Carlos A. Gimenez Sr., Cuban exile and father of Miami-Dade mayor, dies at age 98

Carlos Antonio Gimenez Sr., who abandoned a prosperous life in Cuba in 1960 to start over in Miami with a young family and decades later saw his son elected county mayor, died on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. He was 98.

Born on Aug. 27, 1922 in Havana, he was the son of Antonio Maria and Caridad Vazquez Gimenez. He attended the Belen school in Havana, and split time between the family’s condominium in the city and their farmland in Manzanillo in what was then called Cuba’s Oriente Province.

The Gimenezes raised cattle and grew rice, and Gimenez inherited the successful operation by the time he was married with two children in pre-Castro Cuba.

After Castro took power in 1959, Carlos and his wife, Mitzi, continued the operation and as normal a life as they could. Carlos was alarmed one day to hear his son, a 6-year-old Carlos A. Gimenez Jr., share something his teacher told him: Russians “were the good guys” and Americans “were the bad guys.”

“My Mom and Dad pulled him out of school that day,” said daughter Mitzi Ann Gimenez Bustamante McKeon, who was five at the time and not old enough for school.

Alarm grew and the Gimenezes decided they needed to leave Cuba until the Castro regime fell — an evacuation expected to be brief. The couple left behind jewelry and family photos, with Carlos entrusting the land and business to a ranch hand until they returned.

The family’s new life in the United States meant a shared house in Little Havana that at its most bustling was home to 21 people from Mitzi’s side of the family. Gimenez went to work as a bellhop at the Seville hotel in Miami Beach, and his wife sold shoes.

After several years at the Seville, Gimenez landed a federal job in Miami’s Freedom Tower, processing papers for fellow Cubans arriving in the city. They were arriving by air on twice-daily “freedom flights,” and Gimenez worked there until Castro ended the cooperative emigration program in 1973 .

The couple both found lifelong careers in what was then called Dade County: Mitzi as an office manager, and Carlos as an insurance agent for Prudential, where he worked until he retired in the 1990s.

Well-dressed and younger looking than his age, Gimenez insisted on linen guayaberas for casual occasions and a business suit for anything approaching formal. He was a friendly presence at regular luncheons throughout Miami organized by fellow Cuban ranch owners and their friends.

“He would talk sports, politics, what was happening in Little Havana, what was happening in Cuba,” said Humberto Cortina, the Bay of Pigs veteran and former Republican member of the Florida House who now hosts a talk show on Univision’s Radio Mambi. “He was very much a gentleman. Very courteous. Always with a smile.”

A devoted tennis player, he had regular doubles meet-ups with friends in the Miami area. He was a big Dolphins fan, and a faithful Marlins fan, too.

He rarely missed an anti-Castro demonstration, even if it meant an absence at a big family event. Gimenez briefed his children on the family holdings back in Cuba, laying out the papers showing their true inheritance in land. “He said, ‘You and your brother are the rightful owners. This belongs to you,” his daughter recalled Sunday. “That was very important to him.”

His two children remained in Miami, climbing to leadership roles where they worked.

McKeon is director of tuition and financial aid at Columbus High School.

After starting as a Miami firefighter, Carlos Jr. became chief and then city manager and eventually Miami-Dade mayor in 2011. After serving a full two terms, on Tuesday the Republican won election to Florida’s 26th Congressional District. On Friday, the mayor visited his father and showed him congressional stationery with his name on it as the district’s next member of Congress.

“He was very proud,” McKeon said. “He smiled when my brother told him.”

In the family, the mayor was known as “Junior” and his father Carlos. While overseeing the county’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Gimenez frequently mentioned his experience with having a father in an assisted-living facility and the strict visitation rules in place to prevent the spread of the virus.

A Saturday announcement from the mayor’s office said the elder Gimenez “passed away peacefully this morning, surrounded by his children.”

Carlos A. Gimenez Sr. is survived by his son and his wife, Lourdes Gimenez; his daughter

and her husband, Chris McKeon; six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. His wife, Mitzi Ann Gimenez, died in 2016. His sister, Ofelia, died in the early 1970s.

The statement from the mayor’s office said there would only be a private mass and viewing due to COVID-19, and asked for donations to the St. Jude Children’s Hospital in lieu of flowers.

This story was originally published November 9, 2020 at 6:00 AM.