DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Shy, Plump Teen to Music Megastar

Imagine This: You are born in Havana, Cuba, where your father is a motorcycle policeman assigned to the escort detail for President Fulgencio Batista and his family.

 When Fidel Castro overthrows the Batista government in 1959, Cuba is no longer safe for you and your family and you find refuge in the United States.

 Life is very difficult for the Cuban refugees in Miami because there are social problems as well as money problems. Many Americans don’t want so many Cuban refugees in their country and they treat you badly.

 But you’re determined to succeed and you work very hard, always managing to be at the head of your class. And when things get tough, your mother and your grandmother teach you to find comfort in music.

 When you’re ten, your father is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (a serious and disabling disease that attacks the brain and the spinal cord) and you become his primary caretaker while your mother works during the day and takes classes at night to become a teacher.

 For the next six years you become a little mother to your family, taking care of both your younger sister Rebecca and your ailing father who can no longer walk.

 When things become too much for you, you find temporary escape by locking yourself in your room and playing your guitar. You find that you can temporarily forget your problems while you sing along with the ballads and pop songs you love. Instead of crying, you express your pain through your music.

 During your teen years you’re quiet, shy, and “a little chubby.” Your music becomes more important than ever as your father’s condition worsens, and when you’re sixteen, he has to be moved to a Veterans Administration Hospital.

 During your senior year of high school, you and some girlfriends put together a band. You receive some unexpected help when the father of one of the band members invites Emilio Estefan, a popular band leader in Miami, to listen to your band and give you some tips.

 You meet Emilio again a few months later at a wedding where he and his band, the Miami Latin Boys, are playing. He asks you to sing a song with his band and a few weeks later, he asks you to join his band permanently.

 After you join his band, it develops a different and very special sound, and Emilio changes the band’s name from the Miami Latin Boys to the Miami Sound Machine.

 You and Emilio become very close and you’re married in 1978, three months after you graduate from the University of Miami. Throughout the 1980s you and the band not only continue to record Spanish-language songs but you also begin to record more and more English-language songs. 

 Through your music you shatter cultural and gender lines across the globe and become a superstar in the world of music. You win seven Grammy Awards, placing you among the most successful crossover performers in Latin music and you’re included among the top 100 best selling music artists with over 90 million albums sold worldwide, 26.5 million of those in the United States alone.

 With all that you have accomplished, you still have one unfulfilled aspiration: to perform a free concert in a free Cuba.

                                       “In my music I like to focus on things

                             that bring us together, not things that tear us apart.”

                                                   Goria Estefan (1957-    )

 Excerpted from Dare to Dream!: 25 Extraordinary Lives by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

 For More about Gloria Estefan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqYGIWWTURk

 Giving Back: Gloria Estefan is not only passionate about her music, she is also a passionate and tireless worker for those with problems. She and Emilio organized a benefit concert that raised millions of dollars for the victims of Hurricane Andrew and she has also worked hard for many years to help battered and abused children in Miami.

 Did You Know that Gloria Estefan was painfully shy and that the most difficult part of being in a band was overcoming her stage fright?

 Something to Think about: Do you have a problem that stands in the way of your pursuing your dream?

 Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week’s true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!