Posts tagged Cuba
Flagler’s Eaton in spotlight after interview with former Cuban spy
Oct 10th
“I was back in Havana in 2010 and 2011 working on a book about Harley-Davidson riders in Cuba,” said Eaton, an assistant professor of Communication at Flagler College. “One day I was talking with one of the riders and he told me he knew Roque and asked if I was still interested in interviewing him. Sure, I said.”
Roque, a former fighter pilot, swam to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in 1992 and declared opposition to Fidel Castro. While in South Florida, he became a pilot for Brothers to the Rescue, a group dedicated to searching for rafters in the Florida Straits.
In 1996, Roque slipped back into Cuba the day before Cuban MiGs shot down two civilian aircraft flown by members of the Brothers group, who were accused of dropping political leaflets onto Havana. The attack killed four civilians and outed Roque as a spy, surprising not only the Cuban-American woman Roque had married as part of his cover, but also the FBI who had been paying him as an informant.
Eaton’s interview was Roque’s first in 16 years and was featured on Miami’s Spanish-language cable TV station, América TeVe, for four nights on a show called, “A Mano Limpia,” hosted by journalist Oscar Haza.
In the interview, Roque, who now lives in a cramped apartment and claims he is broke, said he wishes he had done more to stop the shoot-down.
“Perhaps now … I’d try to play a much stronger role in the things that happened,” he said. “I’d try to play a better role. If I played it bad or good, let the people decide. Let those who want to judge me, judge me.”
Eaton’s interview even produced an apology from the former spy.
“If I could travel in a time machine,” he said. “I’d get those boys off the planes that were shot down.”
In addition to the video interview, Eaton wrote two stories on Roque for the non-profit Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which distributed them to a network of news outlet, including the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. The stories generated more than 1,100 comments and were picked up by dozens of websites.
Source: Flagler College
Flagler professor, veteran journalist and Forum founder Ostrowidzki dies
Apr 10th
Ostrowidzki, 80, was a veteran journalist who had served as a White House reporter during the Reagan administration and covered health-care issues in the Clinton era. He also reported on every presidential election from 1964-1988.
He joined the faculty of Flagler College in 1997, and went on to found the Forum on Government and Public Policy, which brings in journalists and other experts to speak about current issues. The Forum has brought to the college names such as Robert Novak, David Broder, Joe Klein, Anne Coulter, Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews.
Ostrowidzki taught Campaigns and Elections for our Humanities department and Media Power in Politics for Communication.
He was a native of Poland, and during the Soviet Union Occupation of Poland (1939-1941), Ostrowidzki’s father, a high-ranking Polish government official, was captured as a prisoner of war. At this time, Ostrowidzki’s mother, brother and grandfather were deported to Siberia while he was on vacation visiting his aunt. He survived both the Soviet Union and German occupation of Poland and was later re-united with his family in England in 1948. Two years later he moved with his family to the United States.
Ostrowidzki started working for the Hearst paper, the Times Union in Albany, New York, as a copy boy in 1953. He graduated from Siena College in 1954 and served in the United States Army from 1954-1957. During his military career he aided Hungarian refugees escaping from the country in the midst of a revolt against the Soviets.
In 1957, Ostrowidzki started working for the Times Union as a reporter. He was promoted to Capitol Hill bureau chief in 1960. In 1961 he was recalled to active duty for the Berlin and Cuba crisis, as an interpreter. After he completed his active duty, he earned a Master of Arts from Siena College and started covering Washington D.C. for Hearst Newspapers.
At Hearst, he served as White House, National, Foreign, War and Congressional Correspondent and Chief Political Writer. Ostrowidzki covered every presidential campaign for Hearst from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.
He is survived by his wife, Sharon; three children; two step-children; six grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and a brother.
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Flagler College is an independent, four-year, comprehensive baccalaureate college located in St. Augustine, Fla. The college offers 24 majors, 29 minors and two pre-professional programs, the largest majors being business, education and communication. Small by intent, Flagler College has an enrollment of about 2,500 students, as well as a satellite campus at Tallahassee Community College in Tallahassee, Fla. U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review regularly feature Flagler as a college that offers quality education at a relatively low cost; tuition is $22,500, including room and board. A relatively young institution (founded in 1968), Flagler College is also noted for the historic beauty of its campus. The main building is Ponce de Leon Hall, built in 1887 as a luxury resort by Henry Flagler, who co-founded the Standard Oil Company with John D. Rockefeller.
For more on Flagler College, visit www.flagler.edu. from Read Media