Breakfast With Brooke

Denver Deputy Mayor Shares Immigration Experience

Editor's Note: This report originally was posted in February. The story appeared again on CBS4's airwaves on July 4.

DENVER (CBS4) - Bill Vidal is used to handling lots of responsibility.

As Denver's deputy mayor and manager of public works those responsibilities include cleaning up after blizzards, starting the largest street and bridge building program in the city's history, negotiating a $50 billion contract with Xcel Energy and managing the construction of the Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum.

But none of those challenges are anything compared to the challenges he faced in childhood as an immigrant from Cuba.

Now he's sharing those lessons in the book "Boxing For Cuba." It starts with Fidel Castro's rise to power and the fear many parents held for their children.

Many of those children were sent to the United States under an immigration program named Operation Peter Pan.

Vidal and his two brothers became three of the Peter Pan children in 1961. Vidal was just 10.

"There were 14,000 children who were sent unaccompanied, there were not enough foster homes so they sent them to orphanages around the country, which was quite distressing to parents I think once they found that out," Vidal said.

Vidal and his brothers ended up in Pueblo. "You arrived in a very strange place. You didn't speak the language."

"Then arriving at that door and seeing we were at an orphanage was totally devastating.

"The word orphanage was close enough to the Spanish word for orphanage that we knew that our fate was. We were going to be in an orphanage just like the one that was across the street from our house in Cuba."

"The kids who were in it ran it like 'Lord of the Flies' with this violent pecking order where the most violent kids rule so you were constantly caught between these two different worlds."

The title Boxing For Cuba is partly derived from a crushing boxing match between Vidal's brother and a bully and is partly a metaphor for the Cuban struggle.

After the boys spent four years in the orphanage, the Vidal family reunited and settled in Littleton.

"Although I thought we had gone through sheer hell in the orphanage and survived it, the real problems with our immigration story started after we reunited," Vidal said.

The family faced discrimination, poverty and uncertainty. Vidal hopes sharing those experiences can add another voice to the current debate over immigration.

"The obstacles of immigration are so difficult they can crush the body and soul, as you read in my book. My hope is people find some compassion in that."

All five Vidals enrolled at the University of Colorado-Denver and the family rebuilt its life in a new world. It was a rebuilding process for which Vidal knows his parents paid the highest price.

"The sacrifice that they made was the ultimate act of love that transcends their own faults."

This "Peter Pan" child did grow up and grew into a respected public servant who gave back to his community. Vidal has worked as a registered engineer in the public sector for 30 years, making him an important part of the fabric of Colorado.

But it was a trip to Cuba which inspired Vidal. It took him five years to put his experiences on paper. And he hopes one day making that trip will be easier and the United States will normalize relations with Cuba.

Until then, he'll do his best to make sure Denver's roads and streets are as normal as possible, no matter the weather conditions.

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