Blanca V. Pedroso

Blanca Victoria Pedroso was born Blanca Victoria Gonzales, on December 23, 1932, in Santa Cruz del Norte, Provincia de la Habana, Cuba, to Claudio and Petra Gonzales. Claudio was an all-around handyman, Petra was a stay-at-home mother, and Blanca was their only child. Santa Cruz del Norte was a “company town” developed by William Hershey (Hershey Chocolate of the United States), who owned a large sugar refinery and mill there, and Claudio was employed as a maintenance man at the mill. The family lived in one of 116 family homes built by Hershey for the employees, and the town had many Hershey provided amenities for the workers and their families including a baseball field, a pool and playground for the children who lived there, a movie theater, and higher wages than the average Cuban worker.

Acelo Pedroso, Blanca’s husband of 63 years before he passed away in 2022, was from nearby Jibacoa, about 10 miles from Santa Cruz. They met at a local dance in Santa Cruz. At that time, Acelo was an airman in the Cuban Air Force, and part of the dating ritual was his frequent buzzing over her house when he and his air force associates flew back from a patrol into the main air base in Havana. They were married in 1959 and separated briefly in 1960, while Blanca was pregnant with their only child (Acelo, Jr.), when Acelo, Sr, left Cuba to join the Bay of Pigs invasion force which attempted to take the island in April 1961. After Acelo, Sr., returned to the United States following the failed invasion, Acelo, Jr., was born in Cuba in May 1961, and the family was reunited in Miami when Blanca arrived there on one of the initial Freedom Flights in November of 1961 when Acelo, Jr., was 6 months old. Blanca was 29 years old when she arrived for the first time in the United States.

Blanca was a stay-at-home mother in Little Havana in Miami with Acelo, Jr., for the first five years of his life, while Acelo, Sr., worked (often working two jobs), and Blanca learned to speak English during those years at a local high school (evening courses). She became fluent in English by 1966. When the family moved to North Miami in 1966, Blanca learned to drive and then started working in the kitchen for Marriott at Fort Lauderdale International Airport, and she was employed there for 26 years. During this entire time, from when Blanca arrived in the United States in 1961, until her husband’s death in 2022 (at the age of 96), she was a devoted, loving wife and mother; a hard worker; and a wonderful cook. She attended church on a regular basis (member of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Miami Shores).

She is survived by her son, Acelo, Jr.; her daughter-in-law Natalie; two granddaughters, Hunter and Chloe; and the entire King, Gurney, Mays, Goodman-Jackson, and Kallenberg families with whom she spent years visiting and enjoying holidays and other special occasions. She learned so much from all of you, and being an only child herself, she was in awe of this large extended family. God bless you all for being such an important part of her life.