Herland Jose Tabares

Herland J. Tabares, 92, passed away on the evening of Friday, February 9, 2018, at Plantation Key Nursing Center in the Florida Keys where he had been residing. Herland Jose Tabares was born on April 30, 1925 in Banes, Cuba, a son of the late Francisco and Maria Ballesteros Tabares. He is preceded in death by his wife of 59 years, Dr. Agnes Mildred Tabares, his brothers, Ricardo Tabares of New Castle and Suitberto Tabares of Miami Florida. Mr. Tabares has a daughter, Maria Elena Tabares, who lives in Marathon, Florida and a sister, Dora Fernandez, who lives in North Miami, Florida. He has many nieces, nephews, great-nieces and nephews. He graduated from high school at La Progresiva Presbyterian School in Cardenas, Cuba. He obtained his Master’s Degree from the National Institute of Physical Education. His specialization was Gymnastics for both men and women. Mr. Tabares became a Professor of Physical Education at La Progresiva Presbyterian College in Cardenas, Cuba for 15 years. He was the Gymnastics coach for the men and took them to the National Competitions in 1955, 1956 and 1957. They won 3 trophies, 18 Gold medals and 36 Silver medals in Optional events. He opened his own gymnasiums one for men and one for women where they would obtain training in Judo, Boxing, Gymnastics and Calisthenics. For several years, he ran a Summer Camp at the famous Varadero Beach in Cuba. Mr. Tabares, his wife Agnes and his daughter Maria escaped Cuba in 1961 fleeing Castro’s communism. They lost everything and came to the United States. Mr. Tabares was a rebel against Castro and had to hide for 7 months prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion. Mr. Tabares came to New Castle, Indiana with his family in 1962 and worked at the Westminster Community Center. He worked with more than 200 boys and girls in a combination of sports and social work. In 1964, he became a grade school physical education teacher and taught at all of the elementary schools in New Castle, Indiana. He also taught Adult Basic Education for several years. Mr. Tabares taught in the New Castle Community School Corporation for 27 years. In the summer of 1987 Mr. Tabares worked as a volunteer translator at the Pan-American Games donating more than 120 hours. In September of 1999 Mr. Tabares won THE AMERICANISM MEDAL from the Daughters of the American Revolution for an adult Naturalized citizen who has displayed the qualifications of Trustworthiness, Service, Leadership and Patriotism. After retirement, Mr. Tabares began painting and in 1996 became a member of the American Gourd Society, changing his medium from canvas to gourds. He attended many Gourd Shows earning hundreds of ribbons for his work. He painted a picture of President Ronald Reagan’s horse and mailed it to the White House. Mr. Tabares was a long-time member of First Presbyterian Church in New Castle and also the Presbyterian Church in Muncie, Indiana. His hobby for many years, besides his painting, was to garden. He grew hundreds of varieties of flowers and also had a vegetable garden. He also loved music. He played his harmonicas (29 of them) wherever he went. He belonged to the Brown County Dulcimer Society. The most important event to him from all of his years in the United States was the ceremony in Indianapolis, Indiana on May 22, 1968 where he became a citizen of this great nation. He always worked very hard to honor the United States flag that received him and made him feel like one of its native children. We will all miss his enthusiasm and patriotism. Funeral services will be held at 12:00 pm Saturday, February 17, 2018 at Sproles Family Funeral Home with Rev. Richard Halladay officiating. Burial will follow in South Mound Cemetery West Lawn Addition. Friends may call from 10:00 am until the noon service Saturday at the funeral home. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to your local Alzheimer's Association. You may send the family a personal condolence at www.sprolesfamilycares.com. The Sproles family and staff are honored to serve the family of Herland J. Tabares. The article below was written by Jim Garringer and published in the Muncie Star Press on July 4, 2001 entitled: Flight from Cuba NEW CASTLE - Herland and Agnes Tabares will join thousands of fellow citizens across East Central Indiana today in celebrating 225 years of American freedom. But their celebration is tempered by a frustrated dream of freedom for their Cuban homeland. It is a dream that nearly cost them their lives 40 years ago. That dream died on the day of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, the day Fidel Castro's militia came looking for Herland. It was 7:30 a.m. April 17, 1961, and Herland and Agnes were preparing to leave their comfortable home in the port town of Cardenas, Cuba, for their respective jobs at La Progresiva Junior College. Herland was a gymnastics instructor, and Agnes was a professor in the language department. But the Tabareses were more than educators; they were contra-revolutionaries. In Herland's gymnasium, stashed in bags of rice that had been used for tumbling mats, were enough guns, food and medicine to equip a small army. Herland was a "cell" leader. Throughout the Cuban countryside, citizens hoping for the ouster of Fidel Castro had banded into cell groups of three or four in preparation for a soon-to-come invasion by their expatriated countrymen who had fled to Florida upon Castro's rise to power 2 years before. Herland's ragtag cell included a Spanish priest and a demolitions expert who had blown off an arm in an accident. Herland and Agnes had both had encounters with Castro before. In his role as dean of students at La Progresiva, Herland had expelled Castro's nephew, Waldo Balart,from the school after an incident in which Balart had run naked from the men's dormitory. Castro himself came to pick up Balart. Agnes had been in graduate school with Castro at the University of Havana, and while she had never known Castro personally, she heard plenty about him from disgruntled co-eds who did. "He was a troublemaker," she said. They had been living on pins and needles for 2 years, worried that a member of the Neighborhood Vigilance Committee (government-sponsored neighborhood spies) might report them. Many throughout the country had been arrested. The timing seemed right to Herland, who along with his compatriots, was buoyed by the promise of U.S. air cover to support an assault by Cuban expatriates. Along with the organization of the cell groups and procurement of weapons, food and medicine, strategic maps of Cuba's infrastructure had been secured and forwarded to the American military. All that remained was to wait. Herland and Agnes had their 18-month-old daughter, Maria, stay with Agnes's parents near Havana, just in case something went wrong. At 7:30 that morning, someone knocked on the door. Herland answered and was greeted by a member of another cell. "The invasion came," the man said breathlessly, and the American air support had not materialized. "The militia is looking for you; you've got to leave town immediately." Much later, the Tabareses would find out that the American planes had been ordered back to their carriers without firing a shot, and that a member of the Vigilance Committee had recognized the one-armed man as he left the Tabares house one day and reported Herland to the authorities. "It was such a confusing moment," Agnes said. "We didn't have time for anything. I ran inside, grabbed our diplomas [proof they had been educated would be useful if they made it to another country], threw them in the car, and told Herland, 'Now go!' " Agnes decided to stay behind. If the militia captured one of them, perhaps the other could get to Maria somehow and escape the country. By 7:45, Herland had stuffed 250 pesos into one pocket and a .38-caliber revolver in the other. Then, not knowing when he would see Agnes or Maria again, he jumped into one of their cars and sped off. Agnes's head was swimming. It seemed at that moment, the only thing she could do was go on to La Progresiva, where two groups of students were awaiting midterm exams in her classrooms. If she failed to show up, she decided, it would look suspicious. Upon arrival just after 8 a.m., she was called to the lobby. Waiting there were the government-appointed mayor and five soldiers with machine guns. "We are looking for your husband," the mayor said. "I haven't seen him in 10 days," Agnes stammered. "Some people told me that he got on a small boat to Florida." "You are a liar! I saw him in town last night," the mayor snapped. "Come with us." It was then that the school's vice president stepped from a growing crowd of students and administrators. "You can't take her with you," he insisted. "She's got two classes of students waiting for her to give them a test." Astonishingly, that was all it took to dispatch the soldiers. "We will be back!" the mayor snarled as they turned to leave. Agnes trudged up the stairs to her classroom. She mechanically gave the tests,gathered the papers and went home. Meanwhile, Herland was trying to reach the home of his Aunt Mercedes in Havana. He was taking a chance going there. She and her family were Communists. "[Aunt Mercedes] was pro-Castro," Herland said, "but she was also pro-Herland." The road from Cardenas to Havana, normally a 2-hour drive, was jammed with tanks and soldiers, all headed for Cardenas to stave off a possible invasion there. Herland was never stopped or asked for identification. Confusion reigned, and the army was looking for enemy soldiers. The roads did close later that day, but not before Herland made it safely to his aunt's house. When Agnes got home, she found a ransacked house and a hysterical housekeeper and cook. Nine militia groups had searched the house while Agnes had been at La Progresiva, taking valuables, breaking china and overturning furniture. As yet another band arrived, Agnes recognized a young soldier named Mario, a former student. The anger and darkness in Mario's eyes convinced Agnes for the first time that she was about to die. "God, if this is the last time I can speak to these students, give me the right words," Agnes prayed silently. After several moments of uneasy silence, Mario spoke up. "Hey guys, let her go." After the roads reopened, she reached her parents' home in Havana. She was stopped several times on the way but was never detained. The Waiting Game From late April until mid-June, Agnes made the trek from her parents' home to the Havana airport every other day, trying to buy tickets for her and Maria to get out of the country - anywhere out of the country. But it seemed that everyone else was trying to get out, too. Besides, it was one thing to buy the tickets, but another to get on one of the outbound planes. Travelers had to clear the government's G-2 list - a list of names of people airport officials were to apprehend. She would worry about that later. On June 17, she bought two tickets to Kingston, Jamaica, for her and Maria. Her flight was set to depart on July 17 – 3 months to the day after the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. Several miles away, Herland had his own set of problems. Aunt Mercedes agreed to hide him, but she was enraged by his role in the invasion attempt. "You are a worm!" she shouted, over and over. But when family members were in the house, she dutifully hid Herland under beds and in closets. His 17-day stay at Mercedes's home ended abruptly after a friend saw him in the back alley. "Herland!" he gasped. "What are you doing here? They are looking for you everywhere!" Mercedes's home was actually one of 10 places he hid from April to July. A couple of weeks before Agnes's flight was to leave, a young man appeared at her parents' home asking for her. He said he was Herland's cousin and that Herland had sent him. Agnes had never seen him before and didn't know how to respond. What if this person was from the government? But what if he was telling the truth? He could represent her last hope of seeing Herland again. She tested the young man with questions about the family. Once satisfied that he really had been sent by her husband, she told him to go back to Herland with a message to be at the Havana airport early July 17. The final 2 weeks before July 17 were spent much the same way as the previous 10, avoiding the militia and trying not to act suspicious. When Herland and Agnes finally saw each other, their reunion was very nonchalant, so as not to arouse the suspicion of the guards and soldiers swarming the airport. But they hadn't counted on Maria's reaction upon seeing Herland for the first time in months. She squealed, "Daddy!" and ran, first to him, then back to Agnes. It seemed as if the entire airport was watching the toddler as her parents tried in vain to pick her up and calm her down. Suddenly, Maria ran headlong into the legs of a machine gun-toting soldier. There was a moment of stunned silence before the soldier smiled, picked Maria up and handed her to Herland. Then, the Tabareses caught another break: Inexplicably, neither Herland nor Agnes was on the G-2 list. One final hurdle remained. The two tickets Agnes had bought would have to get the three of them onto the plane. At the counter, Herland, Agnes and Maria presented their tickets to the ticket agent. "You only have two tickets," he said curtly. "You are going to have to leave your daughter here." When she heard that, Agnes, who had previously maintained a relative state of calm, erupted. "Are you crazy?" she shouted. "Do you think I'm going to leave my daughter here?" At that point, a female agent stepped in and scolded Agnes for the way she had spoken to an "important person" and told her to calm down. As Herland sat in one corner of the terminal with Maria, Agnes retreated to another corner and prayed. Then she went back to the ticket agent and begged. "Please, let us take her," Agnes cried. "She can sit on our laps; she won't be any problem." After enduring a few minutes of this, the agent angrily said, "All right! You can take her. But it will cost you 100 American dollars." Agnes's heart sank. Before Castro's rise to power, American and Cuban currency intermingled in the Cuban economy. But after the revolution, it became a crime to even possess American money. On a telephone from the airport, Agnes called one friend after another. Finally, she reached the president of the seminary at La Progresiva. He was able to collect the $100, make the trip from Cardenas to Havana, and then spirit the money to them in an envelope just 2 hours before the plane's departure. As they boarded the plane, several soldiers moved quickly toward them. Rather than apprehending the Tabareses, the soldiers intercepted the man in front of them in line, grabbing him by the arm and whisking him into an office. After the passengers were seated on the plane, the soldiers boarded it and took the man's traveling companion off as well. "We were so horrified, we didn't dare even look up," said Agnes. As their homeland dropped away beneath them, it all seemed surreal. Had they actually escaped Castro and Cuba? What was waiting when they landed in Jamaica? They would deal with that the way they had dealt with everything else: one crisis at a time. Couple make new life in U.S. after fleeing Cuba It was like waking up from a long nightmare. That is how Agnes Tabares described the sensation as the plane that carried her, husband Herland and their daughter, Maria, to freedom began its descent into Kingston, Jamaica. It had never registered with Agnes until that moment. They were landing in a foreign country as penniless refugees. They couldn’t even hail a taxi at the airport. Herland had had only moments to escape after he was warned that the militia was looking for him, and Agnes had been able to collect little from their ransacked home in Cardenas before she, too, had to flee as Castro’s militia became more threatening. In the months of hiding that followed they thought only of escape. As Agnes and Herland discussed what they were going to do, a man seated nearby on the plane offered his help. To this day, the Tabareses know him only as Rev. Milk, an English pastor who had been sent to help people escaping from Cuba. Thirty-five families on that plane were taken to the Lion’s Club in Kingston in cars that Milk had arranged. For 19 days, the Tabareses stayed at the Lion’s Club. When Maria developed a high fever as a result of the drinking water, a local physician donated his services and the medicine that made her well. With money from Milk and a new-found hope, the Tabareses worked with the American embassy to get permission to enter the United States as residents rather than refugees. That would allow them to apply for U.S. citizenship, which they would obtain by 1968. They also were able to get financial help from the National Mission of the Presbyterian Church in New York City, American sponsors of La Progresiva, the Cuban school at which Herland and Agnes had taught before running for their lives. For 7 months before the Bay of Pigs invasion, Herland had had his salary held in a U.S. bank account, just in case the invasion failed and the family needed to flee Cuba. From Kingston, the Tabareses flew to Miami, where they spent 12 days in a refugee center before going to the home of relatives. During the next 11 months, they bounced from Miami to State College, PA, to New York City, to New Jersey in search of decent jobs and housing. In May, contacts at the Presbyterian Church’s national headquarters called Herland with a job offer at Westminster House, a church-related social service agency in New Castle that was looking for an assistant director. Until then, the Tabareses hadn’t known there was a New Castle. “We tried to find New Castle on the map, and it was just a little dot,” Agnes said with a laugh. But once they visited New Castle and the Westminster House, the Tabareses felt certain they had found a home. Herland’s job involved working with troubled teenagers who in some cases were a step away from prison, but he didn’t mind. “I am not afraid,” he said. “I have dealt with Castro.” Rexford Wright, then superintendent of the New Castle Community Schools, gave Agnes the opportunity to teach, creating a position in the eighth grade to teach “exploratory language,” an introductory class for high school foreign languages. Within a year, she became a full-time Spanish teacher at Chrysler High School. It was a position she held for the next 24 years, the last 14 as head of the foreign language department. In 1986, hip replacement surgery led to her retirement, but not before Maria would spend 3 years in her classroom. “She told me that she studied more for me than any other teacher,” Agnes said, beaming. Herland was able to return to his first teaching love – gymnastics. He taught gymnastics in New Castle’s elementary schools and though he retired in 1991, he continued, on a part-time basis, until 1995. On August 24 [2001] Herland and Agnes will celebrate their 50th anniversary. It is one that, during those agonizing days 40 years ago, neither thought would come. Today, the Tabareses live like many retired couple. Blessed with reasonably good health and warm, gracious spirits, the two stay active in their church, Westminster Presbyterian of Muncie, and generally lead the sort of life that many Americans look forward to. Herland became a painter upon his retirement and has even sold some of his works through an internet site that Maria set up. Agnes travels throughout central Indiana telling of their escape and hardships. Maria, now 41, is a consultant in Greenwood. Seven years after the Tabareses came to the United States, a family member mailed them a couple of photo albums. Besides that, and the language of their homeland which they still speak to each other, Herland and Agnes have little else to show that they ever lived in Cuba. Herland and Agnes at one time greeted each New Year’s Day with the hope that the next New Year, Castro would be overthrown and they would be able to return to their homeland for, if for nothing else, a visit. They don’t do that anymore. Agnes is content to live out her days with the good memories of the Cuba she grew up in. But those memories are still tempered by the nightmare of those final days before they left. I was so scared,” she said. “I had gone through so much. The last thing you can stand in life is to feel you are persecuted. If a person did not believe in the system … if they were not a friend of the revolution, they would be killed.” While many might attribute the Tabareses’ escape from Cuba to good fortune, Agnes and Herland say the hand of God guided them to safety and freedom. The Tabareses’ hope of seeing their homeland again is flickering as they celebrate their 33rd Independence Day as United State citizens. “If Cuba would change, I would like to go back to help,” Herland said. “But I want to die here.” Agnes agreed: “New Castle is our home.”

Tributes

Herland Jose Tabares

April 30, 1925 - February 9, 2018