What follows actually happened. It is not a parable, a tall tale, or fiction.
Before reading it – or following the links – it might not be a bad idea to grab a tissue or three.
. . .
During the Cold War, a boy was born. He was born in a third-world nation.
Unfortunately, he was born in a nation ruled by a corrupt tyrant. That corrupt tyrant was in turn overthrown by a Communist tyrant while he was still very young.
As a young child, he had few toys. But while very young, a relative who was living abroad sent him a toy airplane.
It was a life-changing moment for the lad. From that day onwards, his dream was to be a pilot.
. . .
The boy grew up under Communism. He was indoctrinated by his dictatorship’s educational system.
Initially, the Communist regime was good to him. It allowed him to fulfil his boyhood dream. He became an officer in his country’s air force. The Communist regime sent him to the locus of world Communism – the Soviet Union – to receive training as a combat pilot.
This good treatment, coupled with his educational indoctrination, made him an ardent Communist. Initially.
But while in the Soviet Union, the boy – now a young man – began to see the same things that others from his country had seen years before. While the Soviets were ruthless and good at creating weapons, their standard of living was abysmal. And their claims of having created “Communist utiopia, where all were equal” . . . well, those claims were obviously bullsh!t.
Institutionalized prejudice was rampant, as was inequality. He saw that further when his nation sent him to a third country to support Communist revolutionaries there.
He also heard the stories of how ruthless his regime’s leadership had been when it took over. And the young man’s views . . . began to change.
By his late 20s or early 30s, the young man had become thoroughly disillusioned. Once an ardent Communist, he now saw he’d followed a lie.
In the meantime, he’d married. His wife was a successful healthcare professional. They had two children.
He indicated to his wife how badly disillusioned he’d become. He could no longer stomach parroting the “party line” lies to his troops.
His wife – knowing full well the impact what she was about to say would have on both her and their children – nonetheless told him, “You have to leave.”
No, she wasn’t throwing him out of the house because he was disillusioned. She was telling him to defect.
So he did.
During a military training flight, he defected. He flew to a US base, and safely landed. He asked for political asylum. His request was granted.
But his family remained behind, under Communist rule.
. . .
Being a military professional, the man knew about working through channels. For over a year, he worked – with both US government agencies and private concerns, both privately and publicly – to convince the Communist regime of his former homeland to release his family.
Nothing happened. And after a year, it was fairly clear that nothing was going to happen any time soon.
So the man went back. No, he did not redefect.
He went back to get his family.
. . .
He managed to get a message to his wife through a third party, telling her where he would meet her and his children. At a later time, he also managed to get a second message to her specifying the date and time.
He obtained his private pilot’s license in the US. He secured backers – one of whom bought, for a sympathetic private concern, an aircraft. He obtained access to and permission to use that aircraft, a Cessna.
He kept his plans secret from all but a very few others. He especially did not tell anyone in the US government what he planned – lest they stop him to prevent an international incident.
He then went back to his homeland. He landed the Cessna on a busy highway in his homeland, just missing a car and a truck. Traffic stopped.
His family was there. They got in.
He left. He flew low, to evade radar.
He again returned to freedom. And this time, his wife and children were with him.
. . .
As I said above, the story is not fiction. The man who did this was Major Orestes Lorenzo-Pérez, of the Cuban Air Force. His original defection on 20 March 1991 caused great embarrassment for the US Department of Defense because he’d managed to fly a MIG-23BN from Cuba to NAS Key West completely undetected.
His second trip – on 19 December 1992 – received more publicity. And it also caused Cuba even more embarrassment than his defection. It seems that Lorenzo-Pérez made his second trip during what Cuba’s Communist dictator Fidel Castro had called Cuba’s “most intensive military exercise in its history.” Or, as Lorenzo-Pérez himself put it when asked his opinion of the Cuban military: “I went into Cuba and brought them (his family) back during their biggest military exercises . . . . And I did it in a Cessna.” (smile)
The daring rescue flight had one other collateral benefit . It raised the level of pressure on Castro enough that later additional members of the families of both Lorenzo-Pérez and his wife Victoria were allowed to emigrate.
Loronzo-Pérez is now a naturalized US citizen. His book about his flights to freedom for himself and his family is titled Wings of the Morning. It’s on my list to acquire and read.
You’ll have to ask Hollywood why the book hasn’t been made into a motion picture. But I’d guess I know at least part of the reason.
Orestes Lorenzo-Pérez is today an American citizen. The title of this article is a quotation from one of his remarks at a 21 December 1992 news conference held after the flight rescuing his family.
Bien hecho, Señor. Estoy orgulloso de llamarte mi compatriotas.
—–
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/21/us/cuban-pilot-who-defected-flies-back-for-family.html
https://people.com/archive/100-minutes-to-freedom-vol-39-no-1/
