Unable to ever forget her mother’s anguished sobbing and shrill screams a sleepy Wednesday afternoon, Roseanne Persaud Nenninger finds it deeply distressing even now to speak of her brilliant older brother, Raymond Persaud, 19, one of the six teenaged medical students who won a coveted Guyana Government scholarship in 1976 but was killed on the way to Cuba.
Their parents have passed away unsurprisingly from cardiac related issues – “broken hearts” she admitted in a recent online exchange. “They both never recovered from the loss” Roseanne told me this week.
Her headmaster father ran the nearby Redeemer Lutheran School in Campbellville. Charles Persaud died in 2003 from a massive heart attack, always hoping he would eventually reunite with his bright boy on the next side, but also waiting in vain for justice in the United States (US) where the remaining relatives had migrated in 1979. The elder Persaud became a bit obsessed, writing endless letters including to the President and to Congress and researching material for a related book when he collapsed. Stunned Mom emerged a shadow of her former feisty self and mourned to the awful end in 2014 unable to accept the sudden senseless slaughter of her smiling, shining star-boy son and scores more sweet souls.
Raymond was among the 73 people murdered on October 6 1976 in the twin terrorist bombing of the Cubana Aviacion 455 plane off the Barbados west coast. The victorious Cuban fencing team of 24 youths were heading home to a champion’s welcome triumphantly wearing their shining medals from a record sweeping win at a regional championships in Venezuela. Five North Koreans had departed Guyana following an official exploratory mission.
But the real extended toll from the tragedy is entirely unknown, with entire families torn asunder in at least three countries and those left behind – children, spouses, parents, friends, kin – struggling to pick up the pieces and cope with the trauma of people felled forever in a big jet deliberately ripped apart by powerful C4 explosives and lying unseen and unburied 1 800 feet at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.
Yet somehow the Cubana outliers carry on their harrowing daily mission to manage with the horror of the gruesome deaths 40 years on, and to come to terms with the shameful lack of any moral and legal accounting by the pair of bitter, psychopathic Cuban exile leaders, who meticulously planned the attack and hired two lackeys to carry it out, simply to garner international publicity for their anti-Fidel Castro cause.
The most visible of the Guyanese relatives to eloquently and tirelessly campaign for justice, backed by her brothers Kenrick and the late Trevor, Roseanne took up her father’s baton in 2005 when she received a call from Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on the covert arrival of surviving mastermind Luis Posada Carriles in the US and his brazen application for asylum. Reactivating the battle, she resumed sending new correspondence to government officials and went flying with her sister Sharon to Posada’s immigration hearing in El Paso, Texas. Denied entry, the pair stood outside in the blazing sun for ages, holding up a snapshot of Raymond as he boarded the doomed flight.
Nenninger finally testified before a US Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee in November 2007, as the authorities toyed with the fate of the long-lived American-trained explosives expert and unrepentant subversive, who had illegally re-entered the country. He was eventually freed of all immigration charges and allowed to enjoy a hallowed hero’s existence and paint bucolic landscapes in the Cuban stronghold of Miami where he remains ailing at 88.
Roseanne and her have participated in public demonstrations, been invited to Cuban commemoration ceremonies, met, comforted and cried with Cuban relatives of the victims, complained without success to the US Attorney General and never received so much as a single response, appeared in several television interviews and documentaries, and spoken countless times to other media – in a courageous, continuing crusade to keep alive the fragile memories of a promising brother and all those killed.
The first of five siblings to attend college, the teenager had topped his British-administered Advanced Level Examinations and was dazzled about pursuing his interests in the sciences and fulfilling his dreams of becoming a medical doctor, because he always wanted to give back to the community. “We had a wonderful farewell party for Raymond the night before he left for his journey. My father borrowed 80 chairs from the church to accommodate all the guests.” The laughter, music, food and fun lasted until early that morning.
A short while later those same seats would be used again, this time for Raymond’s wake and memorial service. There was never a full funeral because Raymond’s body could not be recovered from the wreckage and barely an arm surfaced that may have been his.
Rousing Guyanese celebrations were in full swing, too late on October 5 at the homes of the five fellow enthusiastic scholarship awardees – afro-loving Jacqueline Williams; handsome Seshnarine Ramkumar; quiet, bespectacled Ann Nelson; outgoing national basketball star, exemplary athlete and obedient only child Eric Harold Norton and studious but vibrant Rawle Thomas. Economist Gordon Sobha had long packed for his upcoming meeting on the far half of the world in East Germany, diplomat’s wife Margaret Bradshaw was cradling her cute, young baby as she prepared to reluctantly leave the child behind, and devoted grandmother Violet Thomas and lovely daughter Rita were chatting with friends and relatives who had popped by, as they tried to calm their eager livewire charge nine year-old Sabrina Harrypaul, before bed.
October 6 “began with high hopes” and the whole tightly-knit Persaud group trooped across to the distant airport to see Raymond off on his first plane ride and Spanish island adventure. Equally devoted Guyanese parents and pals were going through the exact time-honoured rituals that morning at Timehri.
“He was dressed in a brown suit, specially made by the tailor for his travels. My parents were feeling so proud to have their son heading off to medical school. At the airport, we watched Raymond walk on the tarmac heading on to the airplane. He stopped, waved goodbye and we wiped the tears from our eyes and waved back. Raymond turned the corner and headed into the plane. We headed back home sad but excited at the same time. And tired! So tired, we all decided to take a nap,” baby sister Roseanne, then 11, related.
“After a couple of hours, there was a knock on our door. It was our cousin. It was very odd for her to come to our house on a Wednesday. She worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs. She said she had some news to share with us and everyone had to be sitting down. I was in a confused state, still groggy from my nap, sitting at the dining room table. My mom and dad were there waiting to hear what my cousin would say. She said the plane that Raymond was on, went down off the coast of Barbados.”
Nenninger recounted: “The next thing I remember were shrieks coming from my mother; I’m sure most of the neighbours heard too. Tears flowed downed my cheeks. It all seemed unreal. How was this possible? We just saw Raymond a few hours ago. My mom asked if there were any survivors. My cousin couldn’t answer that question. More screams came from my mother…”
“October 6, 1976, became the saddest day for us. At that moment my family realized that all of my brother’s dreams for his future, and all of our dreams for him, had gone down in the ocean…gone forever,” she told the hearing.
“No words can describe the pain, grief and loss we have faced. Our family, as I am sure you understand, has never been the same since October 6, 1976. It is still painful for us to sit and have conversations about Raymond’s death. We wonder what kind of man Raymond would have been and how he would have contributed to our complex world. My brother was an amazing individual, full of hopes and dreams, that were stolen forever in an instant of an explosion. What a selfish act of Luis Posada Carriles to kill innocent young lives for no other reason than that they were traveling to Cuba,” Nenninger testified.
She acknowledged a few days ago, that like all those mothers and fathers, “My parents suffered tremendously,” but explains that the tragedy forced them to reconsider their options with Dad pushing for the decisive move to the US so his remaining children would enjoy better access to university education. Thinking of the past it really bothered him that they had no money nor opportunity to send Raymond in 1976 to study in a different country and he must have blamed himself tormenting “what if?” They moved to the Guyanese immigrant enclave of Queens and Charles bravely went back to work, supporting his wife and their surviving brood by teaching in New York City public schools.
Nenninger, is a Stony Brook University graduate who practices naturopathic medicine. These days she is looking forward to visiting Barbados next June to see where Raymond’s life chapters closed. Senior sister Roxanne has already made the pilgrimage.
Wondering whether Posada “will be able to reflect on the deaths that he was responsible for – now during his dying days – or will he will still hold on to that belief that he is a freedom fighter?” Roseanne muses “in the end our brother and all the others who perished are dead and they are just a memory in our hearts and minds.”
When the Persauds read the news of Posada’s defiant press conference and his return in 2005, “It all came back.” Roseanne confessed to writer Robinson, “I found myself crying, just crying…It made me think about all those people who lost loved ones in 9/11.”
Now as another anniversary slips by and 2016 concludes, she experiences profound peace and proves philosophical. “I choose not to have anger, but rather to offer forgiveness to Posada for his brutal act. Holding on to that pain and anger only hurt me in the end.”
ID agrees with Roseanne Nenninger’s passionate promise: “What I want is for the world to know that this man is a terrorist,” even as “some people just want this piece of history to go away. I am not going to let that happen.”
