices of Courage’ Award (2003).
In 1992, after Hurricane Andrew, She and her team won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the devastation and tragedy in South Dade County from the storm.
She has, over the years, written much that has helped in many ways to further the causes dear to her heart. Some examples of this long list include her many columns and editorials from her years at the Miami Herald, chapters in the books ‘Insights on Leadership’ (1998) and ‘What is True Wealth and How Do We Create It?’ (2004).
Also included here are some of her many documents written to further the cause of immigrants, such as ‘Dying for Decent Care -Bad Medicine in Immigration Custody’ (2009), ‘Unleash the Dream - End the Colossal Waste of Young Immigrant Talent’ (2010), ‘After the Earthquake - Haitian Children Seeking Safety in the U. S.’ (2011), and ‘Broward Transitional Center - A ‘Model’ for Civil Detention’ (About the needless detention of Asylum Seekers and other noncriminal detainees) (2013).
The Trail of Dreams:
In 2010, between January and May, four young Dreamers (undocumented immigrants and students), walked from Miami to Washington DC., to support their cause. Susana provided support and we flew up to DC and helped set up a press event for them at the National Press Club. In the years that followed we attended the weddings of three of them!
We also traveled and attended several rallies for Farm workers and other unjustly treated groups.
Chet Atkins was a guitar player, engineer and music producer that some people called the ‘Man with a thousand fingers’. When someone commented about his modesty, he replied “I’ve got a lot to be modest about.” As the story goes, he was playing with some friends in a local bar, and a drunk came up and said to him, “Hey, you’re pretty good. You’re no Chet Atkins, but you’re pretty good.”
Susana was like that. She wasted no effort on self promotion or advancement. These weren’t her concern. She always put everything she had into fighting the Good fight and making the world a better place.
She graduated from Harvard in 1979 with Honors, and from Harvard Business School in 1983.
At Miami High one of her best friends was the Valedictorian. She graduated third in her class. When some teachers there gave her a hard time (She was often smarter than them), she filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to find out about their blackballing her from the National Honor Society.
Her high school English teacher, Ellen Kempler, (Also a Harvard grad), who won the ‘Teacher of the Year Award’ a few years ago, and was a good friend since those days, had her kids write a ‘letter to the Editor’ of the Miami Herald. Later Susana wound up on that Editorial board for many years. She started out on the business side of the paper, and one day Dave Lawrence, the publisher, asked her if she would like to write. The rest is History.
When I met Susana in the later 1990’s, she was a writer at the Herald. She wrote a column called Working Wisdom, where she stood up for the working people. I was her T’ai Chi Instructor at the Herald. It was my second job. I was doing Neuropsych testing, and working on my Masters Degree in Mental Health Counseling. She would invite me over for lunch after my Saturday T’ai Chi classes at the Coral Gables Congregational Church.
As dense as I was, after a while, I got the idea she might like me. As the story goes, I chased her and I chased her and she caught me.
I’ve been in love with her ever since.
Once she told me that the books on my shelf, and the fact that I had read them, impressed her. Also, that although I sometimes appeared not to be listening to her, sometimes much later I would remind her of things she had said that had impressed me, that she thought I hadn’t heard. Also, the physical part was great.
We were married in the last century, in December of 1999, by Barrett Eagle-Bear, an Elder and Holy woman and Pipe carrier of the Lakota Nation. We did a Sweat Lodge Ceremony a few days before our wedding. We were married at the Sheridan Hotel at the mouth of the Miami River, near the Indian circle ruins that had recently been discovered there.
That day the weather was calm, then a big storm rose and blew through around the time of the Ceremony. Then it was calm again. When the vows were exchanged, I said “I do.”, and when it was Susana’s turn, she said “Of Course!”
It was a Good Match!
Blessings to all,
Daniel
