CHARLEMONT — At age 11, Carlos Eire was part of the Pedro Pan (Peter Pan) child airlift in the early 1960s after the Cuban revolution. Eire grew up to become a Yale professor of history and religion and author of two books, “Waiting for Snow in Havana” and “Dying in Miami.”
On Wednesday, Eire will be at the Charlemont Federated Church on Main Street to to give a talk on “Migration, Resistance or Reform: Cuba’s Uncertain Future.” It begins at 7 p.m. and is the first of two lectures to be presented this summer as part of the Charlemont Forum.
In 1962, Eire was one of 14,000 unaccompanied children airlifted out of Cuba by Operation Pedro Pan.
He told NPR radio talk show host Terry Gross in 2010 that the airlift was started by a headmaster at an American school in Havana 1959 as a temporary arrangement for the children of dissidents who were fighting against Fidel Castro. But after the government took over all schools in 1961, it grew into a program for any child whose parents wanted them to leave the island.
Eire thought he would be back home after a few months, but the Cuban missile crisis shut down Cuba’s borders, and his parents were unable to leave the country.
After living in a series of foster homes, he was reunited with his mother in Chicago in 1965.
Eire said in a 2003 NPR interview that for him and most other Pedro Pan children, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience, but one that came with a sense of loss. “Not having your parents there, you kind of feel a sense of betrayal — that you’re betraying your parents if you’re too happy,” he said “Even after my mom came, even at the best moments, it was always this feeling that, ‘Gee, you know, my dad’s not here.’ You feel this sense that you should never or can never be really happy.”
Eire earned his doctorate at Yale University in 1979. In 2003, he won the National Book Award in Nonfiction for “Waiting for Snow in Havana.” He will speak about his personal immigration experience and about the uncertain future facing Cuba.
On Aug. 4, Paul Taylor of the Pew Research Center will speak about “Millennials and the Next America.” Drawing on his work at the research center, he will reflect on the political impact of young adults, ages 18 to 35, who will become the largest generation in this November’s electorate. Taylor, author of “The Next America: Boomers, Millennials and the Looming Generational Showdown,” will discuss what the social, economic and political values of this generation tell us about America in the coming century.
That lecture also begins at 7 p.m. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
The 2016 Charlemont Forum is supported in part by grants from the following local cultural councils: Amherst, Buckland, Charlemont-Hawley, Conway, Heath, Plainfield, and Shelburne which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency: www.massculturalcouncil.org