Refugee has made lots of headway since Cuba

The Courier-Journal Tuesday, June 27, 1989

By Martha Elson

For her wedding in Cuba 31 years ago, Amelia Garcia wore a bridal dress and jeweled headpiece designed and custom-made in Paris. She remembers her church wedding in Havana as a lavish and joyous occasion.

But her wedding and the birth f her two children were among the last happy experiences for Garcia and her prosperous family in Cuba. In 1962, they came to the United States as refugees from the Communist takeover. Her father had worked as an industrial chemist for an oil company in Cuba and her husband worked in his family's lithography company.

"They took everything we owned. There was no way of surviving other than becoming Communists. The day that we left Cuba, we knew we were not going back. At that point, there was nothing there for us to look for."

"We had to start from scratch. We came with nothing."

Her family has become well-established in this country. And Garcia is continuing a family tradition of using her skills to help create happy occasions for others.

After working on the side as a bridal designer and consultant for 25 years, Garcia opened a business called Amelia's Originals in the Plainview area this spring. She also was installed recently as president of the St. Matthews Business and Professional Women's Club.

The family, which lives in the Plainview area, moved from Baltimore to Louisville eight years ago when her husband, Rafael Jorge Garcia, was transferred. He has degrees from Columbia and Johns Hopkins universities and is chief ecology and utilities engineer with Joseph E. Seagram and Sons.

Amelia Garcia worked for 25 years in the health insurance field and left a job with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kentucky to open her business. Amelia's Originals, which operates by appointment is located in the Expressions hair and beauty salon 10213 Linn Station Rd*. (No longer at this address. See our contact page for current info)

Garcia's specialty is designing and making one-of-a-kind headpieces, which to her is "creating a work of art." She also makes other bridal accessories and serves as a wedding consultant and planner for the ceremony and reception.

Garcia's mother, a home economics teacher in Cuba, studied fashion design and made her own wedding dress and clothes for Garcia and her sister. In turn, Garcia studied art at Havana University and designed and made dresses for her own daughter, also named Amelia.

More recently, she designed her daughter's bridal headpiece, shown in a wedding photo on Garcia's desk at Amelia's Originals. She also has examples of custom-made headpieces on display and a scrapbook filled with photos of other brides who have work her headpieces. Among her recent clients was Jane Kottkamp of Louisville, who wore a fabric, flower-covered, headband-style headpiece Garcia made for her June wedding.

"I just loved her work," said Kottkamp "Her service is very personalized. She does exactly what you want."

"Oh, my gosh, it was incredible," said Barbara Sherman Hubbuch, another June bride who had her headpiece made by Garcia. "It was very, very nice."

Maria Fernandez, who plans to be married in August, took Garcia a picture of a headpiece she liked in a bride's magazine.

"I had gone out looking at stores, but I didn't really see anything I liked," said Fernandez. "She said she could do it. She added a lot of her ideas. Her handiwork is just excellent. It's… prettier than the picture was."

Garcia's daughter, Amelia is staff pediatrician at a San Francisco military hospital, where her husband is a neurologist. Her son, Capt. Rafael Jorge Garcia Jr., is a military aviation officer and West Point graduate who will soon be transferred with his wife from Alabama to Fort Cambell, KY.

Garcia said both children chose professions in the military to defend the freedoms in this country that the family lost in Cuba.

On a different level, Garcia is enjoying the freedom to work at what she loves and help plan a new beginning for others. "It's very rewarding to see a bride very happy. That is the most rewarding. I know that I am making that wedding the way they want."