Not too many people outside of Miami knew the late Mario Rubio.
There’s no statue of him in Washington, not even in Miami. There’s
no college building, courthouse, or highway named after him.
Perhaps there should be. He did some pretty great things under more
adverse circumstances than most Americans can even imagine.
Rubio died Saturday at Baptist Hospital in Miami at age 83
after what many people, but almost certainly not Mario himself,
would have considered a hard life. Mario went to work at an age
when others are going to elementary school. He worked into his late
seventies, mostly as a bartender (a most under-appreciated
vocation).
Until age 32 Rubio worked in his native Cuba. But after El
Jefe Maximo came down out of the mountains, stole Mario’s country,
and turned it into a leftist prison, Mario managed to get his
family to the United States, one of his great enduring gifts to
them. He worked at hard jobs that don’t pay much so that his
children — he had four with his wife of 61 years, Orio — could
have better.
Well, they have had better. One of those children, Marco,
born after the Rubios had made it to America, has achieved a
successful career as a lawyer and a politician (managing the latter
without having to wear fatigues and carry an automatic weapon).
Marco Rubio, former Speaker of the Florida House, is Florida’s
Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat. He praised his father in
this way:
My father knew hard work and struggle from very early in
his life. His mother died when he was only nine. The day after his
mother was buried he went to work with his father and did not stop
working until he was 78 years old.
He was by far the most unselfish person I have ever known,
always focused on others, and never on his own well-being. He was
especially determined to provide his children with opportunities he
himself never had.
My dad worked as a street vendor, security guard,
apartment building manager, and crossing guard. But for most of his
life he was a bartender, and by all accounts a great one. But the
greatest success came from the two most important jobs he ever had:
husband and father.
He was very proud of my public service. And over the last
18 months he became an expert channel surfer, constantly searching
for my next television interview.
I was blessed to be raised by a world-class father. And I
thank God for allowing my father to live long and healthy enough to
see that the sacrifices he made for us were not in vain.
The Rubio campaign will pause now, as the Rubio family
deals with matters of more elemental importance than politics. But
it won’t pause long. There will be an election in less than two
months — though the heavens fall. And Marco Rubio has based his
conservative campaign on protecting those things about America that
allow people like his father to work miracles for their
families.
Mario Rubio saw left-wing bullies steal his country. And
just because the current band of left-wingers in power in America
don’t wear fatigues and carry automatic weapons (and their own
nannies won’t allow them to smoke cigars), there are still plenty
of parallels that Marco Rubio has drawn attention to on the
campaign trail. Along with Mario Rubio’s own personal qualities, it
was America’s long-established traditions of limited government,
personal freedom, and reliance on capitalism that allowed Mario to
be the success he was, and to help lift his children even higher.
These are traditions under assault today.
Happily, there are lots of Mario Rubios in America, some
with last names that end in a vowel, others not. You’ve got your
Smith, Washington, Koslowski, Feldman, Esposito, Chin, Hostetler,
Nguyen, Many Goats, et al. They, not the political elites that
strive to boss them around and take what they’ve earned, are what
makes America the great and exceptional place it has always been,
and could remain if we have the wisdom and strength to keep it that
way. It’s right that we pay tribute to them at a sad time for the
Rubio family.
RIP Mario Rubio.
