When the former mayor of Denver told me last weekend the closing on his purchase of a house in Indian River Shores had been postponed again because the promised renovations still hadn’t been completed, I couldn’t stop myself.
“Maybe the place really is haunted,” I said in jest, intending no disrespect to the previous occupant of the Marbrisa residence who was the subject of so many gruesome news stories this past couple of years.
Guillermo Vidal, appreciating the dark humor, couldn’t help but chuckle.
“You know, I was raised Catholic,” he said, “and there’s still a little part of me that’s superstitious.”
He wasn’t kidding – and that makes his decision to buy this particular house all the more ironic.
Vidal, who served as Denver’s mayor for eight months in 2011, and moved to Vero Beach in November 2014 to write a second book based on his compelling memoirs, is fully aware of the horrors that occurred there.
He has read all about Gina Albrecht, the cold, twisted opportunist and nursing aide who swindled the home’s owner, 81-year-old George May, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, then cruelly left him in his dementia to starve to death three Octobers ago.
He would not have made an offer on the house if it wasn’t being gutted and refurbished.
“What happened there,” Vidal said, “was tragic.”
It was sickening, heartless, inhumane.
It was also scary.
But the price of the three-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot home – the low $500,000s – was simply too good to pass up, especially with the seller promising to completely renovate the interior.
“They stripped everything, so I was able to choose the flooring, wall colors, counter tops and bathrooms,” Vidal said. “It’s not a new house, but I have some background in construction and I could see it had good bones.”
He also could see past the evil that existed within those walls.
His daughter, Molly, however, decided to prey on her father’s superstition, using her smart phone to take photographs of house’s interior.
“She said she wanted to do a before-and-after thing, so we could see how much the house changed, and she took pictures of the empty rooms,” Vidal explained. “I thought it was a good idea, but, apparently, there’s now an app that puts ghosts in pictures. And that’s what she did.
“I’ve been around a lot of pranksters, but no one has ever pranked me like that.”
He paused for a moment, then added:
“Please be careful telling that story. I don’t want anyone to think we’re insensitive to what happened or that we’re being disrespectful to the man who died.”
Vidal, given his history, would never be so thoughtless. Nor, because of the hardship he has overcome as a Cuban refugee, is he likely to be haunted by a house.
“I’m not unfamiliar with being traumatized,” Vidal said.
In fact, there’s one horrible day – Sept. 29, 1961 – he will never forget.
It was the gut-wrenching day his parents, Roberto and Marta, drove him and his two brothers to the airport in Havana, dropped them off at the curb and drove away.
Vidal was 10. His brothers were 11.
When they left the family’s upper-middle-class home in Camaguey, Cuba, they were told they were taking a vacation.
Instead, the boys were on their way to Miami, alone, left to the good will of Pan American Airways and the United States government, which sponsored “Operation Peter Pan.”
The public-private partnership arranged for the immigration and care of Cuban children fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist regime, which had taken control of the country in 1959.
“Imagine being 10 years old, being sent to a different country where you didn’t speak the language and knowing nothing about the culture, wondering if you’d ever see your parents again,” Vidal said. “I’ll never forget the fear, the trauma, the uncertainty.
“It was easily the worst day of my life.”
And it was only the beginning.
When the flight arrived in Miami, there was no one there to meet the Cuban children, who waited for hours until someone from the “Operation” showed up.
They were then shuttled to Camp Kendall, one of three temporary shelters where the refugees were housed until more permanent homes were found.
“They expected only about 500 kids and they made arrangements with foster families to take them in. But 14,000 kids were sent here between 1960 and 1962,” Vidal said. “They just ran out of foster families, so they started looking for orphanages all across the country.”
Vidal and his brothers soon were placed in the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Pueblo, Colo. – the child refugees met then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy during a layover in Chicago – and spent 3 1/2 years there before their parents finally escaped Cuba and the family was reunited.
“My parents had planned to come here sooner, but after the Cuban missile crisis, the United States broke off relations with Cuba and they couldn’t get out,” Vidal said. “They finally got out in 1965, but they had to go through Mexico to do it.
“They went to Miami first, then a Presbyterian church in Littleton, Colo., sponsored them and brought them to Pueblo.”
Life at the orphanage, meanwhile, wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t fun.
Not only did the Cuban children need to learn a new language and culture, but they also were bullied along the way.
A well-meaning caretaker unilaterally decided to Americanize the refugees’ given names to ease their transition.
“My brothers’ names were changed from Roberto and Juan to Bob and John,” Vidal said. “And I became Bill.”
With the family again intact, the Vidals moved to Denver and began to rebuild their lives. Vidal’s father was trained as a pharmacist in Cuba, but his degree wasn’t recognized in the U.S., so he initially took a job as a janitor.
Even during the most trying financial times, however, Vidal’s parents demanded that education be a priority.
And after he graduated from St. Francis de Sales High School, where he played football and basketball, Vidal enrolled at the University of Colorado at Denver and earned a degree in civil engineering in 1973.
“The day I graduated was one of the happiest days of my life,” Vidal said, “because I knew then that I had the tools I needed to escape poverty and build a successful future.”
His education led to a job with the Denver engineering firm of Stearns-Rogers and eventually took him to the Colorado Department of Transportation, where he worked for 23 years, including five as its executive director.
He then spent five years on the Denver Regional Council of Governments.
In December 2003, then-mayor John Hickenlooper appointed Vidal to serve as Denver’s public works director and later named him deputy mayor, paving the way for the Cuban immigrant and lifetime public servant to become the city’s first foreign-born mayor.
That happened in January 2011, after Hickenlooper was elected Colorado’s governor with less than a year remaining on his term as mayor.
“From being a Cuban immigrant in an orphanage to mayor of the largest city in Colorado,” said Vidal, who spent his time in office pushing for job creation and endorsing comprehensive immigration reform. “That’s not a bad story.”
And Vidal, who considered running to stay in office but ultimately decided he wasn’t a politician, is putting his remarkable story down on paper, writing what amounts to Part Two of his autobiography.
His first book – “Boxing for Cuba: An Immigrant’s Story of Despair, Endurance and Redemption” – was published in 2007 in both English and Spanish. The working title for the follow-up is “Orphan to Mayor,” which he hopes to finish soon.
“I’m about three-quarters done,” Vidal said. “I’ve still got a few chapters to write, then I’ve got to edit it.”
Vidal, now 64, decided to write “Boxing” after returning to Cuba in 2001 – following his father’s death – for an emotional visit during which he traced the remaining members of his family on the island.
The trip not only gave him a much-needed sense of closure and an even-greater appreciation for his life in America, but it also enabled him to better understand why his parents – with whom he had a complicated relationship for decades after that painful day at the Havana airport – made the difficult decision to send young sons to Miami.
“What was the worst day of my life,” Vidal said, “turned out to be the greatest blessing of my life.”
He described the second book as a “continuation of the personal journey” he began when he and his brothers boarded that Pan Am jet 54 years ago.
It’s a journey that has brought him to our picturesque patch of paradise, where he currently lives in a South Beach condo and fills his days by playing tennis, writing, working out at a local gym, walking the beach and socializing with friends.
Twice divorced, he also has done some dating.
“People keep asking if I’m retired, but I believe your purpose in life is creating a greater good, so I don’t know that I really believe in retirement,” Vidal said, adding that he has no plans to enter politics here but could see himself eventually getting involved in a worthwhile local cause.
“To me, the two most worthless days in a person’s life are yesterday and tomorrow, which is why I’m focused only on what’s in front of me today,” he continued.
“I believe there’s still another mission out there for me, but I don’t know what it is. I can’t say what I’ll be doing next year.
“Right now, after being so busy with my career for so many years, I’m doing what I need to be doing – taking a sabbatical, taking this time to finish the book, learn how to build new friendships and relationships, and grow as a person.”
And Vidal sees our seaside community, which he discovered as a first-time snowbird four years ago, as the perfect place to nurture such growth.
That’s why, earlier this year, he began shopping for something more than the condo he bought in 2013, and that search brought him to Marbrisa.
“Honestly, I love the house,” Vidal said. “It’s going to be great when it’s done, and I think I’m getting it for a good price. I’m looking forward to moving in.”
