My father, Ignacio Diaz-Rebozo died on May 20, 2011 at the age of 93.  There is a saying that a self made man is like a self laid egg; it’s absolutely true.  What we are in the present is compromised of those things we carry with us both genetically and from the lessons and experiences we have during our lives.  I had a great opportunity to learn so much from my father and his vast education in what he called, “La Universidad de la Vida” – the University of Life.

Born in 1917 in Havana,  Cuba,  his father, a Spanish sailor, returned to Spain when my father was very young leaving my father and his mother alone in Cuba.  The stories of my father’s poverty and struggles as a youth set the foundation for what he knew he wanted to be and what he had to do to get there.  He would tell stories of his mother crying because the didn’t have money for rice (which at the time was, “dos centavos” literally $0.02.) When he saw his mother crying he told her not to worry that he would make enough to take care of them.  Of course, he was only 6 or 7 but he did start to take on tasks and jobs to help with money and had to leave school very early.

As a result of his situation, my father was relatively uneducated.  He had some minimal formal education but basically taught himself to read and write. He knew that education was critical to leaving the poverty and tears his mother cried because of that poverty.  Although not attending school, he would read anything he could:  newspapers, books, magazines, whatever he could get his hands on.

He fled Cuba when Castro took power.  He left with nothing except the clothes he had with him leaving everything he knew behind.  But he brought with him a lifetime of experiences and was already well into his studies in, “La Universidad de la Vida.”  By the time I was born, he was 51 years old and had an advanced graduate degree from that same university that has no campus, no paper degree, and only the world as your professor.  I cannot overstate the benefit it has been for me to have a Master tutor and mentor so thoroughly educated in that university.  It is something that no Ivy League, Rhodes scholarship, or paper degree can ever provide.  But I had the benefit of it.

He knew the secret for me was to get as much education as possible.  He constantly pushed me to get an education.  He didn’t care what I studied, just to keep going to school.  His view for my success, and by proxy his success, was that I would never have to punch a time clock.  That is the way, simple as it may sound, my father gauged success, to not punch a time card.

I will miss my father and his sage advice.  I will miss his sharp wit, biting sarcasm, and his stories.  I have lost my greatest critic…and my greatest advocate.  I know well that I am not a self made man and that I owe great debts to those who played a role in shaping my life.  I know that an enormous part of me was forged from the foundry of Ignacio Diaz-Rebozo steel.

Papi, te quiero, descanse en paz.