Maria Teresa Simon

Teresa Simon, my mother and the friendliest person anyone could meet, passed away peacefully at Colonial Oaks Memory Care in Sugar Land, Texas on Tuesday March 27, 2018 at age 92. Teresa was born in Santa Clara, Cuba on September 17, 1925 and was married for 68 years to the love of her life, Anibal Simon, who predeceased her in 2014.

Teresa graduated from the Escuela Normal de Maestros in Santa Clara. In 1962, after Castro came to power, our family received US Immigrant Visas and arrived in Miami with $90 as our sole source of funds. My mother and father were unable to find jobs in Miami, 200,000+ Cubans had landed there in short order resulting in a dismal economy. My parents applied for the so-called Cuban Refugee Fund which was essentially “welfare” for the arriving Cubans and at the largess of the government we started receiving $100 a month. In addition, my grandfather had started an insurance fund with a Canadian company for my future college education and my parents cashed that in for a fraction of its value. For four long months during the summer of 62, my parents and I walked on the order of 30 blocks each way to a training center in northeast Miami, which offered English classes. We walked because we could not afford the 10 cents each way, each person for the bus ride. While in Miami the government gave us rations of a Velveeta-like cheese and a Spam-like pressed meat which we ate most every day. We lived in a furnished one-bedroom apartment and while the apartment had window air conditioners, we never turned them on as we could not afford the electricity. After 7 months, with the insurance money running out, my parents accepted a very welcomed relocation to Kansas City, courtesy of the Catholic Church. We will never forget arriving in Kansas City in November 1962 – a group from a local church met us at the airport and took us to an apartment which had been nicely furnished with hand-me-downs from church members – a dinner had been fully cooked and was sitting on the stove awaiting our arrival… Talk about a welcome!!!

Life got much easier in Kansas City; my father got a job soon thereafter and my mother worked in a garment factory during the day while attending night school. Through hard work and dedication she received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Park College and the University of Missouri respectively and began teaching at St. Pius X High School. She worked there until 1974 when she relocated to Houston and continued teaching here until her retirement in 1993. My mother was highly regarded as a teacher; she taught Romance Languages and her students affectionately referred to her as “Bueno”, loosely translated as “Good” or “OK” - she would often respond to questions with the word bueno and Bueno she became!!!

My mother was predeceased by her parents, Jesús and Carmen, and a sister, Dora. She is survived by her son and daughter-in-law, Carlos and Patricia, of The Woodlands, TX and her niece and husband, Iris and Alex, of Miami, FL. A private service will be held in late April and my mother’s ashes will be laid to rest next to my father’s in a peaceful place that they would often visit. The family requests that donations on her behalf be sent to St. Jude Hospital of Memphis Tennessee.