Widow with frozen US fortune dies in poverty

McCarthy, born in Newfoundland in 1900, moved to Cuba in 1924 when she married her husband, a wealthy Spanish businessman. She became a member of Cuba's high society, co-founding the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra and an orphanage for boys. Her husband died in 1951, but she stayed in Cuba.

She was not able to touch the money her husband left her after the US imposed a trade embargo against Cuba in 1962, and lived in near poverty for years. In 2007, after a Canadian diplomat intervened, Washington allowed her to withdraw just $96 a month. Mrs McCarthy had to postpone treatment for respiratory problems when the US did not transfer extra money allowed for medical purposes in time.

She died on Friday morning and in the afternoon, two dozen friends gathered in her home. A candle burned atop the old Steinway piano where she had given music lessons. They accompanied her humble coffin, wrapped in grey cloth, in a funeral procession to Columbus Cemetery, where she was buried next to her husband. "Mary McCarthy was perhaps the best welder of the friendship between the people of Cuba and Canada," said the Canadian consul, Mark Burger. (Reuters)