“So ... why do you want to write
about me?” my 80 year old father asked me ten years ago when I began to
interview him.
Why indeed. My father’s humble
response shows what kind of man he is.
His story will become a novel, Luck is Just the Beginning, due to be
published by Floricanto Press in the fall. It was
inspired by the true story of his remarkable luck. My father won the lottery
after a premonition. But what’s more remarkable is what happened after.
What I’d like to do is to give you
the story behind the novel, tell you about the real people you’ll read about
and the history of Puerto Rico and its rich
culture. And help you to do the same if you want. Through writing prompts and
suggestions, you can tell your own story, or interview a friend, mentor, parent
or grandparent.
Ramón León was born in Puerto Rico in 1925. My grandmother lost her first eight
babies shortly after birth. My father was the 15th child. No one in
his family except his sister (the only girl of the 15!) completed high school.
They were poor and hardworking and owned a clothing and textile store in the village
of Maunabo
My father did alterations, too, but
at nineteen-years-old he had a dream to become a dentist. The island had few dentists
and no dental school at that time. His only chance to attend dental school in
the mainland U.S.
was to apply for a scholarship, but only five were awarded on the island
annually, a tremendous long shot.
What followed was an even wilder
long shot.
Ramón León had a vision: a series
of numbers came to him. He and his friend, Guillermo, were talking of playing
the lottery (Guillermo did, my dad was saving as much as he could for college),
and a number came to my dad, all of a sudden. It’s not that far-fetched. Abuela Chepa, who had earned the esteemed title of Doña Chepa, was a curandera, one who healed with herbs and the laying on of hands, a bruja or witch whom villagers sought for advice, cures for their ailments, even to tell their futures.
“Hey, Guillermo, I think I just thought
of the number to play in the lottery!” Dad shouted to his friend.
I can imagine the look of
Guillermo’s face when he believed Dad would finally play.
And then the lottery salesman had
the number Dad saw in his head. So, for
the first time in his life, my father was so sure that it was fate that he bought not
only a single ticket, which sold for twenty cents, but the entire sheet of
thirty tickets for $6.00. It was all the money he had saved since he was a boy
of seven, selling pastries for a penny a piece to the macheteros, the men who wielded their machetes in the sugar cane
fields. It was an enormous amount of money at the time in 1944, when most
people made a dollar a day working in the cane or coffee fields.
And he won the jackpot: $18,000.
My sisters and I grew up hearing
this story, so to me, it’s part of my history (I’ll write more on premonitions
later), and it’s inspirational what he accomplished with the money.
He went to Michigan , barely knowing English, and
completed college and dental school. After a long career, when he finally retired,
many of his patients cried.
It took me nearly ten years and a
dozen rewrites to complete my novel, inspired by the story of my father’s life.
Luck is Just the Beginning will be in
my hands by as soon as the fall. A beautiful tale. A dream come true for me,
too.
