Armando Codina
An unaccompanied Cuban child landed on the shores of the United States, a change of clothes in his hands and a small, almost-worthless Cuban coin in his pocket. The year was 1961. The boy was fourteen years old and knew not a word of English.
Today, he is a remarkably successful businessman, a civic leader, and, above all, an exceptional family man. His name is Armando Codina.
…
Codina grew up the son of a well-off Cuban politician, the president of the Senate. His parents were divorced before he was a year old. Nevertheless, he lived a very materially comfortable childhood.
“I was kind of a wild kid who had no worries,” Codina recalls. “I had motorcycles, I had horses… I never paid attention to anything other than having a great time.”
Yet this, in retrospect, proved unsatisfying. “The thing that I would have wanted more than anything is… for [my father] to have loved and honored my mother. That would have been the most important thing.”
…
On January 8st, 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, and shortly thereafter began deposing all democratic statesmen. Among those sent into exile was Armando Codina’s father who wound up in Puerto Rico, leaving his son with his ex-wife in Cuba.
Of this, Codina recalls, “My father came to see my mother, and I remember because he was raising his voice, and I wasn’t used to hearing that. So when I got closer to the conversation, I remember my father saying to my mother, ‘We’ve made a grave mistake. This guy [Castro] is a Communist. I’ve gotta leave again.”
Fear spread throughout the country as Castro’s Communist policies became increasingly evident despite his denial of adherence to Marxian principles. Soon Armando’s mother, like many other parents at the time, feared that Castro would begin drafting the youth for military service in Angola. For this reason, she slipped him out of the country as a part of Operación Pedro Pan by which the CIA enabled close to 15,000 Cuban children to escape to Miami.
Many parents including Codina’s mother “found an underground railroad that the kids could get out with fake visas… and be sent to a camp for unaccompanied Cuban children,” as Codina put it himself.
Fourteen-year-old Armando Codina thus found himself landed in the midst of a foreign country with a foreign language, but with much opportunity despite the challenges to be faced. Codina told me one of his first memories of the States: “So I had one Cuban quarter, and I put it in a Coke machine and it gave me a Coke and American money back, and I figured, this is a hell of a deal.”
…
Soon after his arrival in America, Armando Codina was transported to an orphanage in New Jersey. “The first night I spent there was the worst day of my life. When I got there I saw the name, and it is similar to Spanish, so I knew it was an orphanage. But I wonder why I was there because I have a mother and a father... there were rough kids there; I took abuse,” he recalled.
“Every day I used to get up and say, ‘God, what are they gonna do to me today?’ … They tore my shirt, I got beat up – it was not a happy time … but when I left there, I thought to myself, ‘I’m never gonna let anybody abuse me again.’”
Though it was an unpleasant experience, Armando Codina says, “It was good for me; it was a character-builder ... You can make any bad experience [sic] and learn something from it… Rather than letting circumstances shape you, you need to turn around and make lemonade.”
…
After three years in the orphanage and in and out of foster homes, Codina’s mother finally arrived in the US and was reunited with her son. She, like her son years earlier, did not know English and had little that she could do to earn a living.
“I went to work so that she didn’t have to work, so I don’t have a college education,” Codina said. He got his first job bagging groceries at a Winn-Dixie. At the same time, he found work telling at a bank where he got his first taste of managing money. In his interaction with certain patrons, doctors, he discovered a problem. Medical billing systems were primitive and unwieldy.
So Codina took out a loan of $60K and started a company for computerized billing. Several years down the road, he sold it for over $5M.
“That was all the money in the world to me then,” he said. So he went into civic service to give back to the country that he professes to have given him so much.
…
“The highest calling in life depends on who you are – for me – it was to be a committed civic servant volunteer,” Codina told me over dinner with his slight, but distinct Cuban accent.
Codina spent a number of years fighting gambling, homelessness, and domestic violence. Today he is still on the board of Community Partnership for the Homeless and Partnership to Advance School Success, among other social initiatives. This desire to give back he passed along to his children when he had a family of his own.
“All of my kids are involved civically... they all have a social conscience.” One of his daughters, Allie, for instance, made a documentary about her cousin who has Downs Syndrome which “shows that people with disabilities have some of the same hopes and aspirations as you and I have,” as Codina described it.
…
After his stint in civic service, he returned to business and grew to be quite successful through many prudent development endeavors, and he also served on the boards of iconic American corporations such as GM, Merrill Lynch, and AMR. His company, Codina Group, Inc., merged with Florida East Coast Industries, in a $270M deal.
No such success could have been even remotely imaginable in Communist Cuba. Armando Codina is therefore immensely grateful to America for the opportunities it has enabled him to make and take.
“I could never repay what this country has done for me,” Codina said humbly.
That evening after dinner, he took me around to the dock behind his house. There, in the water sat a sizable boat, and on its stern, painted in stylized letters was its name: “What a Country.”
…
There are many have argued that the American Dream is dead or at least not available to most people.
“If I did it, anybody can do it,” Codina told me. I could almost feel the vitality emanating from him across the table. Given that energy and will to overcome obstacles, even the most disadvantaged in American society could fight and change their position. It is hard to imagine a situation more disadvantaged than that of a teenage boy from Cuba with no real possessions to his name in an orphanage and without the ability to speak English. Yet today one such boy is now a giant in American business. All it took was drive, a drive not only to take advantage of opportunity but to make his own opportunity.
Yet the American Dream is a delicate thing, Codina believes. It can be killed in various ways, he posited. Governmental regulation and taxes, he believes, can discourage or punish people who seek this success. On the other hand, and, as Codina would have it, more importantly, the American Dream becomes worthless if it leads one to lose his or her priorities, and the greatest of these is the family.
“It doesn’t matter how successful you are if you mess up your family life.” Codina looked at me evenly. His steady expression underscored the firmness of the principle of which he spoke.
“So, family,” I began to ask, “to you is–”
“Everything,” he interjected, “everything.”
…
“My number one priority is my family,” Codina reiterated. His actions further bolster his words. At the very beginning, Codina worked two jobs for the sake of supporting his mother. Later, Codina refused to take his computerized billing company public despite solicitations by people on Wall Street because he felt it would take him away from his family, causing him to have to travel more. In addition, he would lunch with his mother at her home often five times a week to maintain the family bond as an integral part of his life. Today, Codina Partners is not only run by Armando Codina himself, but also one of his daughters and a son-in-law.
Family, for Codina, runs beyond blood ties, it would seem. His driver and groundskeeper Julian, an El Salvadoreño expatriate who has worked for the Codinas for thirty years, is treated as though a member of the family.
“Sr. Codina es una buena persona,” Julian told me with a broad grin. Everyone else I met who knew the man echoed that sentiment.
Armando Codina explained, “People in life treat you the way you treat them. I treat these people [workers such as the waiters in the restaurant] with equal amount of dignity as the CEO of a company. But I am even more careful with these people because somebody at the bottom of the totem pole can’t defend themselves.” It is this care that Codina takes to be good to others, especially the vulnerable, that generates much respect among those who know him.
“Look at Julian, look at Carmen [his secretary] – see how protective they are [of me]… people are a reflection of how you treat them.” It is akin to a familial bond. And this pact, this family value, Armando Codina places above all.
…
“See those security men,” Codina pointed as he turned into the gated community where he lives, “I am maybe the only person who stops to talk with them every day.” He slowed and stopped the car and rolled down the window to chat with the men on duty.
“How you like the weather today?” Codina asked. “If you don’t like it, you just let me know,” he quipped, grinning and waved them goodnight.
Thomas Z. Horton, a Texan freelance writer, is currently studying at Princeton University.
Today, he is a remarkably successful businessman, a civic leader, and, above all, an exceptional family man. His name is Armando Codina.
…
Codina grew up the son of a well-off Cuban politician, the president of the Senate. His parents were divorced before he was a year old. Nevertheless, he lived a very materially comfortable childhood.
“I was kind of a wild kid who had no worries,” Codina recalls. “I had motorcycles, I had horses… I never paid attention to anything other than having a great time.”
Yet this, in retrospect, proved unsatisfying. “The thing that I would have wanted more than anything is… for [my father] to have loved and honored my mother. That would have been the most important thing.”
…
On January 8st, 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, and shortly thereafter began deposing all democratic statesmen. Among those sent into exile was Armando Codina’s father who wound up in Puerto Rico, leaving his son with his ex-wife in Cuba.
Of this, Codina recalls, “My father came to see my mother, and I remember because he was raising his voice, and I wasn’t used to hearing that. So when I got closer to the conversation, I remember my father saying to my mother, ‘We’ve made a grave mistake. This guy [Castro] is a Communist. I’ve gotta leave again.”
Fear spread throughout the country as Castro’s Communist policies became increasingly evident despite his denial of adherence to Marxian principles. Soon Armando’s mother, like many other parents at the time, feared that Castro would begin drafting the youth for military service in Angola. For this reason, she slipped him out of the country as a part of Operación Pedro Pan by which the CIA enabled close to 15,000 Cuban children to escape to Miami.
Many parents including Codina’s mother “found an underground railroad that the kids could get out with fake visas… and be sent to a camp for unaccompanied Cuban children,” as Codina put it himself.
Fourteen-year-old Armando Codina thus found himself landed in the midst of a foreign country with a foreign language, but with much opportunity despite the challenges to be faced. Codina told me one of his first memories of the States: “So I had one Cuban quarter, and I put it in a Coke machine and it gave me a Coke and American money back, and I figured, this is a hell of a deal.”
…
Soon after his arrival in America, Armando Codina was transported to an orphanage in New Jersey. “The first night I spent there was the worst day of my life. When I got there I saw the name, and it is similar to Spanish, so I knew it was an orphanage. But I wonder why I was there because I have a mother and a father... there were rough kids there; I took abuse,” he recalled.
“Every day I used to get up and say, ‘God, what are they gonna do to me today?’ … They tore my shirt, I got beat up – it was not a happy time … but when I left there, I thought to myself, ‘I’m never gonna let anybody abuse me again.’”
Though it was an unpleasant experience, Armando Codina says, “It was good for me; it was a character-builder ... You can make any bad experience [sic] and learn something from it… Rather than letting circumstances shape you, you need to turn around and make lemonade.”
…
After three years in the orphanage and in and out of foster homes, Codina’s mother finally arrived in the US and was reunited with her son. She, like her son years earlier, did not know English and had little that she could do to earn a living.
“I went to work so that she didn’t have to work, so I don’t have a college education,” Codina said. He got his first job bagging groceries at a Winn-Dixie. At the same time, he found work telling at a bank where he got his first taste of managing money. In his interaction with certain patrons, doctors, he discovered a problem. Medical billing systems were primitive and unwieldy.
So Codina took out a loan of $60K and started a company for computerized billing. Several years down the road, he sold it for over $5M.
“That was all the money in the world to me then,” he said. So he went into civic service to give back to the country that he professes to have given him so much.
…
“The highest calling in life depends on who you are – for me – it was to be a committed civic servant volunteer,” Codina told me over dinner with his slight, but distinct Cuban accent.
Codina spent a number of years fighting gambling, homelessness, and domestic violence. Today he is still on the board of Community Partnership for the Homeless and Partnership to Advance School Success, among other social initiatives. This desire to give back he passed along to his children when he had a family of his own.
“All of my kids are involved civically... they all have a social conscience.” One of his daughters, Allie, for instance, made a documentary about her cousin who has Downs Syndrome which “shows that people with disabilities have some of the same hopes and aspirations as you and I have,” as Codina described it.
…
After his stint in civic service, he returned to business and grew to be quite successful through many prudent development endeavors, and he also served on the boards of iconic American corporations such as GM, Merrill Lynch, and AMR. His company, Codina Group, Inc., merged with Florida East Coast Industries, in a $270M deal.
No such success could have been even remotely imaginable in Communist Cuba. Armando Codina is therefore immensely grateful to America for the opportunities it has enabled him to make and take.
“I could never repay what this country has done for me,” Codina said humbly.
That evening after dinner, he took me around to the dock behind his house. There, in the water sat a sizable boat, and on its stern, painted in stylized letters was its name: “What a Country.”
…
There are many have argued that the American Dream is dead or at least not available to most people.
“If I did it, anybody can do it,” Codina told me. I could almost feel the vitality emanating from him across the table. Given that energy and will to overcome obstacles, even the most disadvantaged in American society could fight and change their position. It is hard to imagine a situation more disadvantaged than that of a teenage boy from Cuba with no real possessions to his name in an orphanage and without the ability to speak English. Yet today one such boy is now a giant in American business. All it took was drive, a drive not only to take advantage of opportunity but to make his own opportunity.
Yet the American Dream is a delicate thing, Codina believes. It can be killed in various ways, he posited. Governmental regulation and taxes, he believes, can discourage or punish people who seek this success. On the other hand, and, as Codina would have it, more importantly, the American Dream becomes worthless if it leads one to lose his or her priorities, and the greatest of these is the family.
“It doesn’t matter how successful you are if you mess up your family life.” Codina looked at me evenly. His steady expression underscored the firmness of the principle of which he spoke.
“So, family,” I began to ask, “to you is–”
“Everything,” he interjected, “everything.”
…
“My number one priority is my family,” Codina reiterated. His actions further bolster his words. At the very beginning, Codina worked two jobs for the sake of supporting his mother. Later, Codina refused to take his computerized billing company public despite solicitations by people on Wall Street because he felt it would take him away from his family, causing him to have to travel more. In addition, he would lunch with his mother at her home often five times a week to maintain the family bond as an integral part of his life. Today, Codina Partners is not only run by Armando Codina himself, but also one of his daughters and a son-in-law.
Family, for Codina, runs beyond blood ties, it would seem. His driver and groundskeeper Julian, an El Salvadoreño expatriate who has worked for the Codinas for thirty years, is treated as though a member of the family.
“Sr. Codina es una buena persona,” Julian told me with a broad grin. Everyone else I met who knew the man echoed that sentiment.
Armando Codina explained, “People in life treat you the way you treat them. I treat these people [workers such as the waiters in the restaurant] with equal amount of dignity as the CEO of a company. But I am even more careful with these people because somebody at the bottom of the totem pole can’t defend themselves.” It is this care that Codina takes to be good to others, especially the vulnerable, that generates much respect among those who know him.
“Look at Julian, look at Carmen [his secretary] – see how protective they are [of me]… people are a reflection of how you treat them.” It is akin to a familial bond. And this pact, this family value, Armando Codina places above all.
…
“See those security men,” Codina pointed as he turned into the gated community where he lives, “I am maybe the only person who stops to talk with them every day.” He slowed and stopped the car and rolled down the window to chat with the men on duty.
“How you like the weather today?” Codina asked. “If you don’t like it, you just let me know,” he quipped, grinning and waved them goodnight.
Thomas Z. Horton, a Texan freelance writer, is currently studying at Princeton University.