Patti Culp, executive director of the Alabama Travel Council, envisions a day when all Americans will be able to travel to Cuba -- preferably, she says, on luxury cruise ships shoving off from the Mobile docks. This year, Culp traveled to Washington, where she lobbied Alabama's congressional delegation to lift the travel ban.
"We feel like it will create new reasons for people, especially people driving from up north, to think of Alabama as a destination," she said.
Lyons, the port director, believes that if the embargo is lifted, the state will be well-positioned to rebuild Cuba' crumbling infrastructure. He noted that Alabama is home to three major foundries that could produce sewer and water pipes.
And Ron Sparks, the state commissioner of agriculture and industry, hopes a new U.S. policy will allow Cubans to replace their famously jury-rigged jalopies with shiny new Hyundais -- specifically, the Sonata sedans and Santa Fe SUVs built by Alabama laborers at the company's $1.4-billion factory.
Sparks has visited Havana on numerous trade missions and has already seen a few Hyundais zipping around its ancient streets.
"Why are they bringing them in from Korea when it's 800 miles to Havana from our plant in Montgomery?" he asked.
Sparks, a Democrat, takes credit for ramping up Alabama's Cuba trade after his election in 2002. His office now says that Alabama leads the nation in the total amount of agricultural goods produced for shipment to Cuba, generating $450 million in economic activity per year and accounting for as many as 2,000 jobs.
To Sparks, the Cuba debate as defined in South Florida -- with its ideological fireworks and decades-long personal grudges -- is simply alien. "I don't know enough about it to have an opinion on it," he said.
Instead, he talks about the warmth and goodwill of the Cubans he has met, and the benefits of free trade for them and the people of Alabama.
"I grew up in the Cold War," Sparks said. "I thought Russia was the worst thing that could ever happen to America. But I also remember the day President Reagan stood on the wall and said, 'President Gorbachev, tear down this wall.' I supported that. Now let's tear down the wall between us and Cuba."
The ties between Alabama and Cuba go further back than one might expect. Founded by French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, Mobile was a Spanish city before it was an American one, and Mobile is dotted with reminders of vestigial links to Havana: A bronze likeness of D'Iberville stands near the riverbanks, gazing toward Havana, where he was buried in 1706. A matching statue stares back across the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba.
In the 1990s, a number of locals formed the Society Mobile-La Habana, and persuaded the city government to declare Havana its sister city.
Michael Feore, a past president of the society, keeps a stash of old shipping records in a box at home. They are evidence of the schooner fleet his grandfather once used to sail lumber to Cuba, a common transaction for Mobile businessmen before the time of the Castro dictatorship.
Feore, 70, is also one of a handful of older Mobilians who cherish the memory of a pre-revolutionary Havana that seemed especially magical by Alabama standards.
"I visited when I was 19, and it was just the most interesting and delightful place I'd ever been," he said.
If the cruise line ever sails back that way, he said he plans to be aboard.
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richard.fausset@latimes.com
