Tomas Andres Estrada-Palma

This is my grandfather. We called him Hoppy because we mispronounced what my older cousins were calling him "Poppy." Soon everybody in the family was calling him Hoppy. I never knew him to appear this way. This drawing is of my grandfather when he was much younger before I was born. But you friends and family in Cuba will remember him looking like this. He was the best grandfather ever! In fact, the only good that ever came from Castro was he stole Hoppy's pension so he was forced to live with us to survive until he died in 1970. But having Hoppy living with us was the luckiest break a kid ever had. When he died my friends and the kids in the neighborhood cried.