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Reply #6: Here's a longer version of that story from the Reuters site: [View All]

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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-04-09 09:49 PM
Response to Original message
6. Here's a longer version of that story from the Reuters site:
Edited on Sat Apr-04-09 09:52 PM by Judi Lynn
Canadian denied U.S. fortune dies at 108 in Cuba
Sat Apr 4, 2009 1:15am BST

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKN0343405520090404?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for posting this. I heard about her years ago.

Here's an earlier story about her:

St. John's native to mark 107th birthday at Havana villa
Last Updated: Friday, April 27, 2007 | 2:19 PM NT
CBC News



First photo taken in 2006.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2007/04/27/mccarthy-birthday.html

~~~~~~~~~

Adding a story from 2007:
Rich Canadian widow cash-strapped in Cuba
Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:39pm EDT

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Canadian Mary McCarthy lives in the same mansion she and her millionaire husband moved into 62 years ago in the once-posh Country Club area of Havana.

Peacocks still strut the one-acre garden under royal palm trees, but the lawn is overgrown and the house filled with Napoleon III furniture, chandeliers and a Steinway grand piano is falling apart.

At the age of 107, McCarthy is wheelchair-bound, but still dresses up for visitors in a satin dress, silk blouse and chiffon scarf, red lipstick coloring her wrinkled face. Her pearl necklace and earrings, though, are plastic.

Her real jewelry and the small fortune she inherited when she was widowed in 1951 have been frozen in a Boston bank since the United States placed Cuba under sanctions after Fidel Castro's leftist revolution in 1959.

That's because she lived in Cuba and did not leave with most of her wealthy Cuban neighbors who fled to Miami when Castro nationalized businesses and steered the Caribbean nation toward Soviet communism.

The Cuban government confiscated her properties and her husband's leather factory, assets valued at $4 million, and she was left only with "Villa Mary," a dilapidated mansion in need of repairs where she lives in virtual poverty.

Since January this year the U.S. government has let her withdraw a $96 a month allowance from her U.S. bank after Canadian diplomats interceded on her behalf.

McCarthy is asking U.S. President George W. Bush to free her money so that she can live her remaining days with dignity. She would also like to have her family's "trinkets" released.

"They said they couldn't give it to me because I live in Cuba. That's the only money that I have left. It is in Boston, but I live in Cuba, that's the great terrible, terrible thing," she said during a recent visit to her home.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthNews/idUSN0721902420070812
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