Armando Gregorio Terjera, left, and his wife Violet chat inside their New Whiteland home in 1973.
Daily Journal Archives
News from around Johnson County as reported on Nov. 30 in the pages of the Daily Journal and the Franklin Evening Star from the last 111 years.
On this day in 1973, one of the stories on the front page of the Daily Journal was about a Cuban couple relocating to Johnson County and becoming U.S. citizens.
Armando Gregorio Terjera was at one time one of the most wealthy businessmen in the Matanzas province of Cuba with one of the largest import-export operations in the country, and he was a senator.
But by 1973, he and his wife Violet resided in a modest home on Sweetbriar Drive in New Whiteland. Atop a small TV set in the living room of their home sit two American flags. They were citizens now.
Terjera lost all his wealth and his political career in his native Cuba in the overthrow of the Cuban government by Fidel Castro 15 years earlier.
Now 57, Terjera was unable to work as emotional diabetes had contributed to the loss of most of his eyesight and his general health was only fair. His wife taught at the Atterbury Job Corps Center near Edinburgh.
They said they are a “very happy couple.” They looked back at the plight of 15 years earlier and their family’s struggle in the following years without bitterness.
“We’re just proud to be Americans,” Armando Terjera said.
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Other memorable Johnson County stories from this day
2004
The city of Greenwood was stuffing sewer bills with a letter urgently asking residents to support plans for a proposed aquatic center.
1996
A century-old, handwoven Turkish silk rug was expected to fetch more than $20,000 at an Edinburgh auction.
1993
A fire at a White River Township cabinet store caused $500,000 in damage and spilled chemicals into a creek.
