Went Fishing, Ended Up in a Cuban Prison | True Story | Ep 063

➡️ How a fishing trip turned into 9 months in a Cuban prison - and somehow saved this man's life.

In 1973, Gordon Hesse joined what he thought would be a two-week fishing trip to Jamaica. Instead, he found himself arrested by Cuban authorities, thrown into solitary confinement, and facing an uncertain future in one of Cuba's most notorious prisons. Decades later, he shares how this harrowing experience actually changed his life for the better.

📚 Featured Book: "Cuban Blues: How Captivity in a Foreign Prison Saved My Life" by Gordon Hesse

⏱️ CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Intro & Setup
0:43 - The Arrest: From Fishing Trip to Prison
3:01 - The Real Story Behind the Trip
4:34 - Moment of Capture
6:52 - The Interrogation
10:41 - Life in Solitary Confinement
13:13 - Transfer to El Castillo del Principe
14:49 - The Prison Riot & Military Tribunal
20:36 - Inside the Castle Prison
27:01 - Freedom and Transformation
28:56 - Final Thoughts & Lessons Learned

🔥 HIGHLIGHTS:

- How a simple navigation error led to their capture in Cuban waters
- Surviving 400-man prison cells in Castro's Cuba
- The desperate hunger strike that finally secured their release
- Why Gordon believes prison actually saved his life
- From prisoner to probation officer: How the experience shaped his future

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➡️ More about the guest:  Gordon Hesse
📚 Featured Book: "Cuban Blues: How Captivity in a Foreign Prison Saved My Life" by Gordon Hesse
https://www.amazon.com/Cuban-Blues-Captivity-Foreign-Prison/dp/B0DDHXJNQW

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Transcript

00:02 - Mark (Host)
so stacy, we have a lot of guests with whom I would love to swap lives. With right, they've done some amazing things. They have some amazing experiences. Some of them are really cool, right. Right, I mean no offense to our guests, but this is not one right? No, I agree because he went through some stuff we know other guests but I wouldn't swap with too. 

00:24 - Stacey (Host)
But but at the end of the day he's happy that he went through this experience. That's the crazy part of it. As difficult as this experience was for him. He sat here on this couch and told us it changed his life, and he has a book, cuban Blues how Captivity in a Foreign Prison Saved my Life. 

00:43 - Mark (Host)
Saved his life. Can you imagine you? Captivity in a foreign prison saved my life, saved his life. Can you imagine you wake up one morning, you go about your day and before night falls you're arrested in a foreign country, in prison. Your parents don't know. He was in his 20s when this happened. Nobody knew, they thought they were lost at sea and yet here they were, swept away and tucked away in prison with a sham of a trial, a dungeon, a dungeon and solitary confinement. This story's crazy. Yeah, and he really, technically, wasn't committing a crime. No, he wasn't he was with people who were committing crime. 

01:14
They had nothing against them, or you're right, they had nothing you're right, none of them committed a crime when they were arrested. That's, that was an. It's a very important but interesting part. 

01:24 - Stacey (Host)
They were captured put in jail Before they committed the crime. Right, they hadn't committed a crime. Well, Gordon wasn't going to commit a crime. 

01:30 - Mark (Host)
Right, he was going to write about it. He was the journalist that was accompanying them. This is a wild story. We don't want to give any more away, because I think you're going to love how he tells it, since he lived it and, uh, let us know, we'd love to hear more. All right, this is gordon hess. 

01:46
Enjoy hi, I'm stacy and I am mark, and this is the gurus at game changers podcast. Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. So imagine this you and your friends wake up one morning, you decide to go fishing, you jump on a boat, you head out. It's something you've done many times before. Everything seems fine, everything is fine any other day, except then, out of nowhere, you notice a gunship from another country bearing down on your position. They intercept you, they board you, they haul you all off to a foreign prison, throw away the key and you have no idea why. Sounds horrifying, right. Well, that, believe it or not, is just the beginning of what is an unbelievable real life story from today's guest, gordon hess, the author of a book. We have the book right here. There's the book author of the book cuban blues how captivity in a foreign prison saved my life. So there's stories within stories within stories here, and I can't wait to hear them all From Gordon Gordon. Welcome to the show, thank you. Thank you for joining us. 

02:50 - Stacey (Host)
Welcome Gordon, so great having you here today, Thank you. So let's go back to 1973. You were on a fishing boat, a shrimping boat. 

03:01 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I was asked to fill in as a crew member for a good friend of mine who was the skipper of the boat and he said he had two crew members and he didn't think they were that good and he wanted to have a backup. So I said, yeah, I'll go along. It would be a two-week journey on the vessel it was a converted shrimp boat and then I'd be able to get home and be with my parents in Lavalette, New Jersey, to help them open up their summer cottages. Well, that ended up being nine months in Cuba. 

03:33 - Stacey (Host)
So you were on your way to Jamaica on the shrimp boat. 

03:36 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
That's correct. 

03:37 - Stacey (Host)
And had you been doing that for a while? No, no. 

03:41 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
The skipper of the boat. His name was Chip, he had gone there before and he had come back with marijuana, so he had had a successful run there and at the last moment he said I don't trust the crew I have here. Would you come along? And he was a dear friend of mine and I was honored and it sounded like an adventure. I wasn't going to be involved in any of the marijuana part of it, I was just there to be crew and I thought this will be a great thing for me to propel my writing career with an article to Rolling Stone or something like that about how these these missions went on illicitly. 

04:23 - Stacey (Host)
I see. And then in the beginning of the book you talk about you're taking a shower on the boat and you look out the window and you see what. 

04:34 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I saw a powerboat coming up at a very high speed. It was probably maybe a half a mile away when I first saw it and I could see the waves from the bow coming off so quickly it was clear that they were hell bent on election and that's when I told the skipper, and then I looked at where we were and we could see the cottages in Cuba. 

04:57
We had gotten that far. Apparently, the fellow that was on the wheel watch, who is one of the guys that he was wary about, had apparently fallen asleep at the wheel. Oh, one of the guys that he was wary about had apparently fallen asleep at the wheel. Oh no, and that's how we ended up in the cuban waters. They boarded us. 

05:11 - Stacey (Host)
They found we had weapons, which included a rifle and a pistol yeah, wow exactly the tools you need to invade cuba you were there, the boat was coming rapidly at you. You turned around. You told everybody at that point you probably couldn't turn the boat around, right? 

05:26 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
no, there wasn't enough time to move and it's a slower boat. 

05:28 - Stacey (Host)
Right, they were going really fast. 

05:29 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Yeah, this was a chugger and the boat coming up on us was high speed. I mean, we could see the wave, the wake right coming out of it and it was flying and you knew that this was probably military, like what? I just knew it was something bad, something I didn't want. 

05:46 - Stacey (Host)
So what did you tell the captain? 

05:48 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
They ended up pulling up to us and told us to you know, kill our engines. And then they examined our boat and they found the guns and the rifles. And they said you're going to have to go into Nuevitas in Cuba and have your boat fumigated and checked out. To me bad things were happening, but they were still phenomenal. 

06:11 - Stacey (Host)
Right, right, were you scared. 

06:13 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, definitely, I didn't feel like I was on a good path. 

06:16 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, so wait, let me take a step back. You knew this was a drug run. I did you did you know it? But you considered yourself like an embedded journalist? Yeah, he wasn't a part of experience, right? Yeah, that's the way I saw it. 

06:31 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
That's not how the cuban no, no, no they they weren't really interested in any background, it was just we were in their waters and we look threatening in some way and there was probably an opportunity for them to benefit in some way and ultimately they kept the boat and did you try to deny, or did the captain try to deny what was happening, like why do you have a gun? 

06:52 - Mark (Host)
Why do you have guns, why do you have knives, why do you have $20,000? Were there any drugs on board? 

06:55 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
No. 

06:55 - Mark (Host)
So it was before any deal was made. 

06:58 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Yeah, you got it. 

06:59 - Mark (Host)
But what excuse, what explanation were you guys able to give? Just that we were on our way down to Jamaica. 

07:10 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
That's it, and literally I knew no more than that. Got it I was there for the ride and to examine it and get a good story. 

07:19 - Stacey (Host)
You had plausible deniability. Yes, you had no idea why the guns were there. You had no idea why the money was there. 

07:24 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Right, yeah, yeah, I did not know about the money at all, interesting what was that? 

07:29 - Stacey (Host)
do you know? What was the money? 

07:30 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
it was money to go to pay the people that were going to bring the marijuana on the boat. I mean, I was very removed from the details. It was like I I chip said I need somebody I can trust because these two guys they don't have a lot of experience on the waters. I had worked on clam boats in New Jersey. I knew how you handled a boat Not that I was an expert by any means, but it was something I was familiar with. And he started getting very, very nervous that he was working with people he didn't know what their capabilities were. 

08:04 - Stacey (Host)
And I think we should kind of explain to our audience, who might not know exactly what the climate was like in 1973. But of course, like marijuana was illegal back then, fidel Castro was not. 

08:14 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Yeah, fidel was in power. 

08:15 - Stacey (Host)
So it was a very different climate than it is today. 

08:19 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Very much so. 

08:19 - Stacey (Host)
Do you want to explain that a little bit? 

08:25 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, I don't know whether I'm somebody to describe the politics of the time right, but they were very wary of us and we were wary of them. Uh, I was just a little guy on a on a boat trying to get an interesting story and it's safe to say, more than I bargained for. 

08:38 - Stacey (Host)
It wasn't like the kind of thing where you would just go hang out in cuba no, no, we weren't going there with our party hats or anything like that no, had no intention of being anywhere near Cuba. 

08:48 - Mark (Host)
No, I had no plans on touching soil in Cuba. 

08:52 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I was going to go around, we were going to get a load and come back on it and I'd get off and then I'd head back to New Jersey to to be with my family again right so. 

09:01 - Mark (Host)
So the reality is, if I pull you over, let's say I have a, I'm a cuban vessel and you're in my waters and I, I board you, search and I find knives, guns, money I'm probably arresting you, yeah right, so it's pretty much the way they saw it interrogating you and I don't know what that looks like in the 70s in cuba. What does that look like if they're interrogating you? We? 

09:23 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
weren't really holding anything right but we had an intention yeah so the the problem as time went on was how do you prosecute people for something they were intending but they didn't do so. 

09:37 - Stacey (Host)
They had no case yeah well, so go back to like when they put how did it happen that they put you in prison? The boat then went to shore. 

09:47 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
We went to shore, they put us in a mansion and they gave us very hard chairs to sit on for three days and questioned each of us and during that time they examined all the things that were on the boat and we were very suspect. They had radios and sound systems that they had taken off the boat, thinking that they'd find micro dots or something like that on it. They said what are these? And he said they're radios or they were digital players. Dvds were new back then. That's how far we're going back in history. And he said they're just music. And the guy questioning him said all of them. And he said yeah, all of them. And he pulled out a disc from behind his back and said what about this one? 

10:38 - Mark (Host)
It's like we've got you in our grips now. 

10:41 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
And from there they took us and they put us in a place called G2, which was a state security prison, and I was in there in solitary confinement for a month. 

10:52 - Mark (Host)
Oh wow, how old were you. 

10:55 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
My 26th birthday was my first day in solitary confinement, wow. 

10:59 - Stacey (Host)
What did it look like in there? Was it like a like you would imagine a solitary confinement cell would look like? I have pictures in the book that show exactly what it was. 

11:06 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I can draw it from memory, but it was basically two heavy planks hanging on chains diagonally, and then there was a vent window, but they were louvered inside of each other so that you couldn't look out. You could just see light trickle in, and that was all I had for a month. 

11:26 - Stacey (Host)
Oh my God. So what were you thinking during that time? 

11:30 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Oh, my thoughts went all over the place, reflection on what I'd done wrong in life and how I was upsetting my parents because they didn't even know I was on a boat. So when they got the word that I was missing at sea, you can imagine they were rather jolted by that. And that's the kind of stuff that I I didn't know all that at the time, but it was plenty to feel bad about. 

11:52 - Mark (Host)
So all of you were reported missing. 

11:55 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
We were, and then a naval reconnaissance plane saw our ship in the harbor, and that's when the Cubans started replying to State Department questions. And the United States doesn't have direct diplomatic ties, or they didn't at that time so they had to go through the Swiss embassy and the Swiss would handle the negotiations. 

12:15 - Stacey (Host)
So for that month you were in that cell, they would bring you food, they would talk to you. Did you like have a writing utensil? 

12:22 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I was called out two times. One time was just to get the date on me. Did I have a military record? Was there something that I might be covering up? I was working as a lifeguard and a bartender, you know nothing. Dramatic really. Then I got speeches on communism and how wonderful it was and things of that nature and I thought, oh, they're going to put me before the cameras and I'll have to renounce my citizenship, or something like that. 

12:50 - Mark (Host)
So you were in chairs for days, just sitting in a chair. That was, I guess, your interrogation. They're asking you a ton of questions, thinking maybe you're a spy, and at some point I guess they get nothing out of you guys, because there's not much more than it was a drug yeah and um, then they throw you in the prison uh, the sequence was uh went from solitary confinement and they said they were going to release us. 

13:13 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
they put us in a mansion. They didn't know what to do with us. They were really confused. They put us in a mansion. A mansion, it was comfortable, it was on the waterfront, we could walk down to the water. We couldn't leave the premises. And then, after a month there, we kept saying, well, when are you going to let us go? And they said very soon, it takes time. And then, the next thing I knew, a prison wagon showed up after we'd been there a month and then they put us in the big prison, which was El Castillo del Principe, the prince's castle. 

13:45 - Mark (Host)
Yeah. 

13:46 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
And that's now a World Heritage Site. 

13:48 - Mark (Host)
So now you're transferred to the prison. 

13:50 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Mm-hmm. 

13:52 - Mark (Host)
What's that? Like, I mean, you had to be terrified. 

13:54 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, I found out after the fact. We came in. It's a big, star-shaped prison with a number of points on it, and one of the points we were on had, I found out afterwards, 400 men prisoners in one cell. If you can imagine that there was like three places for people to use for a toilet and showers and we would be released to have lunch uh, maybe dinner, I don't don't even remember that and that went on for months and ultimately, um, I got into a disagreement. I forgot something I had been told very early. I never insulted cuban's mother and I used the expression son of a bitch and guys started throwing things at me. Ultimately it led to a riot. So now I'm a ringleader. 

14:49
You know, little gentle me used to be on a lifeguard bench yeah, um, and eventually they separated the americans from the cubans and put us in a dungeon and we were there for a while. Then we went before a military tribunal and they tried to present evidence and they didn't really have any and we denied all of it and they were stuck on how to make a verdict and we went back to our cells and went on a hunger strike. Third day of the hunger strike they let us go. 

15:22 - Mark (Host)
Hey guys, thanks for listening. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review, give us a follow, subscribe, all those things. All those things. We love it because we read each and every comment and it helps shape the show, so we would appreciate it. 

15:35 - Stacey (Host)
Please, and back to the show. 

15:39 - Mark (Host)
Do you think the hunger strike had an impact or do you think it was just timing? 

15:42 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I think it was a combination of elements. We we didn't fit any of the profiles that they had already. 

15:48
We weren't holding anything illegal right our intentions could be questioned, but we hadn't committed any of those things. We're in a boat that dropped into their waters by accident, and that was pretty clear, and I think they figured we had been such annoyances between the riot and the hunger strike and different things like that. It was like let's get these three out of here. There were about 20 Americans that had been caught with boats or airplanes in Cuba. I think most of them had sentences of at least six years, wow. So they ended up putting us on a plane and flew us out through Mexico and then we landed in Florida. 

16:31 - Stacey (Host)
Did you have a lawyer, Like was anyone defending you? 

16:33 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
We met a lawyer about 10 minutes before the trial. 

16:37 - Stacey (Host)
Really. 

16:37 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, it was a presentation of facts. They'd ask us questions and we denied what they were saying. We denied things, and some of those things. That was dishonest. It's the only time in my life that I can recall that I lied. What did you lie about? No, we weren't going down to Jamaica. Oh, okay. 

16:57 - Mark (Host)
So just your intention. 

16:58 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Yeah, you lied about your intention. 

16:59 - Mark (Host)
What was your story? We were just down on the boat. 

17:02 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
They didn't want a lot of detail at that point because they weren't getting what they wanted, right, and they figured it's just going to make matters worse for us to be fumbling with it. At least, that's the way I see it. 

17:12 - Stacey (Host)
Whose idea was the hunger strike? 

17:14 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I think all of us agreed together. 

17:16 - Stacey (Host)
How did you know that would work? 

17:18 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, we didn't. We didn't. We figured we'd try. We knew the other people had been caught barehanded with marijuana, right, and we hadn't been caught with anything. We had a boat with a rifle and a pistol and they realized they couldn't prove anything if we denied what we had told them earlier. So we weren't being honest. But they weren't being honest with us either. 

17:48 - Stacey (Host)
I think it's the time when you can lie. I'm okay with that. 

17:51 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I really am. 

17:52 - Stacey (Host)
The other part of that is you said in your book at least the beginning of your book that you did have marijuana the night before. 

18:03 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
So you did have it as the boat was approaching, but someone oh yeah, that's right, one of the crew members that we were worried about. He had some on the boat. 

18:06 - Stacey (Host)
How smart was that that you guys got rid of that yeah. 

18:09 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, when I saw the boat coming up, I said you better get rid of that stuff that you had last night because it's not going to do us any good with these guys coming. And he, he threw it over and when they pulled up they knew that something had been thrown overboard. 

18:20 - Mark (Host)
Oh, they did. 

18:21 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
So they thought, you know, was it magnetic equipment or radio gear? They had no idea they thought you were a spy. 

18:29 - Stacey (Host)
Is that what you were? 

18:30 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
They didn't know what we were. We were just clumsy seamen really is what it came down to. And I'd worked on clam boats. I'd worked on hard boats like that and what they're like. I used to unload the docks in Point Pleasant, so I was more comfortable on a boat. That's why my friend Chip said at the last moment will you come in? I need somebody else. And he was a dear friend. 

18:56 - Mark (Host)
He'd done a lot of good things for me when I was in a slump and it was kind of a payback to him when you walked into that prison, I think you said 400 people in a cell, 401, so right, obviously the majority of them are Cuban. Obviously there's a small amount. I think you said 30 or 80, something like that. Americans, yep, were you received poorly because you were American? Were you at more risk because you were American? 

19:25 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
What was that dynamic of living in that world that evolved, especially after I got in a fight and I didn't make a good showing. The Americans got annoyed because up to that point, the impression the Cubans had is that we all knew karate and things of that nature. 

19:44
And I was kind of. I went after a guy and somebody collared me from behind and smashed the jar on my head and it wasn't a pretty show. And I got my head addressed and they put methylate all over and came back and the Americans said you really did a lousy job. Up till now they thought all the Americans knew jujitsu and we were martial arts experts and you kind of showed them we aren't and you've got to go back and beat that guy. And my head was pounding from earlier in the the day and they said you got to attack that guy and I said, well, point him out to me and I'll, I'll go get him. And we did and it caused a riot in the prison. Guards came in then they realized maybe we ought to segregate the americans, these troublesome it's a problem and then they put us in a dungeon so where's the dungeon? 

20:33 - Mark (Host)
you mentioned that they put you in a dungeon well, well it's. 

20:36 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I mean, you've got to realize this is a castle, basically, that had a moat around it, that had different wings on it and it had been used as a military base. It overlooked the Plaza de la Revolucion. When Fidel spoke, we could actually hear him on the loudspeakers. 

20:55 - Stacey (Host)
The dungeon, so like. To me, a dungeon is like where they put like dragons, like on Game of Thrones. 

21:00 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Is that what it looked like? No, this was a cell with one opening in. 

21:04 - Stacey (Host)
Could it have been very dangerous? 

21:07 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I think it was dangerous. It was. I mean, at one point the Cubans took us out to the countryside and up to that point the guards had been pretty slack-jawed. They didn't look very impressive, these guys. They were spit-polish guys, they had better guns than the previous guys. And they took us out in the country and they just said walk up the hill. And the four of us that were on the crew were walking up the hill and we're thinking these guys are going to gun us down. Do we run now or not? And we got up to the crest and there we saw la cabana, which is right at the the uh mouth of the harbor of havana, and that's where we were. We were kept there overnight. They shaved, shaved our heads and gave us my first professional shave. 

21:59 - Stacey (Host)
Who did that? 

21:59 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
That was in the prison. Did someone have like a straight? 

22:02 - Stacey (Host)
razor at your neck. 

22:05 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, I got a haircut and a shave. It's my first professional shave. The barber takes this stuff it's white and he puts it all over my face and it feels really, really good. After I said, kssso, what is this, what are you putting on my face? And the guy on the bench starts laughing and I said all right, what's the joke? He says oh, it's hemorrhoid cream. 

22:31 - Stacey (Host)
That's a crazy story, it really is. I really really have endured that story. 

22:35 - Mark (Host)
Could easily have gone the other way. Did all of you have the same experience in that prison, or was some worse or better? 

22:41 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
No, we really weren't allowed to do work details, we just kind of occupied ourselves. I did it by drawing pictures Some of them are in my book of what I observed there, what I remembered, trying to capture as much of it as possible. I think of the Joni Mitchell line reminders you're not good enough. That's pretty much the experience that I went through. I wasn't good enough and I had to be better as a human being. So I think the whole experience of being there, with all the uncertainty that went with it, was very valuable to me. 

23:16
I appreciated the value of my parents so much more. They were in their later years and if they had died while I was away I would have had that guilt the rest of my life. I got home, they were here and we had really good closure in the many years that they had. After I came back and the odd thing was right after I came back, I worked at the docks for a little bit and then found out there was a position as a probation officer. So I ended up walking into the prisons on your book. 

23:48 - Stacey (Host)
It says how captivity in a foreign prison saved my life. So is that what you mean when you say that you kind of examined yourself while you were there? Is that what? What saved you? 

23:59 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
There was a lot of time for self-examination, to appreciate how fortunate I'd been in life. I had two loving parents, I had some very wonderful advantages throughout life, and this kind of made me recognize a lot more of what I'd been given. It also taught me a little bit about being a little bit tougher myself, being a little bit more thoughtful of other people. My feeling is you got to take an unfortunate thing and find out where is the value in it, and I found a lot of value in the people that I met in knowing what it's like to go on a hunger strike and not knowing what the outcome is going to be, and, as it turned out, that was enough to get us out of the country. They realized they did not have anything solid to hold us. 

24:48 - Mark (Host)
So I mean, here you are probably facing the worst thing you ever faced, I assume, being in prison in Cuba. 

24:53 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Yeah, I can't think of anything to top that, that's for sure. 

24:58 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, so in that moment is when you realize were you headed in the wrong direction. Is that what you see yourself as? 

25:04 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
in your 20s. I don't want to say drifting, but I was kind of at an unsettled point in my life. I felt like I was going in eight different directions at one time and I really needed to have more of a focus on what I did, and I think that helped me kind of clarify for myself what I ought to be doing. I had so many good things laid at my feet. I really did. I was a very fortunate person. 

25:31 - Stacey (Host)
Do you remember the moment when they said you're free to go? 

25:35 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
We weren't sure to believe them so we didn't put any confidence. Until we went back to this building. They called the immigration building. It was for seamen that had been disassociated with the ship they were on, and we stayed there for a couple of days. We had been there previously when they told us they were going to let us go, and then they changed their mind so they didn't know what to do with this either. Bureaucratically, it's a mess. 

26:00 - Stacey (Host)
So when you got out, it was a blur. You weren't sure you were actually getting out. Did they put you on a plane? Were they with you? Was your lawyer there? Do you remember? 

26:11 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
that this immigration building was for people in transit and we stayed there. Then we met people the swiss embassy who said that this has been cleared and they got the passports that would get us into mexico correctly, because they didn't have direct flights from cuba to the united states, so we had to go to mexico, wait there a couple hours and then take a flight to um, to florida, and that's where we ended up. 

26:40 - Stacey (Host)
Did you look at your buddies and we're like we're out. Do you remember anything that you said to each other or? 

26:47 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Oh well, there's a lot of things we all disbanded. I never saw the other guys that were in the crew, except for my friend Chip. He was a lifelong friend. 

26:56 - Stacey (Host)
So the plane touched down in Florida and you were home. Did your parents come to get you? 

27:01 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
They did and they had to get back to New Jersey. So I had two or three days alone. That's where that picture in the cover of the book. That was three days after I got out of prison, I had come off of the hunger strike. So everybody said, boy, what happened? 

27:16 - Stacey (Host)
He's all ripped. 

27:16 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Eventually I came home, started working at the docks and boom, the opportunity to work with the probation department happened. I ended up running a volunteer program to work with kids that were basically slipping into the criminal system. 

27:34 - Stacey (Host)
What made you write the book? I mean obviously the story. But why did you write the book and why did you call it Cuban Blues? 

27:43 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, I wrote it because I knew that there was something in that experience that I think other people could appreciate what's your number one takeaway. 

27:48 - Mark (Host)
Here you are. All these years later, you reflect back on that entire experience top to bottom. Got on that boat that morning all the way fast forward to landing in that plane back in Miami. I learned. 

27:59 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I wasn't good enough and I had a long ways to go to be a better person. I came out and it just seemed like things unfolded right in front of me almost without effort. 

28:10 - Stacey (Host)
Bottom line is go, get captured and go to Cuba and become a better person. 

28:14 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Yes, yes, that's it. That's what we're saying Pick your country, pick your country, pick your country carefully. 

28:19 - Mark (Host)
I have a feeling maybe that's not really what we should be telling people to do. No, probably not. But the message, of course, is no matter how bad it is, there's something in there to be taken from it to propel you into a better space, I think that's it. 

28:30 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
I think we all have more resources than we realize. We don't tap them. We tend to give up unless we can't give up, and I was in a position where I couldn't give up. I had to keep going. I got some good advice along the way and I was with some good people. So I just feel like I'm happy with who I am today because of what I went through. 

28:54 - Stacey (Host)
What's next for Gordon Hess? 

28:56 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
That's part of what I'm trying to figure out. Part of it is getting my story out. I think there's a lot of things that can trying to figure out. Part of it is getting my story out. I think there's a lot of things that can be learned from it. 

29:03 - Stacey (Host)
Well, we really appreciate you coming on and telling us your story Great story. It's very uplifting to think that you could go through that type of turmoil and come out with this attitude. It's crazy. 

29:15 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
Well, I think the big lesson is you have more in your capabilities than you think you do. You have to be pressed to do it and you just have to make good judgments or recognize when you made a bad decision. How. How do you correct it? As best you can. Sometimes you can't. You can't let that stay with you the rest of your life, because because you'll be missing part of life well put, well put well put all right words to live by thank, thank you so much. 

29:41 - Mark (Host)
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. 

29:44 - Gordon Hesse (Guest)
It's been a wonderful opportunity. 

29:50 - Stacey (Host)
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