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About the Author
MATT LAWRENCE
Tales from the Tropix
 It was the early 1960's when the adventure seeking Florida native Matt Lawrence first experienced people fleeing Castro's tyranny. "I was a little kid," he'll tell you, often over a cold beer at his favorite raw bar in the Florida Keys, "and I was hearing the name Fidel Castro, over and over on the television news."
During those same years, Florida was famous for launching rockets that astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn were riding upon into orbit; and at the same time; President John F. Kennedy was pointing another type of rocket towards Cuba in response to Castro's (and President Khrushchev's) threat of pointing nuclear rockets towards South Florida and the United States.
The threat was so real there was a Nike missile base just three miles from Lawrence's boyhood home. "People in my neighborhood were building concrete bomb shelters in their backyards," reminisces Lawrence. "I was never afraid though. I guess my parents shielded my brother and me from that terror; the terror of Castro pointing Soviet made nuclear warheads at us, just ninety miles from our house."
"Soon after that, I remember hearing the words Freedom Flights and Pedro Pan on the news; and shortly thereafter; my classmates changed."
"All these kids were coming to my elementary school class with nametags on, but they couldn't speak English. You could just sense their fear of the unknown, and their not being able to communicate. Our teachers just did their best to make them feel comfortable;" Continues Matt.
"And then we found out that sometimes these children were here without their parents; and they were living with relatives or placed with Catholic Services through the Archdiocese in Miami.
My first lessons of oppression came at a very young age," Lawrence laments. "I was just too young to understand the significance." Neither South Florida, nor the author, was ever the same.
 Dying to Get Here combines the torrid truths of the Great Cemetery of Castro's revolution and the author's knowledge of the islands of the Caribbean. Knowledge he gained while certifying SCUBA Instructors throughout the Bahamas and the Florida Keys as he explored those islands skirting the treacherous Florida Straits.
That same knowledge is what prompted the phone call to Matt from a dive buddy; an airline pilot, with a pure soul, a huge heart, and the idea to save human lives in 1992.
Dying to Get Here is based on Matt Lawrence's personal experiences as director of special projects for Freedom Flight International during the early 1990's, allowing this South Florida teller of tales from the tropix to take you inside the cockpit and out onto the sea in this excitingly fast ride; giving you, the reader, a bird's eye view of a human tragedy so gigantic that Lawrence himself would have found it hard to believe, had he not witnessed it for himself!
Photo Credit: Debra L. Amon (photo of Matt with Cuban balsero oar, top right)
 
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Matt Lawrence schedules speaking engagements, book signings, school functions and interviews with limited advanced notice. Feel free to e-mail him your request.
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