Fannie's Story

Do you ever think about Fannie?” Nely asked her sister Sunny as they drove together one afternoon.

The words hung in the air—startling and significant. That simple question carried with it the challenges other Penedo women have faced. They were like women everywhere, each successive generation building upon the choices and lessons from those who came before while trying to realize their potential, simultaneously tending to work, families and community.

Both sisters felt relieved upon hearing the question. The silence was finally broken and with it the grief each carried about Fannie—the niece they barely knew, whose short life would forever occupy their thoughts.

“I think about her every day.” Sunny replied.

With that admission, the journey that led to the creation of Penedo Charitable Organization began, resulting in a nonprofit organization with a mission to educate girls to become women of knowledge, faith and service.

Who was Fannie?

Sunny and Nely, daughters of parents who fled Cuba after the revolution with nothing more than jewelry sewn into the hems of their skirts, and the promise of what the United States could offer, were young women in their early twenties when they first met Fannie. She was the daughter of their half-sister Sonia.

Before Fannie’s birth, Sonia had an opportunity to come to America in 1967 when her father, Enrique Penedo and his wife Onelia, bundled up Sunny, Nely and their sister Carmen and left Cuba after Castro came to power. Sonia chose to stay behind. Almost twenty years later she appeared at the Penedo home with ten-year old Fanny at her side. They arrived in the United States along with the mass exodus of 125,000 Cuban refugees who flocked to the shores of Florida on makeshift rafts and overstuffed boats as part of the Mariel Boatlift, later called the Freedom Flotilla.

Although Fannie was culturally Cuban her skin color identified her as Afro-Cuban—amix of her Black father and Afro-Cuban mother. Cuba, like America during the Jim Crow era, was a country where racial stratification was the norm, with White citizens monopolizing economic and political positions and the majority of Black citizens occupying lower-class positions. Sonia and Fannie’s skin color made them part of the Cuban underclass. And, because race is a social construct and frequently used as a way for people to categorize others, in Cuba, Fannie was labeled a “Mulato”; when she came to America, she was labeled “Black.”

What happened to Fannie?

Sunny and Nely remember Fannie as a shy little girl who was never comfortable in her environment. For reasons that remain a mystery, she became a teenager with a private life and found another family with which to identify. By middle school she joined a gang and by the age of nineteen she became a single mother of two.

For some girls, their missteps become experiences that mold and shape character, eventual lessons for the next generation of family members, but not for Fannie. She never had the opportunity to grow into adulthood, complete her education, raise her children or share her experiences with others. At the age of twenty-three cervical cancer racked her body with pain and ended her life.

Sunny and Nely watched their niece fight to stay alive as she took her last breath. Tormented by witnessing a young woman suffer and die from a curable disease, they internalized their sorrow and spent years asking themselves, What if? What if Fannie had acquired the knowledge to make better choices? What if she had faith to realize that she could overcome any circumstance? What if she had the ability to serve others with the lessons she learned?

Until that afternoon when Nely asked, “Do you ever think about Fannie?” thoughts about their niece were kept private but once the weight lifted and the sisters began to talk, dreams for honoring Fannie took hold. They worked to find a way to demonstrate that her life mattered.

Through Penedo Charitable Organization, Sunny and Nely want to offer young girls an opportunity to realize their full potential—something Fannie was unable to do. The organization will identify at-risk middle school girls and guide them through an 11-year mentoring sequence, providing them with sustained tutoring, resources and financial support to a college, university or vocational education program.

In remembrance of Fannie, Penedo Charitable Organization will educate girls to become women of knowledge, women of faith and women of service.