Russian emigrant witnessed Cuban revolution

At age 92, Orest Forest - Forostovsky is his Russian name - spends his days at a desk in his room at Heritage Harbour. For the last decade or more, he's been writing his memoirs, using a magnifying glass like a shot glass to study old documents and fading photographs.

Mr. Forest looks back on a life lived on opposite sides of the world, during turbulent decades of history and times of blissful peace. He is someone who can equally appreciate a Chopin etude and the Communist revolution in Russia. He can talk rapturously about tropical flowers, and knowledgeably about the murderous bandits that terrorized his childhood hometown on the...