These were the children who were made to fly. They were slipped out of Cuba on
 the wings of a secret, labyrinthine mission.

 During a span of two years, the so-called Operation Pedro Pan exodus delivered
 to us 14,000 Cuban refugee children, the largest migration of unaccompanied
 minors in the hemisphere.

 This month marks the 40th anniversary of the first arrivals, who landed on Dec.
 26.

 Never mind the storybook identity bestowed upon this exodus. The clandestine
 mission that defined their childhood years has involved more mystery than it has
 magic.

 Largely triggered by parents' fears that the Fidel Castro government would take
 possession of their children and indoctrinate them, the exodus came to stand for
 Cuba's ultimate heartache -- the separation of children from their parents.

 The children were scattered across the United States, about half of them going to
 live with relatives, others landing in orphanages, foster homes and boarding
 schools.

 For decades they lived in relative obscurity, as exile history regarded theirs as an
 inevitable exodus.

 But in the last 10 years, many of the now-adult Pedro Pans began to dig up their
 roots and challenge the fairy tale. Their questions led to long-lost childhood
 friends and then to deeper questions about the role of the U.S. government and
 the Catholic Church.

 Gradually, Pedro Pans started uncovering the names and faces of people involved
 in the covert operation.

 ``It was almost like a biological need to know. Pedro Pans all over the world got
 this feeling of needing to be involved, honestly questioning how this happened,''
 recalls real estate agent Elly Vilano Chovel, a Pedro Pan child who has made it
 her mission to locate the scattered children of her migration and to piece together
 the behind-the-scenes story of their flight.

 With her Operation Pedro Pan Group, she set out to document their shared
 history. So far, she has located some 2,000 of the Pedro Pans, scores of
 success stories among them. More than this, she and other now-adult refugee
 children have brought to light the complex network of Cuban exiles and
 Americans who assisted in their escape. Their research has sparked everything
 from books to lawsuits -- one distinguished child of Pedro Pan sued the CIA for
 documents pertaining to the exodus -- to the collection of oral histories.

 And this year, as the Pedro Pan generation manifests a diverse identity, the story
 of Cuba's most famous refugee child stirred great soul-searching and plenty of
 debates among many Pedro Pans.

 In the heightened months near the end of Elián González's stay here, passionate
 e-mails flew between many of them.

 As for Chovel, who took heat for advocating the child's return to his father in Cuba,
 a visit with the boy sent her back to her childhood, when she landed in a foreign
 world at age 14.

 During her visit, last Dec. 28, she told Elián the story of Peter Pan and about the
 children who came with her from Cuba.

 ``He kept asking me to teach him how to fly like Peter Pan,'' she recalled last
 week in a Coral Gables cafe, where she sipped hot Chai.

 ``He kept saying, `I want to fly, I want to be Peter Pan.' He said this over and over,
 until I asked him why he wanted to fly. He whispered, `So I can go wherever I
 want to.' ''

 The memory still brings tears to her eyes.

 ``It also brought a shocking awareness that nothing has changed,'' she
 concluded.

 ``Families continue to be split 40 years later.''

 That experience brought to surface all the old feelings of separation, the pain she
 and other Pedro Pans have lived with for years and the sad realization that they
 still cannot fly.