Inheriting a Ring With a Tragic Story
"My uncle wore this ring always -- until he was shot. Somehow, it ended up on my hand."

She said, "Oh, don't cry. People will think I said something mean to you." She's looking around and she said, "No, no we're Cuban, we don't cry at restaurants." And I'm laughing and crying. It was such an emotional moment because I had not thought about this ring for one second, but the moment I saw it, I remembered the story.
My mother's brother came to the United States embassy in 1960, immediately after Castro took over, one of the early wave of exiles. My cousin and I lived with him when we came to Miami alone in 1961. He borrowed some money and opened up a grocery store -- not that he knew anything about grocery stores -- it was one of those little businesses that began to pop up when the Cuban exiles first came to Miami.
By the early 70s, he had enough money that he and his wife were going to take a trip to Europe. At the end of this one day, he gave rides home to a couple of his employees. He usually had the money from the day earnings, but this day he had more because they were going on that trip. A couple of masked men came to each side of the car with weapons and he saw the one on his wife's side holding a gun to her head but he didn't see the other one or at least that's the story, who knows. So he pulled a gun himself to protect her and this guy shot him in the head.
Turns out they left without anything. It could have been an execution, it could've been a robbery. It's very hard to tell exactly what happened, it happened fast and he was dead. His wife died only about three years ago. I knew she wore it — I saw her wear it — but somehow I didn't have any emotional connection to the ring until all of a sudden, it was like the end of the story.

Maria Emilia Froedo, an artist, retired arts administrator and educator. interviewed by Bijoux Bios’ Jaye Ann Terry in February 2019 in Tampa.
Maria Emilia Froedo taught at the University of South Florida, was the executive director of Florida Craftsmen (now Florida CraftArt), and worked for the Pinellas Opportunity Council, using the arts to stimulate economic development in low-income communities. She has served on numerous state, county and city boards, most recently on the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs Action Planning Task Force. Her own artwork can be found at the Polk Museum of Art, the Gulf Coast Museum of Art, Florida International University, the Leepa-Ratner Museum of Art and in private collections. She was one of six Latino artists to share experiences on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s public-school curriculums Quilted Landscapes: Expressions of Assimilation. Now retired, she writes and illustrates poems and novellas.
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