Father’s Day: Miguel Grau and the letter to his wife that shows him as he was

There is no Peruvian who does not know the Grand Admiral of Peru Don Miguel Grau Seminar. We all know about his career, his dignified time in Congress, his victories in the war, his nobility in the face of the defeated enemy and his immolation aboard the “Huáscar.” However, today “Father’s Day” is well worth taking a look at the selfless dad he was for his children. To do this, let’s look at the letter that on May 8, 1879, he dedicated to his wife when she had to go out to face the enemy. Let his handwriting and his handwriting reveal to us the exemplary father he was.

“Since life is precarious in general and even more so since one is going to expose it at every turn for the sake of the country in a just war, but which will be bloody and prolonged, I do not want to go on campaign without first informing you through this letter several orders: starting with the first, which consists of begging you to grant me your forgiveness in case you believe that I had intentionally offended you.”

At the beginning of his letter we see the feeling of a man who begins to express his last wishes and who does not want to leave any doubt about the love he professes for his wife. There are only 5 months left until he delivers his life in defense of the Homeland.

This is the letter that Miguel Grau Seminary sent to his wife.

“The second undertakes to ask you to attend, with great care and tenacious vigilance, to the education of our idolized children. To achieve this essential task I must advise you, or rather recommend to you, that all the little that I leave of fortune be used to give you all the instruction that is possible; only inheritance that I have always wanted to leave them. This, then, is my only and last will, which I earnestly ask you to observe religiously, if the supplication of a dead man can deserve any respect.”.

With these words, a 45-year-old father who was facing fatality was concerned about ensuring what he considered was the most important thing for his children’s future: their education. This was the most important of the orders he made to his wife Dolores Cabero, eleven years younger than him. In the letter, Miguel Grau Seminario’s will is to ensure that all of his assets (not substantial, by the way) are dedicated to his education. That was the inheritance that he wanted to leave to his eight children. The oldest, Enrique, was 11 years old, the youngest, Miguel, only a few months old. Among them were Oscar, Ricardo, María Luisa, Carlos, Rafael and Victoria. There were 10 children of the Grau-Cabero couple, two had died prematurely.

In that letter, the father of the family then scrupulously makes the accounts of his possessions and points out debts pending to be paid: “Everything I have of fortune, acquired hon-ra-da-men-te, is reduced to the following: twenty-five thousand soles in Cédulas of the Mortgage Bank, thirty-one thousand three hundred soles in Cédulas of the Internal Debt, four shares of one thousand soles each of the National Bank of Peru, one thousand soles with their respective interests held by the house of Canevaro, to whom I am indebted for two hundred pounds sterling, which I requested for Anita Quezada, whose document was signed by “It’s my birthday in December of this year.”

The “Knight of the Seas” is rightly considered the paradigm of the exemplary Peruvian and rightly consecrated as the “Peruvian of the Millennium.” His figure takes on even more brilliance when we notice that everything transcendent he did in his life was achieved without neglecting his condition as a loving, responsible father, concerned about the education of his children and who could proudly emphasize to his wife and family that The resources he left behind for his final will to be fulfilled were acquired “honestly.” The underlining comes directly from the hand of the “Peruano del Mileno”: it is Grau’s word.