Family, friends, former Cuban political prisoners and a scattering of 40- and 50-somethings who came here as ``Pedro Pan'' kids in the 1960s filled St. Dominic's Catholic Church on Thursday to bid farewell to Ramon Grau Alsina, elder statesman of the Cuban exile community.

No cemetery service was held. Instead, his family cremated the remains of the man known as ``Mongo'' to save his ashes for burial in a post-communist Cuba. Grau died at age 75 on Tuesday.

In testament to the anti-Castro activist who spent 21 years in Cuban jails, a phalanx of similarly aged ex-political prisoners lined the front row of the church. They stood silently in a final salute throughout the more-than-hourlong Mass led by Monsignor Bryan Walsh.

With Grau's older sister Polita also in the front row, Walsh paid tribute to the brother-and-sister team who distributed U.S. visa waivers in Havana after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. They were part of a covert group that helped thousands of children come to this country ahead of their parents in Operation Pedro Pan.

``He touched my life. But I never actually knew our story until he was liberated from prison,'' said Raul Nuñez, 51, a businessman who came to this country as a Pedro Pan child and spent a chilly winter in Boston before being reunited with his family in Miami.

Nuñez called Grau ``humble, modest.'' His Miami home was always open to the adult Pedro Pan kids who sought his advice or to listen to him speak about Cuban politics.

``He was always willing to listen to what we had to say,'' added another former Pedro Pan child, Carlos Alamulla, 48, who mostly liked listening to Grau.

``He talked about Cuba, like it was a little piece of cake,'' he said. ``He put us back in touch with our roots.''

Mourners included at least 19 former Cuban political prisoners -- including his sister, Polita, who was jailed for 14 years.

Among the 19, they had served a combined 304 years in Cuban jails.

Grau, the nephew and then adopted son of 1944-48 Cuban President Ramon Grau San Martin, was sentenced to a 30-year jail term in 1965 for plotting to kill Fidel Castro and organizing a pro-CIA island spy ring.

He was released in 1986.

Nephew Frank Grau, a Miami businessman, said that because his uncle served as personal secretary to the Cuban president during World War II, ``Mongo'' Grau had made the acquaintance of such celebrated world figures as Franklin Roosevelt, Juan Peron and Winston Churchill.

So it was with ease that the former political prisoner bantered with Ronald Reagan during a 1987 visit to the White House to commemorate Human Rights Day.

It was just months after Grau's release from jail, the nephew said, and Reagan made a pledge to the ex-prisoner:

``I will give you a free Cuba,'' the American president said.

``Mongo replied,'' according to his nephew, ``Very nice. And I'll give you Miami back.''

People sitting in the church nodded in recognition as Walsh, the Graus' co-conspirator in the Pedro Pan operation, recounted the facts of his friend's life -- his early political upbringing, his human rights and anti-communist activities.

Fellow ex-prisoner Jorge de Guzman, who was jailed for 12 1/2 years and came here on the same 1986 freedom flight as Grau, said few in the church at 5909 NW Seventh St. learned anything new from Walsh's words. They simply came to pay tribute.

``We know who was Mongo Grau: He was a person who fought for Cuba,'' he said. ``And he now rests in peace -- knowing that he did what he had to do for our country.''