Ruth Caballero de Saco

On Sunday, December 13, 2020 at 10pm, Ruth Caballero Monteagudo, widow of Manuel Saco Sanchez, passed away from natural causes at age 99 - six months to the day of what would have been her 100th birthday -- in her home in Coral Gables, Florida.

Ruth was born on June 13, 1921 in Camaguey, Cuba. She was the youngest of twelve siblings in a family that had settled in Cuba from Spain in the early 1520’s. Her father, Roberto Caballero Benavides, was a landowner or colono and cattle rancher in the eastern part of the island, and Ruth grew up on the family farm. Her fierce streak of independence was surely inherited from her father, uncles, and grandfather – all of whom were Mambises or Cuban freedom fighters in Cuba’s wars of independence during the 19th century.

She followed her older brothers to the Universidad de la Habana where she received her doctorate in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1947, and practiced for several years at the Khoury Laboratories in La Habana. On April 4, 1951 she married Manuel Saco, a native of Pontevedra, Spain and an executive for an American company in Cuba. They raised two sons, Roberto and Raul, and two daughters, Ruth and Rita Maria.

Ruth lived in Camaguey, Matanzas, and La Habana in Cuba; Miami, and New York City; Madrid, Spain; and San Juan de Puerto Rico. She played piano as a girl and loved all types of music. Precocious to a fault, she was also ambidextrous, and was fond of freaking out her sisters when writing by starting a sentence with one hand and finishing it with the other! She loved to travel and visit the places her older sisters had lived in and described in their long letters from Spain, France, and Italy during the late 1940’s and the 1950’s. She had a joyous, positive, and generous disposition toward life and spent many hours as a volunteer for charity organizations like La Liga Contra el Cancer, Centro de la Juventud Catolica, Centro Cubano de Madrid, and the American Red Cross.

Ruth was preceded in death by her husband, Manuel. She is survived by her four children: Roberto, Raul, Ruth, Rita Maria; her grandchildren: Francisco, Shaindel, Maite, Emmanuel, Carlitos, Dovid, Alejando, and Leah; great grandchildren: Chaim, Hoovie, Daniel, Aliza, Sarah, Menuch, Gavi, Chaimiti, Viví, the twins Yalie and Lebbie, Luciana, and Oliver; and family in Florida, Wyoming, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Washington, D.C., San Jose de Costa Rica, Santiago de Compostela and Madrid, Spain.

A private burial service will be held the week of December 14th at Woodlawn North Park Cemetery in Miami, Florida. Donations may be made to a charity of choice.