OPERATION PETER PAN

Three of our deceased classmates (Ramiro Sigler, Franciso Esquivel and Humberto Sanchez) came to Montana as part of "Operation Peter Pan" What follows is a June 12, 2013 article from the Helena Independent Record outlining their arrival and first months in Montana.
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Dozens of Cubans who temporarily called Montana home in the 196os will gather for a reunion this weekend in Helena. 
They are known as the "Pedro Pan" or Peter Pan children, who were part of one of the largest recorded exoduses of unaccompanied minor children in the Western Hemisphere. According to the website pedropan.org, Cuban parents feared Castro was going to indoctrinate their children into his Marxist-Leninist social programs, and they asked the Catholic Welfare Bureau of Miami to intervene. 
The U.S. State Department waived visa rights for the children, and eventually more than 14,000 were flown to Florida between 196o and 1963. After spending about a year housed in makeshift camps, the children were distributed among the 100 cities in 50 states via the Catholic Church network. About 150 of them came to Montana between 1961 and 1963, said Diane Langefus, who was 11 when two of the Cubans landed in her class. Eventually, she said, Helena was home to at least 66 of the Cuban children. The Catholic Diocese of Helena distributed the rest of the children to foster homes, orphanages or other facilities in Whitefish, Kalispell and Butte. 
"They would get to Helena, stay at St. Joseph's Home until the Catholic Diocese put them through the system," Langefus said. 
The diocese bought the old Toole Mansion — now home to the Jackson, Murdo and Grant law firm — and turned it into Brondel Hall. Some of the boys stayed there and left their signatures on a wall, where they remain today

For more information here are three additonal Links