In January of 1951, when she was not yet 30 years old, Rosemary went to Havana, Cuba. I didn’t know this – or had forgotten, if ever I had known – until a few months ago, when I started scanning her vacation slides. This page is a short account of that trip. My text may read funny but I’m trying to give only the facts, as I’ve learned them from her pictures and from her notations that accompany her slides and that are in her photo albums.
Wallace L. Hart (Wally) was an army pilot in WWII and after the war worked for a time as a product engineer at Roofing Machinery Manufacturing, where Rosemary was long employed and where she was Purchasing Agent. Some time in 1949 or 1950 he sent a postcard from Cuba to Roofing Machinery.
By June of 1951 (5 months after Rosemary’s eventual Cuba trip) he was on active duty at Bergstrom AFB in Texas.
In January 1951 Rosemary and Mom went on vacation. The two are photographed in Cypress Gardens, Fla,
as well as in Silver Springs and Winter Haven. Wally is pictured at Key West; Rosemary and Mom stayed in motels in Winter Haven and Key West, and the dynamic duo were seen at the Sunny South Airport:
Also, Mom and Wally are pictured at OpaLocka, Fla, in this file photo:
After this (the following pictures come later on the film roll) photos are taken over and in Havana, Cuba:
There are about a dozen such pictures altogether. Some of them can be located in Havana. For instance, this recent aerial photo of Havana shows Wally’s postcard’s National Hotel from directly above
Compare his postcard to this view of the hotel from nearer the ground:
More interesting are these two photos:
To take them, Rosemary stood facing the Gulf at the spot I’ve marked with a red X on the aerial photo above; turned to her left and took a picture; then turned to her right and took another.
Later on this same vacation, Mom and Ro stopped in New Orleans (she has postcards or matchbooks from at least 5 Clubs and Restaurants there) as well as in Memphis, where they stopped at St. Augustine’s, Father Cap's assignment in those days.