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Castro at 12 asked fdr for 10 dollars { June 18 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9876746%255E2703,00.htmlhttp://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9876746%255E2703,00.html
Castro, 12, to Roosevelt: Send me a tenner
From The Times
June 18, 2004
FRANKLIN D. Roosevelt received thousands of letters from children during his White House years, but one has emerged this week of particular note: a plea from a 12-year-old Cuban boy named Fidel Castro asking the then US president to send him some cash.
The handwritten letter, sent in 1940, concluded with an elaborate signature and the words "Your friend".
It asked Roosevelt to fulfil one of the young Castro's great desires: to possess a $US10 bill. "Never I have not seen a ten dollars bill green American and I would like to have one of them," the future communist, dictator and revolutionary wrote. He included a return address at the Colegio de Dolores in Santiago, Cuba, where he was studying at the time.
The White House had an office to deal with all the president's correspondence and Castro received a reply but, to his disappointment, no $US10 bill.
Psychologists may now debate whether this slight planted the seeds of Castro's anti-American zeal, but the 10 US presidents he has taunted since he came to power 19 years later might wish that the money had been sent.
In 1959, Castro's guerillas, including Ernesto "Che" Guevara, toppled the seven-year military rule of then Cuban president Fulgeneio Batista. At 32, Castro became the country's leader.
In 1975, he told a reporter that although the money never arrived, he became a hero at school when the acknowledgement from a US diplomat was received. The school posted it on the notice board for a week.
Castro's letter is one of several children's requests to the president that have gone on display at the US National Archives and Records Administration.
Others include that of a boy named Andy Smith, who wrote to Ronald Reagan in 1984 to ask for federal funds to help to clean his bedroom.
The president himself gave the boy a handwritten, tongue-in-cheek reply. In it, he noted a new effort -- the Private Sector Initiative Program -- set up to encourage volunteers to tackle local problems rather than relying on government help. "I'm sure your mother was fully justified in proclaiming your room a disaster," Reagan wrote. "Therefore you are in an excellent position to launch another volunteer program to go along with more than 3000 already under way in our nation. Congratulations."
Another letter to go on display is from three girls in Montana begging Dwight Eisenhower to spare Elvis Presley from conscription and, specifically, to save his sideburns. "My girlfriend's (sic) and I are writting (sic) all the way from Montana. We think its (sic) bad enough to send Elvis Presley in the Army, but if you cut his sideburns off we will just die!"
Sadly, the sideburns fell victim to a regulation GI haircut.
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