Honoring a parent and a generation of immigrants

Growing up, most children remember playing outside with their friends or going to the playground, but for brothers Reggie and Richard de Villiers, their playground in the early 1980s was the Otto G. Richter Library on the University of Miami's Coral Gables Campus. "Our parents and our aunt came to Miami from Cuba with nothing and with no other family, so when we were in grade school, there was limited money for after-school care and no other family members to look after us because both our parents had to work,” said Reggie de Villiers. "Fortunately for us, our mother, Mercedes, was part of a group of Cuban women hired by the University in the mid-1960s to work in the library. She worked in the cataloging department while our aunt worked in the binding department. It's a job my mother held for 46 years before retiring at age 81. Unfortunately, she passed away two years later,” he said. Gladys Gomez-Rossie was part of that same group of Cuban women.