about Lorraine and Alan

Lorraine is a great, great granddaughter of Perucho Figueredo.  She was born in 1951, in New York City, the oldest of six children born to two artists, both of whose families originated in Spain, but whose passages from Spain to the US could hardly have been more different.

We have traced Lorraine’s father’s family back to a time when, as Sephardic Jews, they were forced to leave Spain, and found refuge in Holland.  Several generations later, in 1831, Lorraine’s great, great, great grandparents sailed from Amsterdam to Philadelphia, later settling in New York City.  There they were shopkeepers and merchants and inherently Jewish, but as time went by, they adapted to their new environment and produced engineers, anthropologists, lawyers and artists.

Lorraine’s mother’s family left Spain voluntarily, the earliest known ancestor arriving in Cuba some time before 1514.  The first Figueredo came from Spain to Jamaica in about 1525, and his great grandson was taken - according to one version of the story - in chains, to Cuba in 1650.  Despite this inglorious start, the family became prosperous landowners in Bayamo in the province of Oriente.

When Perucho Figueredo was executed by the Spanish in 1870 for his part in the Ten Years’ War, his immediate family was deported from Cuba.  First they went to New York, then to Key West, and, soon after, Lorraine’s great grandparents moved to Colombia.  Two generations later, in 1938, Lorraine’s mother returned to New York and, when she met and married Lorraine’s father, the circle was complete.

Today, Lorraine is an expressive arts therapist working with cancer patients at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina.  She is the founder of a program called The Healing Arts Network which brings complementary therapies including music, art, horticulture, photography, pet therapy, etc, etc, to her patients.  She has been invited to speak at several national conferences on the healing arts and is presently working towards a master’s degree in liberal studies.

Alan, in contrast, has too much time on his hands.  Retired after thirty years as an engineer, he now spends his days either in the garden or his workshop, and his evenings writing web sites, when he could be writing the next great American novel.