July 5th 1946

My father left Cuba and went to Boston, Massachusetts to do his medical internship.

Meanwhile, my mother, his fiance, was still in Cuba awaiting his return. Her father, Jose Jaime Hurtado, a banker in Camaguey, Cuba, did not want my mother to marry my father because he came from such a humble and poor family.

My mother flew to Boston, Massachusetts, joined my father and it was there they were married.

Che Kills A.J.'s Friends

In 1959 Fidel Castro came into power and all private property became property of the state.

My father never liked politics and refused to discuss them, but some of his best friends who had studied with him in Havana, and were also doctors, had strong opinions about Castro's revolution.

One night several of his best friends were rounded up by Che Guevara whom without as much as an explanation to their bewildered family lined them all up and shot them.

read more on Che here >>

Escaping Cuba

Since my father never protested nor got involved with politics, Castro never consider him a threat, and doctors were disappearing faster than Fidel could import them from China, Russia and Czechoslovakia, so he offered my father a cushy job and would allow my father to stay on his properties with security and prestige. But my father refused to meet with Castro's government officials and had made plans to leave Nuevitas by having a friend with a boat take him across Cayo Romano in the dead of night at the risk of meeting the same fate as his friends should he have been caught .

That's my father on the bow and the young boy next to him, is yours truly, Raul, better known as "cyberray". Lucky for us a Visa for a vacation to Spain was approved and the plans to leave Cuba clandestinely were aborted.

A.J. Arrives as a Poor Cuban Immigrant & Went to Help the Coal Miners.

Harlan Kentucky


Cobb Memorial Hospital - Phenix City Alabama


Upon his arrival from Cuba with not much else but the shirt on his back, A.J. soon found out his license to practice medicine was worthless in the United States, so he set out to study night and day, and this time in a foreign language. He studied all his nights until he passed the Medical Board Exam and became a doctor one more time.

A.J. realized that they needed Doctors in the coals mines of Kentucky so he packed up his family and took them to places like Pikesville, Hazard, and Harlan County, Kentucky. Working his way South to places like Cobb Memorial Hospital in 'Sin City' Phenix City, Alabama.

A.J. started writing for the American Medical Association

A.J. wanted more than anything to be close to his beloved Cuba, but he realized that jobs in Florida were being vied by thousands of contestants, everyone wanted to be in the nice warm weather so he realized he had to do something different to set him apart, so he took up writing for the American Medical Association.

He Wrote Articles Such As This

A.J'.s Writing Generated Interest From Around the World

These were "old fashion" trackbacks....

A.J. Moves to Key West, Florida.

Now that Dr. Fernandez contribution in the Medical field was recognized, and his reputation firmly established, he received many jobs offers from all over the United States. A.J. had an opportunity to pick Key West, Florida, and it was to this city to which he unselfishly gave the rest of his working medical career to for the next 20 years until he retired.

A.J. dreamed of seeing his beloved homeland of Cuba once again and I offered to take him there many times, but he refused to give one(1) dollar of revenue to the cold blooded assassin that had killed his friends and took everything he had worked so hard for.

A.J. Misses his Wife Clara

We did everything to try to lift A.J.'s spirits and keep his mind off his wife who had been abducted.



Here is A.J. with his great-grandson Alexander J. Fernandez and an aging cocker spaniel by the name of Sandee.

We drove him 10 hours non-stop to Winter Haven, Florida so he could see his wife and hopefully this would break his hunger strike. Unfortunatly he was denied access to her by the Winter Haven Police Department. A.J. spent the night sitting in the car waiting to see his wife when he was told by officer J.Davis badge # 169, that he could not see his wife, her captors had succeeded in convincing the Winter Haven police that she did not want to see him, which was a lie, she had no idea that her husband was just one block away from her and her rescue was only minutes away.

Shortly after that, Dr. Fernandez passed out in the back seat of the car and we had to drive 10 hours back to Key West in a blinding rain during a heavy rainstorm as there were no hotels rooms available in the aftermath of several storms that hit Central Florida.

Upon his return to Key West, Dr. Elias Gerth tried giving Dr. Fernandez steroids to induce his appetite, but the tramatic events that he had been enduring for so very long, got the best of him.

Dr. A.J. Fernandez died on January 9th 2005, just three (3) days after the Circuit Court of the 16th Judicial Circuit for Monroe County, Florida decided that Clara G. Fernandez should live in Key West with her husband.

For A.J., - "It Was Too Little - Too Late" -