Ever Heard of “Peter Pan Kids”?

It has nothing to do with the movie or the peanut butter. In fact, until this past Tuesday, neither my wife nor I had ever heard the term used in this way.My wife and I are subscribers to the McNeese Banners Series, usually just attending the concerts and shows that are offered. Rarely do we attend lectures, but last year we had to see former Astronaut Story Musgrave. This past Tuesday, Juan Jose Valdez, the official geographer of The National Geographic Society, presented a lecture about his duties with the Map Policy Committee, and since my wife sometimes wishes she had become a cartographer, we decided it would be interesting to find out just how maps are made.

Well, we not only learned about the map making process, we learned that Mr. Valdez was a child Cuban refugee referred to as a "Peter Pan or Pedro Pan kid" who came to the U.S. under that program.

Operation Peter Pan (Operación Peter Pan or Operación Pedro Pan) is a codename of the CIA project, in course of which over 14,000 Cuban children were sent from Cuba to Miami by their parents after rumors were spread that the Cuban government led by Fidel Castro will soon begin taking children against the wishes of their parents to military schools and to Soviet labour camps. The operation took place between 1960 and 1962, and was designed to transport the children of parents who opposed the revolutionary government, and was later expanded to include children of parents concerned that their children would be shipped to Soviet labour camps.^[1] With the help of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami and Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh, the children were placed with friends, relatives and group homes in 35 states.^[2]

According to a May 16, 2009, article in the Miami Herald, Pedro Pan had its origins in the December 1960 visit to Miami by James Baker, headmaster of the Ruston Academy in Havana, to try to secure funds and visas for about 200 children. Baker met with the Havana-American Chamber of Commerce and then with Msgr. Walsh, who then took the plan to Washington.^[3] --wikipedia

You can visit to find out more.

Guess you really can learn something new everyday.