The plaque was hard to miss: It was four feet high and three feet wide, made of marble quarried from what was then known as the Isle of the Pines, the smaller island that sits under the crook of western Cuba and is today called La Isla de la Juventud. It was adorned with a bronze medallion designed by an 18-year-old Cuban sculptor named Manuel Garzón Molina. The bronze was said to come from a cannon used by García during Cuba’s fight for independence.

Inscriptions picked out in gold leaf celebrated García as the major general of the “ejercito libertador de Cuba” — the liberating army of Cuba — and as a master Mason.

Most in attendance were Masons, including two dozen visitors from Cuba, who had raised the funds for the memorial and arranged for its installation at the hotel where García had died at age 59 on Dec. 11, 1898.

Noted the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia in its annual report: “The visit of these brethren from Cuba was one of the most enjoyable events of the year.”

García fought in three wars against Spain. During the first he found himself in a tent, surrounded by the enemy. Earlier in the day, García had shown his revolver to a comrade, noting that it held six bullets: five for the enemy, “and one for me.”

With Spanish forces closing in, García made good on his promise: He raised the barrel to his chin and pulled the trigger. An explosion outside caused him to flinch. The bullet missed his brain and emerged from the center of his forehead.

“It gave him headaches for the rest of his life,” said author Donald Tunnicliff Rice, who has written about the Spanish-American War. “If a story that survived is to be believed, his first words were, ‘Can I have some soup?’ ”

Thirty years later, García was again at war, commanding troops in the east of Cuba. After the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War, he was sent by Cuba to the United States to serve as a representative of the newly independent country.

“He first went to New York City and this is probably what did him in,” said Rice. “He shook 1,000 hands. Everybody wanted to shake Calixto García’s hand. He picked up a cold, which turned into pneumonia in Washington, and he died.”

García’s body was interred briefly at Arlington National Cemetery before being returned to Cuba.

García’s posthumous fame in the United States was thanks to a man named Elbert Hubbard, a former traveling soap salesman who founded the Roycroft Arts and Crafts community. In 1899 he published an essay entitled “A Message to García.” In it, Hubbard celebrated a young U.S. Army officer named Andrew S. Rowan who during the Spanish-American War had been directed by President William McKinley to take a secret message to García, whose exact whereabouts in the wilds of Cuba were unknown.

Rowan became Hubbard’s idea of the perfect underling, a no-questions-asked go-getter unafraid of a challenge. Wrote Hubbard: “It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing — ‘carry a message to García!’ ”

Thanks to Hubbard, “carry a message to García” became shorthand for “overcome any obstacle for your boss.” The essay was printed as a pamphlet and distributed across the country. It was a favorite of captains of industry, many of whom saw it as a goad to their feckless employees. President Richard Nixon was caught on tape using the phrase during the Watergate scandal.

Author Rice debunks the message-to-García myth in his book “Cast in Deathless Bronze: Andrew Rowan, the Spanish-American War, and the Origins of American Empire.”

In fact, Rice said, there was no message. Rowan had merely been tasked with finding García. And it was not a secret mission, at least not after Rowan blabbed about it during a stop in Jamaica, after which he was followed by journalists.

The Raleigh Hotel was torn down in 1964. García’s Wikipedia entry includes this line: “Today, this tablet resides at the private residence of one of Gen. García’s direct descendants.”

That’s possible. García had many children — legitimate and illegitimate, Rice said — and many descendants live in Florida. Rice thinks it’s likely that someone has the plaque but isn’t publicizing the fact, not wanting to be bothered by the curious.

“He’s still a big hero in Cuba,” Rice said.

And Hubbard, whose exaggerated tale of American derring-do in search of the Cuban general became so popular? He died with his wife in 1915 when a German U-boat sank the RMS Lusitania.