By Tony Gallucci

What is the connection between Fidel Castro and the Hill Country Youth Ranch? Answer: Cuba’s loss is our gain!

The path to new Director of the Cailloux Charter School for Dr. Maria de la Cruz started with an escape from Cuba in the company of nuns shortly after the communist takeover. The lessons learned in dealing with that childhood trauma are what brought de la Cruz to the schoolrooms of the Hill Country Youth Ranch.

It was Castro, of course, whose junta threw the clergy out of Cuba. The new regime allowed those under 12 and older than 60 to leave voluntarily, thinking that the young and the infirm had little to contribute to a worker society.

What they did not count on was, in splitting families and sending some family members to safe havens in the U.S., the separation itself would forge bonds for many Cubans to the free world.

Just such a scenario developed when Maria’s father risked his life to escort nuns to the U.S. embassy within the 24 hour window they were allowed to safely leave. In thanks, the church offered to take his young daughters, Maria, then 10, and Carmen, eight, to safety and to house them. Left behind were their parents and young brother of five.

They flew first to Miami, but an aunt who had also just arrived wasn’t able to take them in, so they wound up in Corpus Christi where the nun’s order had a convent. There they languished for a year before being contacted by the Cuban government. Bureaucrats informed the two young girls that their parents died trying to escape.

"From that point on the nuns were our caretakers," said de la Cruz. There was no education at the nun’s hands, just an existence, one ever so isolated because of the language barrier, but perhaps more so because of the cultural gulf.

In truth, her parents were alive, having escaped by boat, and had made landfall off the Florida coast. "For a month we believed they were dead," de la Cruz said. "They left under cover of darkness, left everything behind."

A British Cutter picked them up in the Keys and took them to the Bahamas, and from there contact was made with the U.S. government. Eventually they were flown to Miami and, a month later, they were able to locate and contact the girls.

It took a further year and a half for them to wend their way around the Gulf to Corpus and their waiting daughters. There the family was reunited, and the three children placed in public schools. It was that reunion that eventually brought Maria to us.

"My father was a doctor in Cuba, but he had to work a while as a janitor at Spohn Hospital in Corpus until he was able to get his credentials from Cuba."

Maria’s introduction to U.S. schools, and to a teacher specifically, is what changed her life forever. "I had a special teacher. She had me translate Little Women from English into Spanish. It took a whole year to do it, that’s all I did for that year, but that’s how I learned English.

"I was traumatized by all the changes, and that was just one more change," she said. "But after my family reunited, we started assimilating. I really felt like such an outsider. It was such a different culture. School became my outlet, my escape. I became a bookworm.

"Because I had such a good experience with my teachers, I decided to become one. Then, the children always came to me with their problems and that’s how I started my training in Psychology."

While working 25 years as a classroom teacher, de la Cruz labored toward her Ph.D. in School Psychology. The promise of Texas schools was good not only to Maria, but to her siblings – her sister is now a pediatrician and her brother a journalist. "It’s a good country!" de la Cruz said.

Her first taste of the Youth Ranch experience was as a teacher at the Ed Brune Charter School at Big Springs Ranch. "I fell in love with the place and the kids. I felt like God really wanted me there."

Then she moved to the Ingram campus last year, "met the kids and immediately fell in love. I’m very drawn to this population because of my own history," she said.

As School Director she is the Principal of the school portion of our residential campus community.

The highlight thus far has been "getting to open the new school. I want our students to have a quality program. I want it to be a place of joy and richness and learning."

Less enamored of handing out behavioral consequences, de la Cruz says that, thankfully, those are rare. "The staff loves the kids and they love us. That relationship is the grease that makes this place work.

"Teaching here involves more preparation than usual. All of our teachers are trained to work with special needs kids," she said.

Marcy Dorman, Ranch librarian, is effusive about what de la Cruz has brought to the school setting. "I just admire her so much. She could have had the big bucks, but she has devoted herself to helping our children instead. She’s so positive! She only sees the good in people despite all she’s been through."

As for her goals for Cailloux School, de la Cruz said, "I want us to build our relationship with our houseparents, so that we become one team. We have a good-sized mentoring group going – volunteers from the community who come work with our students. They read to them, or work on specific skills like math, or sometimes are just there to listen to them.

"And I’d also like to get us into some competitions, academic competitions like spelling bees and mathathons," de la Cruz said.