Macon Magazine

G IVING UP HAS NEVER BEEN AN OPTION for Barbara Baldwin-McNulty. When she faces an obstacle, she figures out how to get through it. That mindset has led her to become the president and CEO of Dean Baldwin Painting LP, an independent aircra painting company that has provided expert painting services to the aviation industry for more than 58 years. She oversees a company that operates in five states, employs about 400 people, and occupies more than 560,000 square feet of aircra hangars and administrative space. Her most recent endeavor was opening four brand-new aircra hangars at the Middle Georgia Regional Airport in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her successes have not come easy. Baldwin-McNulty was born and raised in Havana, Cuba, by her mother, Maria Teresa Frias, and three big brothers. Life was pretty good — until it wasn't. "I remember the Bay of Pigs invasion because the bombs were dropping. I woke up and it sounded like continuous thunder," Baldwin-McNulty said. "I got out of bed and looked for my mom and brothers. They were all sitting together, watching as the airplanes circled off in the distance dropping bombs." Baldwin-McNulty was only 9 years old during the Bay of Pigs Incident in April 1961 — too young to comprehend the full scale of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cold War tensions between Castro and Eisenhower, and this failed US-backed invasion of Cuba by Brigade 2506. She remembers seeing military tanks parked outside of her Catholic school in the days leading up to the incident, but it wasn't until the bombs dropped on April 17 that she knew her home was no longer safe. Her mother knew it too. In 1961, Maria Teresa fled with her children, deciding their safety was worth losing everything they owned. By October 1962, a quarter of a million Cuban refugees had crossed the 90-mile stretch from Cuba to the United States. Over the next few decades, 750,000 more would join them. Like many of these families, Baldwin-McNulty and her family immigrated to Miami, Florida. "It was quite frightful," Baldwin-McNulty said. "Everyone always says to me, 'You're such a strong woman.' But when I started school here in the United States, if my mother was not at that fence line a er school to pick me up, I would be bawling because I was so scared." FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: DEAN BALDWIN CELEBRATES THE GRAND OPENING OF THEIR MACON FACILITY IN 2021 58 maconmagazine.com | APRIL/MAY 2023

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