156 The Villamil family history has, for the last three generations, been deeply entwined with cane sugar. Milton Hershey completed Central Hershey in 1918. In addition to his completion of the Sugar Mill, Hershey constructed an electric railroad that ran between Havana and Matanzas. The railroad was used mainly to bring sugar cane to the mill. The refined sugar was sent to the Port of Habana for shipment to the USA. Hershey’s Cuban holdings were later sold to Cuban Atlantic Sugar Company in 1946. Jose Antonio Villamil, an MIT educated Chemical Engineer lived in Varadero section of Habana, Cuba. He was the Mill Manager of Central San Antonio, a smaller mill owned by Hershey. His younger brother, Alberto Villamil, was also an MIT educated engineer, who worked for Central Hershey, The National Sugar Refining Company and later Florida Sugar. After the revolution in 1959, the Villamil brothers fled to the United States where Alberto stayed and worked for Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida as a chemical engineer until he retired. Jose Antonio’s career took him a little farther south, he moved to Guatemala with his wife and three sons. He worked for the Bacardi family’s sugar factory “El Salto” along with two other mills before eventually retiring to Miami, Florida. CHAPTER 13 right: Jose Antonio above: Hershey Sugar, Cuba