Fidel Castro

One of the enduring pieces of trivia that I've wheeled out over the years is that I remember when Fidel Castro's son attended P.S. 20 in Queens, about three-quarters of a mile down the block from my elementary school, P.S. 20. Both schools were, and still are, on Sanford Avenue in Flushing. Several people have already shared their memories of this, even before today's passing of Fidel. Any decent search engine will get you there.

It was 1959, and Castro was being courted by the United States as a favorite son. A year later, before speaking at the U.N., Castro introduced his comic self by throwing chicken bones out of the window of the Hotel Theresa in Harlem at reporters. Ah, that Fidel.

Many, many years ago the advertising executive Jerry Della Femina, suggested at a meeting that a tag line for the new client, a Japanese electronics company called Sony, could be: "From those wonderful folks who gave you Pearl Harbor." It later became the title of a book by Mr. Della Femina.

It didn't take Castro long to go from a U.S. darling to an international pariah. By 1962, Castro, with his friendship with Russia and the accommodation of Russian missiles planted in Cuban and pointed at the United States, could easily be called: "That wonderful man who helped give us the Cuban Missile Crisis."

But live to be 90 and never really be replaced as the leader of a country for over half a century, and people will say what the old saying says: "politicians, public buildings and whores all gain respectability if they last long enough."

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