Special Delivery : Cuban Who Discovered Students’ Letter in Bottle Gets Help in Immigrating to U.S.

For about a decade, Judy d’Albert’s fifth-grade students at Harbor Day School have been writing letters, sealing them in bottles and dropping them into the ocean as part of their lessons on how early explorers used currents to navigate the globe.

About 200 messages have gone out, and the students have received 20 replies. But the first time d’Albert cast a bottled message into the Atlantic Ocean during a Caribbean vacation, lives were changed forever.

That bottle washed up in a small fishing town on Cuba’s north-central coast, where it was found by one of the community’s few English speakers. A five-year pen-pal relationship between 52-year-old Luis Abreu and students at the private elementary school ensued.

Last November, Abreu sent his friends an SOS: He and his wife had miraculously won scarce visas issued by the U.S. State Department through an annual lottery for legal immigration, but they did not have the money to travel. The students swung into action, collecting $1,800 to cover most of the travel expenses for Abreu and his 47-year-old wife, Miriam--a sum that would have been impossible for Abreu to raise on his salary of $10 a month.

Nearly five years after Abreu found d’Albert’s message, he and his wife are scheduled to arrive Wednesday at John Wayne Airport with tickets donated by a Harbor Day School parent. Though they have no idea yet where they will spend their first night here, the Abreus hope to settle in Orange County.

“We hear of the story of somebody being on a deserted island hoping to be rescued,” said Francisco F. Firmat, an Orange County Superior Court judge and Cuban immigrant who has served as interpreter for the Harbor Day School students. “This was the reverse. The person who found the bottle was the person who was rescued.”

The Abreus arrived in Miami on Feb. 24, the same day two unarmed Cessnas flown by Cuban Americans were shot down off Cuba’s coast. They were unaware of the incident until they arrived in Miami.

“When I got there, they told me I was on the caboose of the last train out of Cuba,” Abreu said from a friend’s home in Miami. “People are saying I’m the luckiest man alive.”

After the planes were shot down, the Clinton administration halted charter flights between the United States and Cuba last week and vowed to support legislation strengthening the embargo against Cuba.

“I could have come to the United States . . . years ago,” said Abreu, who was a prisoner of war for three years after the Cuban Revolution. “I never wanted to immigrate illegally to anywhere.”

Said Eric Neff, 11, one of Abreu’s pen pals: “He asked for help from us, and he made sure that he wasn’t going to ruin our friendship because of it. It took a lot of guts to ask something from a friend.”

The couple left behind two grown sons, ages 24 and 22, and Abreu is searching for a son from a previous marriage who left Cuba for Miami four years ago. The family hasn’t heard from him since.

“The spirit wants one to strive for liberty, and that’s what has given me the drive to go on,” Abreu said in Spanish, his voice breaking as he held back tears. “Your spirit takes you places, but your soul always remains with your home.”

Dozens of d’Albert’s past and current students plan to greet the couple at the airport.

“It’s amazing that after five years of communicating with letters, we are going to meet him,” said Kellie Brownell, 11, a fifth-grader at Harbor Day School. “If he would have had a flight scheduled last Monday instead of Saturday, the whole project would have been lost.”

The relationship began during a June 1990 vacation to Anguilla, an island in the British West Indies, when d’Albert gave a fisherman a bottled message to toss into the ocean on behalf of her class. She hoped the message would find an Atlantic current and end up in Europe. Instead, it washed up on the shores of Caibarien, the small town where the Abreus lived.

In his first letter to d’Albert’s class, dated April 13, 1991, Luis Abreu, fearing government monitors who read his mail, wrote that a fisherman had found the bottle and given it to him.

“If I make wrong in my letter,” he wrote, “excuse to me because this is the first time that I write a English letter. . . . About myself I’ll say to you that I’m a sport bus driver here in Caibarien town. I am 47 years old and I have four children. I like to make friendship with all the people of the world.”

Later, he told the students he lived east of Havana and was called “Johnny” because he was one of the few in town who could speak English. Abreu owned a bus and made his living driving athletes and musicians from town to town, earning about $10 a month. The salary wasn’t enough to cover medical expenses for his ailing wife, who is suffering from a disease caused by malnutrition.

Recently, he said, work has been scarce and gasoline in short supply, making the couple’s lives even more difficult.

Abreu learned English in a Cuban elementary school, picking up conversations on the streets of Havana, where American tourists vacationed before the revolution.

In Cuba, where baseball is a national obsession, Abreu has been following the American pastime for as long as he can remember. He often asked Harbor Day School students to send baseball magazines.

Firmat, the Orange County judge, said that he has contacted the Angels and hopes Abreu may be able to get a job with the organization, even if it means working as a janitor.

D’Albert’s class has established a fund to help the couple with the expenses of settling here. Donations may be mailed to Luis Abreu, in care of Harbor Day School, 3343 Pacific View Drive, Corona del Mar, CA 92625.

Abreu is approaching his new life with anticipation and wonderment.

“I learned as a child to work very hard,” he said. “Now I have to wait for what God has in store for me. . . . But I know one thing: The life I had there won’t compare to what I’m going to have here.”