Carlos Fuente Sr.
Son of Arturo Fuente who reopened the family business in Ybor City in 1946 and led it through fire, revolution and relocation to the Dominican Republic; died in 2016.
Carlos Fuente Sr. was born in Tampa and grew up around a family cigar business that had been closed since a 1924 fire. He reopened it in Ybor City in 1946 and took ownership from his father in 1958, reportedly for a single dollar. For the next two decades he ran a small operation making cigars from Central American leaf as the American industry consolidated around machine production.
The 1970s brought two displacements. Production moved to Nicaragua and was destroyed there during the revolution in 1979, after which the family relocated to Santiago in the Dominican Republic in 1980. That move, made under duress, placed the company in what would become the largest premium cigar-producing country in the world, and the Santiago factory grew steadily from there. The family arrived in Santiago with little more than its rollers and its brand.
He worked alongside his son Carlos Fuente Jr. for the rest of his life and the Don Carlos line is named for him. Carlos Fuente Sr. died on 5 August 2016 at the age of 81. His exact birth year is not consistently reported and is therefore omitted. He was among the last figures in the industry whose working life spanned the Tampa cigar era and the modern Dominican one.