Category: Miami Stories

My parents came to Miami in November 1944 from Massachusetts. My father, Demosthenes John Mekras, had just graduated from the seminary and married my mother, Exacousti “Toula” Panagiotopoulos.

My father was ordained into the Greek Orthodox priesthood in January 1945 at the Saint Sophia Church in downtown Miami. They worked together to perpetuate Greek Orthodoxy and in 1948, the magnificent Saint Sophia Cathedral that stands today was built on Coral Way and 24th Road.

I was born in 1946 at Jackson Memorial Hospital (my brothers George and John were born there, too). We lived in the parish home next door to the cathedral until 1959 when we moved into our own home on 22nd Road. We three still live in Miami and so do all of our children! We are native Miamians.

We grew up going to Bayfront Park Pier 5, where boats would come in with fresh fish. Fishermen would clean their catch on wooden tables and we would watch the really big fish be weighed on the hook. We grew up going to Crandon Park with friends for picnics. While on Key Biscayne, we would swim late into the day, go to the zoo and have fun on the rides.

Saturday was the day for the Parkway Movie Theatre with a bagged lunch and yo-yo contests during intermission. Afternoons were spent with a hammer and screwdriver trying to crack open coconuts, playing with the water hose, gathering insects in jars, climbing trees and riding our bikes everywhere.

Christmas was Burdines downtown on the breezeway with Santa, cotton candy and the ferris wheel. New Year’s Eve was the parade down Biscayne Boulevard with beautiful girls twirling batons, artistically decorated floats, high school and college marching bands and lots of fun. New Year’s Day was the Orange Bowl football game and parking our car at Ahern-Plummer Funeral Home for free.

Easter was a photo with the bunny and picking out brightly colored chicks at the Five and Dime to take home as Easter pets. The religious aspect of Easter was Holy Friday with Coral Way closed to traffic for a procession symbolizing the funeral of Christ as observed in the Orthodox Church, and midnight services for the Resurrection. I mention these two services not only because my father was the celebrant, but because so many non-Orthodox Miamians would gather on the sidewalks to observe this beautiful tradition. Our church still celebrates these services today.

My mother owned Cynthia’s-Coray on Miracle Mile from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s (before malls) and my Saturdays were spent trimming the display windows and going to Jahn’s and Cookies with friends. Dean’s Waffle Shop across from Sears was a favorite, too.

My brother George raised homing pigeons. He would take the bus on Coral Way to the public library at Bayfront and let the birds go, get on the bus and go home to wait for the pigeons to fly home. They always did! My brother John delivered the Miami News weekday afternoons on his bicycle.

Our schooling was at Coral Way Elementary, Shenandoah Junior High and Miami Senior High. Both of my brothers are University of Miami medical school graduates. Our mother chaired many school carnivals in the beautiful garden area of Coral Way. We learned how to swim at Shenandoah Park swimming pool. My brothers played football for Miami High. Those were the days when the Orange Bowl stadium was filled to capacity with Miami residents attending games with good sportsmanship and great half time shows.

Old Cutler Road was covered with crabs on rainy days. A wonder was to see manatees come up to the sea wall on South Bayshore Drive (now Brickell Bay Drive) and feed them veggies. The snakes at the Serpentarium were huge! It was a treat to go to the Big Wheel and Hot Shoppes drive-ins and have your food brought to your car window. It was fun going to Royal Castle and counting how many little hamburgers (now called sliders) you could eat for 15 cents each.

Gas “wars” were when gas was down to 19 cents a gallon and lines would be around the block at Brooks Gulf on 20th Road. WEDR radio station did foreign language programming and on Sunday mornings my mother hosted “Grecian Melodies,” the first and only Greek language radio program in Miami. There was no I-95 and driving to Sunset Drive from our home in the Roads was an excursion. South Miami seemed so far away! US-1 was a lazy drive.

I love Miami. My parents loved living in Miami and always said how fortunate they were to be assigned here and able to raise their family in this City Beautiful. Old Miami offered me a wonderful childhood. So many great Miami memories! After the death of my father in 2005, the City of Miami designated the street in front of Saint Sophia “Rev. Demosthenes J. Mekras Way” and my family is appreciative of this honor.

Miami was a wonderful place to grow up and I am sad that many of our childhood highlights and traditions are no longer. It is a much different city today from the one we had in my youthful days, but it is still a great city to call home, especially since my seven precious grandchildren, Ariana, Joana, Jonathan, Natasha, Kristian, Evana and Ella, also call Miami home.

There’s a saying by Aristophanes: “A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers.”

I have felt “at home” in the many cities where I have lived and worked, but I have never known a city like Miami, with its strong culture of giving and responsibility mixed with care.

My love for Miami developed many decades ago. My family began visiting Miami Beach in the 1940s, and we fell in love with the area, eventually moving here when I was a young boy in 1954. We settled in the Pinecrest area.

Along with my three older brothers, I loved to fish and dive, and often rode my bike to our favorite spots in the area by Old Cutler Bay, known today as Matheson Hammock and Gables Estates.

Back in the day, my friends and I would sneak into Arthur Vining Davis’ estate (at the time) to get to the stretched canal on his property that led to the bay, where we could catch snapper, grouper and lobster. Davis was an industrialist and philanthropist with extensive real-estate holdings in Florida, and would often come out in his wheelchair to greet us with a warning to be safe.

I attended Pinecrest Elementary School, Palmetto Jr. High School, and graduated from Palmetto Sr. High School in 1970. This was a very special time for me because I met the love of my life – my wife, Dawn.

I can truly say that I had a very happy childhood growing up in South Florida.

I left Miami in 1971 to go to college, and after one year, following my brothers, I joined the armed forces. Three of us were in the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. Two of us, including myself, were helicopter pilots, while my other brother was a Green Beret.

Military service was followed by a move to Atlanta, where I completed college and received an MBA at Georgia State University, both with honors and as part of the GI Bill. It was there that one of my professors secured an interview for me at Merrill Lynch.

This is where a new professional journey began.

At Merrill Lynch, I was a stock broker and later a producing sales manager, which led to a full-time managerial role. After several years, my wife and I left the South and spent the next 4 ½ years in the Windy City, Chicago, where my responsibilities included managing several Merrill Lynch offices.

After a successful run in Chicago, I was transferred for the next two years to Princeton, N.J., at Merrill Lynch’s corporate headquarters.

A few years later, I was thrilled to head home to Miami to oversee Merrill Lynch’s Miami-Dade operations. After a 30-year absence, we were back and couldn’t have been happier. We bought our beautiful home in Gables by the Sea and our first boat, which we named “Miami Twice.”

My first day back at work in Miami was Sept. 11, 2001, the day of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was a difficult time wherever you were in the world, but certainly here in Miami there was a peculiar vibe. Everyone was looking for an outlet to express their emotions. Our employees channeled theirs by building a house for Habitat for Humanity in Naranja in south Miami-Dade.

Week after week, we had unbelievable volunteer turnouts. There were so many volunteers that we had to buy extra hammers. The house was built in record time. Dawn and I were there with a packed crowd every Saturday, ready to take on any job, despite learning that I was not destined to be a roofer! This endeavor launched the “Culture of Community” among the Merrill Lynch family in Miami that lives on today.

After being promoted to regional manager for the South Florida area in 2006, I was asked once again to move – this time to New York City. However, in 2009, the chance to lead the Latin American division brought me to and through Miami frequently, and I returned permanently at the end of 2010.

I retired this year, ending my 31-year career with Merrill Lynch, I’m proud to have dedicated my entire professional career to one company. When reflecting on my life, I’ve always said: “One wife, one job!”

Dawn and I are thrilled to be home in Miami, for the third time in the same house with the same boat we bought in 2001. We can’t think of a better place to celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary.

While there are more chapters to write, we are looking forward to some well-deserved time off for fishing and diving in the warm, beautiful Miami waters and to continue a frequent topic of discussion: Should we rename our boat “Miami Thrice?”

My family came to this country in 1959, three months after Castro took power. We lived at Northeast Second Avenue and First Street for three months. We used to love it there as it was very close to the Post Office and Central Baptist Church, where we attended.

Afterwards we moved to where all the newly arrived Cubans were living – Southwest 14th Avenue and Second Street. I went to Ada Merritt Jr. High. At that time I didn’t know a word of English but I was eager to learn. In a few months I was getting excellent grades and by the time I graduated in June 1961, I was a member of the National Honor Society and graduated in the Top 20. I also received the American Legion Award. I was the first female and Non-American to receive it.

My father bought his first car a year later – a 1953 Pontiac in three shades of green. Before getting the car we would walk or take the bus downtown. We especially loved going to the basement of Richard’s Department Store on Thursday nights. One of our outings was going to Bayfront Park (now Bayside) on Sundays to watch the boats coming in with the catch of the day. The library, a band shell and the Japanese garden in the park also were great places.

I remember walking to the first McDonald’s in Miami on Northwest Seventh Street and 32nd Avenue, where you could get a whole meal for under $1. And who could forget the Royal Castle deals – two small hamburgers, a birch beer and a doughnut for 99 cents.

Once a week we would go to Shell’s City, where for $20 we would fill up two carts of food. Funland Park on Northwest 27th Avenue and 79th Street and the drive-in on 27th Avenue were very popular at that time. Restaurants like Ferdinand’s on Seventh Avenue and Seventh Street (now a hardware store), Mansene’s on 37th Avenue (now a funeral parlor) and Day and Night, which was opened 24 hours (now a CVS store) were some of our favorite places to eat. Chesapeake on 36th Street and Le Jeune Road was famous for seafood.

My father worked at the Top of the Columbus Hotel, where a steak dinner cost you $5 – at that time very expensive! Diamond’s Novelty store was one of the few buildings past 42nd Avenue and Seventh Street.

In 1962 my parents managed to save $350 and put it as a down payment for a house east of the airport (Grapeland Heights). They still live in the same house. I had to take three buses to get to Miami High – I graduated in 1964.

My first job was at Coppertone Corp. on Le Jeune Road and 24th Street. I was making $1 an hour as a secretary, which was considered a good salary as others were making 75 cents an hour. My mother would take my sister and me to dances at Miami Beach hotels where there was always a small Cuban band playing. We went practically every Saturday and to the beach at Eden Roc Hotel on Sundays. We also loved to go to the Miami Beach pier on Sunday nights to dance. The entrance was 25 cents.

In June 1968 I moved to New York City and lived there for almost five years. Although I loved living in New York, I missed the Magic City and came back in 1973. I have lived here ever since, three blocks from my parents’ house, the same neighborhood I moved into when I was 17. Miami has really changed and it has become a metropolitan city but I still prefer my “old” Miami.

In 2002 a school friend contacted me and she and I went on a mission to “find” the people who graduated with us from Ada Merritt Jr. High in 1961. To date we have contacted close to 60 people, including the principal and two teachers and have had several reunions. Mr. Ruben Blumstein died three years ago but Mr. Joseph Marmar, our math/algebra teacher is 92 and I visit him often.

I Love Miami!

I was working as a waiter at the Netherlands Hotel on Ocean Drive in 1941.

I loved Miami Beach and came down every winter to work and play. War broke out, and I decided to join the Army Air Corp.

Fast-forward to 1963 in St. Louis, Mo. I met my wife, Audrey. We married in ’64 and moved to Miami Beach in ’65. Finding it hard to get a job to my liking, I decided to try my hand at the News and Book Store on Alton Road.

After a couple of tough years, I turned it into the “Joe’s Stone Crab” of the news business. Miami Beach had a reputation of being a tough place to do business. I found it just the opposite. Success is so often achieved by welcoming your customers, getting to know them by name and establishing a rapport.

Although so often many celebs crossed our threshold, my regular customers created my success. Now I’ll drop a few names: Sports figures: Roy Rubin (basketball), Eddie Dibbs (tennis, my favorite), Lou Thesz (Wrestling), Bear Bryant, Rony Seikaly, Brooks Robinson and the Rolle brothers. Politicians: Robert Rubin, Abe Ribicoff, and Alcee Hastings. TV/Movies: Larry King, all the Bee Gees and Michael Caine.

Author Ayn Rand and the artist Roy Lichtenstein, among others. The gifted author Tom Harris graciously autographed all of his books in my store one day, Silence of the Lambs, Black Sunday and Red Dragon. The cast of Miami Vice came in frequently when they were taping next door. Meyer Lansky would often call on Sunday mornings from a nearby deli offering to bring me a corned-beef sandwich and to see if the New York papers had arrived.

A memorable time in business was the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, when I rented the loft upstairs in my building to the “Chicago 7.” Another time was the 1980 Mariel boatlift, which caused a downturn in business for a few years. When business is good, always remember to put something away for the bad times. During my time in business, I put four children through college – two of them are doctors, and the other two are successful in their own fields.

I closed the store after 30 years in ’95. I enjoyed every day. I miss my daily visits with so many, and I’ve kept close connections with a few. We moved to Quayside in ’98, and I resumed playing tennis, going to the track until foot surgery in ’08 curbed my activities. Now I’m heavily into spectator sports.

Thinking back on my life, I was born in Connecticut, served two and a half years in the China/Burma/India campaign during World War II, settled for a time in St. Louis, then decided to return to the place I always loved and wanted to call home: Miami Beach and now Miami.

It was 1944 when my parents, Harold and Ruth Ingoe, moved our family – my brother Fred and me – to Coral Gables from Oklahoma City to a 1930 Spanish-style house on Pizarro Street.

The house was quite inviting with front and rear courtyards. The screened-in back porch gave a perfect view of our garden, complete with a small pond surrounded by coconut palms and orchids. I kept large goldfish and a few sea horses that delighted everyone. The 1947 hurricane destroyed the aquatic life in the pond.

I remember feeding hibiscus flowers to a beautiful tame deer that was our neighbor’s pet. Being close to Southwest Eighth Street, I frequently saw Seminole women dressed in their native, colorful blouses and skirts shopping at nearby stores.

Our house was on the Coral Gables bus route, where I caught a ride to Coral Gables Elementary, Ponce de Leon High and later to Coral Gables High. At Gables Elementary, our principal was Abigail Gilday, who led with an air of authority that was easy to do since she was a six-feet tall, wore long black skirts and ugly black shoes. By contrast, Harry Rath, principal of Coral Gables Senior High, was a milder more approachable leader. My favorite teachers at CGSHS were Miss Ions, English/grammar, Miss Patterson, Spanish I, II and III, and Miss Prettyman, biology.

With my friends Sue Lockett, Judy Guadagno and Judy Parham, we would go to the Coral Gables Theater on Ponce de Leon where we saw movies and ate copious bags of buttered popcorn and drank Coke floats! Later, the Miracle Theater opened, which provided a little competition between the two cinemas. We would travel to the Venetian Pool and Matheson Hammock for swimming and practice for life guard certification.

One year, I was in a water ballet. We trained at the Venetian Pool to perform with Esther Williams in Miami Beach. Some who were brave – my brother Fred was one – would dive from the cliffs while others explored the cave. At Matheson Hammock we biked through the mangrove paths and had many picnics by the water.

I don’t want to skip over the Girl Scout Little House on Granada Boulevard; it was there that we were assigned Girl Scout cookies to sell. One year I sold the most cookies, thanks to my father who took them to work and coerced many to buy a box.

The War Memorial offered modeling lessons and the Coral Gables Country Club was the site for cotillion lessons. I don’t know how the others felt, but I was scared to death at dancing with a boy and forgetting the right steps. The Gables was a small family-oriented community where my friends enjoyed their youth.

My great-grandfather Andrew Christian Frost was born in Denmark and migrated to the United States in 1873, settling in Wisconsin by 1876. He was approached by James Ingraham, who worked for Henry Flagler in promoting the East Coast Railway, to come to Florida and become a land developer. He had a reputation as a colonizer, having started up the towns of Frostville, Mountain and Armstrong in Wisconsin.

My great-grandfather first refused, but in the 1900s he relented and moved nine of his 10 children, his wife and himself to Modello in South Florida to develop land for the Model Land Company. He eventually talked many of his fellow Danes into coming to South Florida, land of promise and sunshine. (He didn’t tell them about the swampland, mosquitoes, alligators or snakes.)

He was instrumental in changing the name of Modello to Dania because of the number of Danes he brought down here to live. Dania was incorporated in November 1904 and is the oldest city in Broward County. My great-grandfather is considered the founder of the city.

My grandfather, Sheridan Christian Frost, was his seventh child. My mom, Clara Broward Frost, bears the middle name Broward because she has birth certificate No. 3 born in Broward County. Broward County was separated from the middle of Palm Beach County and Dade County at the urging of Andrew Christian Frost and others. Broward County came into existence on Oct. 1, 1915, her actual birthday.

My mother’s mother died just two days after the 1926 hurricane swept through South Florida as a result of running from house to house during the storm trying to reach safety. My grandmother and great-grandfather are buried next to each other at the City of Dania Cemetery, which he plotted out for the city.

My mom and dad, George Morris, married and lived around Northwest Seventh Street near the Orange Bowl. I was born in 1936 in what we called “Miamah” at Victoria Hospital. My brother, Jimmy, was born three years later in 1939. We spent the first five years of my life there.

My dad wanted to join the service when World War II broke out but couldn’t because of having two children. He was working for Florida Power & Light at the power plant in downtown Miami. To join the war effort, he became employed by the Tennessee Valley Authority at the Watts Bar Dam power plant.

I can remember my mom gathering enough gas and tire-ration stamps to pull a trailer up to Tennessee to join my father. I remember the lights out, the covered windows, the test air-raid sirens, and that we kids couldn’t buy bubble gum. When I could get it, I always saved mine on the bedstead.

When the war ended, we all came back to South Florida. We landed in West Palm Beach. There was a housing shortage due to all of the service men who had trained in South Florida and moved here after the war. By this time, I had a sister, Calista. My dad bought a piece of property in Lake Park that had no power lines, no road into the property and no buildings. We lived in an army surplus tent for about four months until he could build a frame house.

We still had no electricity, I did homework by kerosene lamp or gas lantern, mom cooked on a kerosene stove, and we had an icebox that held a block of ice. It was my job to empty the pan of water after it had melted.

In 1952, my dad transferred back to the Miami Power Plant on the MacArthur Causeway. I attended Miami Jackson High. I was at the Thanksgiving Day football game where Edison beat Miami High for the first time. (Miami Jackson had beat Miami High the year before.) The goal posts were displayed at the entrance of the school.

I got my first job working at a card and candy shop, The Treasure Chest, around the corner from the Olympia Theater. I was paid 50 cents an hour, but I got to eat a lot of candy.

I remember when Elvis Presley was appearing at the Olympia. There was a long line in front of our store of girls and women waiting to get backstage to meet Elvis. My boss asked if I wanted to get in line. I said, “No,” as I didn’t know who he was or what he did.

Guess who I got in line for? Julius La Rosa. Anybody remember him?

We went swimming at Crandon Park or Haulover Park. I remember the zoo and the train ride at Crandon Park. The 25-cent Saturday movies. Schools without air-conditioning.

I became engaged in my senior year to Charles Rory Eggleston at the Ross’ Frosty Freeze across from Miami Jackson. He worked for Pan American, and we planned to get married in the summer. He bought a home for us in Hialeah, then the bedroom community for the airlines. In order for him to get the loan for the mortgage of $10,500, I had to sign an affidavit that I was truly going to marry him. Apparently, banks didn’t trust single men.

While we were dating, my husband and I spent every Tuesday and Saturday night at the stock-car races at the Hialeah Speedway and sometimes took in a drive-in. We liked to go to the amusement park at 27th Avenue and 79th Street. Hialeah had two bowling lanes and were busy all the time. These were really some good old days.

Well, our family now has four daughters, four grandchildren and two great-granddaughters – all of whom were born here and live in South Florida, most of them in Hialeah. I’ve seen a lot of changes, some good, some bad. I used to pick strawberries where I currently live in Hialeah. There were also unpaved roads and horse ranches.

But I have traveled to all 50 states, and I would not want to live anywhere else but South Florida. We are now up to the fifth generation who are native South Floridians.

Coming to Miami Beach had been my dream since childhood. I was in my early 20s and had saved enough money to take my vacation there. So in the middle of October 1941, I took a bus from New Jersey. It took three days, and I was dirty and exhausted upon arrival. Even so, going over the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach was thrilling.

The bus turned left at Ocean Drive, and I was let out in front of the Miami Beach Hotel, 505 Ocean Dr. I got a room for $5 a week (summer rates). I went swimming every day, and dancing every night. They had speakers on the beach that played beautiful music. I was so enthralled with my surroundings that I quit my job in Jersey and said, “This is where I want to live.”

At night after a date, I would walk barefoot along the shoreline from Fifth to 14th streets and back. I would smell the sweet scent of jasmine, watch the palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze, listen to soft music drifting from the hotels and some nights the moon would rise out of the sea. These are my most precious memories.

The loud speakers on the beach interrupted the music for President Roosevelt to announce that war was declared. This was Dec. 7, 1941. Shortly after, the beach hotels became filled with Army Air Corp soldiers.

The summer season was over and rates had gone way up. Winter season was Dec. 20 to the middle of April. I found a permanent efficiency with a balcony at the Florence Villas for a yearly lease of $50 a month. It had a lovely yard in front, was only three blocks south of Lincoln Road and four blocks west of the beach. I loved it!

My first jobs were waitressing at the Vanderbilt Cabana Club and Pickin Chicken. Then I sang at the Paddock Club. This was before it became what it is today and it had a great live band.

I met and married John Bonanno, staff sergeant and baker for all the soldiers on the beach. We had our first child at The Biltmore in Coral Gables, which the Army had taken over.

After the war, we returned to John’s hometown in Pennsylvania, bought a small bakery, and had three more children. We both missed Miami Beach so much. So we sold the bakery and returned to Miami on March 15, 1959.

John couldn’t find his kind of work that paid enough on the beach, so we settled in South Miami. He worked for various bakeries. We bought our own bakery with another John on Bird Road in Olympia Heights called, The Two J’s Bakeshop. We both worked hard, John baked, and I did all the cake decorating.

John died in January 1993. Although I still miss him, we had almost 50 years together and some of our best times together were in Miami Beach. I recently turned 92. I live in Homestead now with one of my daughters, and I’m so happy to still be living in South Florida.

Elena York Sanchez was born in Cuba in 1921, the youngest of seven siblings, to Augusto W. York, originally of Marietta, Ga., and Aurora Valmaña of Marianao, Cuba.

Her father met his future spouse, a teacher, after arriving in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt as one of the famous Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. She taught him Spanish, and his Southern charms won her heart. After the war, the Southern gentleman stayed behind, becoming a Cuban citizen and founding the Cuban Signal Corps.

He is noted for introducing volleyball to Cuba and officiating at car and bicycle races and boxing matches. He rose to the rank of Comandante of the Cuban Army. His sister Alice would marry a relatively famous Baptist preacher named William Jesse Barton, who was the sixth pastor of the First Baptist Church of Homestead.

After the Communist Revolution in 1959, most of his progeny, and their children, returned to the States. Some moved back to Georgia, others to Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina and, yes, Miami, where we return to mom, Elena.

Married to my father, Manuel Francisco Sanchez, in Cuba, they became one of the thousands of Cuban refugees fleeing the new Marxist government. I was 2 when I left the island; the family relocated to New York for several years. It was in Harlem that my brother Tony was born.

Eventually, my father’s siblings, spouses and children would all move to Miami.

Mom not only managed the household, but she worked as a teacher and later as a social worker with Florida’s HRS, from where she would retire. After working a full day at her “day” job, she worked at my father’s grocery store in Little Havana (Topeka Supermarket), including weekends. And she still had time to be a Cub Scout den mother and volunteer at our church, St. Kevin’s.

She also remains active, to this day, with La Juventud Católica, a Catholic activist and religious organization to which my father belonged for over 50 years.

My father’s market and family restaurant and cafeteria became the meeting place of some of the most notable of early exile radio personalities and actors, including Leopoldo Fernandez (Tres Patines), El Chino Wong and Rolando Ochoa. The store was only blocks away from the first home of Belen Jesuit Prep. The priests were family friends of my father and family, as he and his siblings had attended Belen in Cuba.

From my parents’ home in West Dade, we watched a man land on the moon, saw FIU being built and walked to attend the outdoor Mass of John Paul II in Tamiami Park – all milepost moments in South Florida.

My parents’ home was not only an amazing place to grow up in, but also an island of hope and love for the whole family. Many a relative, friend and stranger found themselves living there throughout the course of the years. From widowed aunts, separated uncles, an elderly grandmother, newly married and single cousins, and even a homeless stranger that showed up once at our church, Mom made room for all.

After the unexpected death of my father, Mom’s attentions shifted toward a new generation that included her grandchildren and turned her attention to music and poetry.

I still recall my father’s funeral in 1988, when Miami Auxiliary Bishop Agustin Roman showed up unexpectedly. Mom was humbled by his visit and asked Bishop Roman how he had become aware of my father’s passing.

“Elena, come now, you are more famous than Coca-Cola,” he told her.

I could fill pages and pages of family anecdotes, from Mom’s involvement with Miami’s “Centro Mater” near downtown, the building of “La Ermita de la Caridad,” her work during the Mariel Boatlift, food drives, visits to homeless shelters.

She has always been more than a witness to our community’s history – she has been an active protagonist. Not a political figure, nor a captain of industry or finance, yet in the circles she traveled – and in the lives of people she met – lives were changed for the better, kind words were shared, and hope and love imparted. The world is a much better place because she is in it.

Last Thanksgiving, the descendents of Augusto W. York gathered here in Miami, at the home of his last living daughter, Elena. We are grateful to the generations who came before us and helped define the values of who we are today.

My mother, who will turn 90 on Aug. 19, has always been a source of light, of gentle and humble grace, of quiet, enduring strength, and of infectious humor and love. Southern and Cuban generations, both past and present, are ennobled and proud of this amazing South Floridian. Thanks Mom!

My journey to Miami Beach in 1939 actually began two years earlier. I was 10 and living in a New York City apartment house when a Western Union telegram arrived to change our lives. We had won the Irish Sweepstakes.

Disrupted from our neighborhood, friends and schools, my two older brothers and I boarded a train called the Silver Meteor that took us south on a new and somewhat scary adventure. Shortly before arriving in Miami, I was really confused when the conductor announced “Next stop Hollywood!” Where were we, I wondered: In Florida or California?

Seeing Miami Beach for the first time, with its pastel-colored buildings, I marveled at how different it was from the dirty red brick buildings I had known in New York.

Thanks to our sweepstakes winnings, my parents purchased an eight-unit apartment house where we lived on Third Street and Jefferson Avenue. New school, new friends, and a new type of climate – all had to be gotten used to very quickly.

My first job was as a pin boy at an open air duck pin bowling alley on Alton Road and Third Street. There was a corral next to it that kept stabled donkeys used to pull lawn mowers during the day, mowing overgrown empty lots. We loved riding them.

My two older brothers worked as busboys at a fancy restaurant called The Strand, on 12th and Washington, where the waiters paraded through the dining room carrying flaming swords. I had my bar mitzvah in 1940 at Beth Jacob Synagogue, now the home of the Jewish Museum on Third Street and Washington Avenue.

By 1942, the country was at war and things changed. The city was taken over by the Army Air Force. I remember Flamingo Park, the beaches and the local streets, filled with marching and singing soldiers, sweating in the hot sun, with my mother trying to keep up with them while passing out glasses of ice water.

At 16 I did a stint as an usher at the old Wometco’s Plaza Theatre on First Street and Washington Avenue. I became an air raid warden that year and delighted in blowing my whistle and advising people to keep their windows covered. On occasion we could see burning ships on the horizon and the next day would find globs of tar and oil on the beaches from the tankers that were sunk by German U-boats.

At 17, I joined the Civil Air Patrol, a subsidiary of the Army Air Force. I attained the rank of master sergeant and was in command of the cadet program in the Miami area. We spent time marching and taking classes at a big building on 37th Avenue called the Coliseum, and spent weekends at Chapman Air Field performing search and rescue missions for the Air Force, using small Piper Cub airplanes. I also worked at the Air Force motor pool and bused soldiers to the various military hospitals in the area, including what are now Mount Sinai and the Biltmore in the Gables. We also drove German and Italian POWs to work as KP’s at the various Army mess halls on the beach.

I enlisted in the Air Force when I turned 18, took basic training in Biloxi, Miss., then went to photography school in Denver. I was sent overseas for a couple of years, ending up at Yokota Air Base in Japan where I served as an Air Force photographer.

By 20, I was back home in Miami Beach and in short order, married to my high school sweetheart, Erma Lee Edelman. Within five years, we had three kids, (Leon, Jack and Paula), and I joined my father-in-law in his fish business, Collins Fish & Seafood, ultimately growing it into a major wholesale seafood distributorship.

In the early years, I remember delivering fish and live stone crabs (today you can only get the cooked claws), in the alley behind Joe’s Stone Crab. Owner Grace Weiss would personally come outside to check the order out and sign my bill.

A memorable experience occurred during a visit by President Kennedy to Miami. We received an urgent call from the hotel where he was staying and shortly therafter the Secret Service came to watch us with steely eyes as we prepared an order of seafood for the president’s dinner. I think it was pompano and lump crabmeat.

The Beach was a colorful place in the 1950s and ’60s. On occasion, Silver Dollar Jake, a local character who always drove an old convertible with the top down, would stop by and take pictures with his new Polaroid camera and hand out silver dollars to the kids, his colorful parrot perched on his shoulder. I remember taking my kids to a place they loved called Fairyland.

In 1975 I decided to fulfill a long-time ambition and attended the Miami Police Academy, graduating and serving for 10 years as an auxiliary police officer for the city of Miami Beach.

After 40 years in business, at the age of 60, I retired and have since devoted myself to various volunteer pursuits.

I’ve seen Miami Beach reinvent itself a number of times since I stepped off the Silver Meteor approximately 72 years ago.

I’ve gone from a wide-eyed kid to a great-grandfather, and made many wonderful memories during the intervening years. These are just a few of them.

In July of 1921, my father, mother and two older sisters and I moved to Miami from Brunswick, Ga. We lived in a tent in the area of Jackson Memorial Hospital. My first memory is living on Northeast 17th Street near the Old City Cemetery.

Our neighbors were the Albury family, with whom we have remained friends over the years.

When I was about 3, we moved to Lemon City on Northwest 58th Street. Most of the whole block was a family who settled there years earlier. There was Ma and Pa Johnson, their sons Uncle Leroy, Uncle Dick and daughters Aunt Essie and Aunt Emma and Aunt Laura. It was like one big family. On the other corner was the Lyons Family. He had been a major in the Philippines. We lived there during the 1926 hurricane.

I started kindergarten when I was 4. Miss Pearl Desrocher was my teacher. This was in the old Lemon City Elementary School, which no longer exists. I attended Sunday school at the old Lemon City Baptist Church on Northeast Second Avenue and 59th Street, which later moved to Northwest 60th Street and First Place.

In September, 1926, a big hurricane hit Miami. My mother was eight months pregnant with my youngest sister. When the windows started blowing out my daddy tied us all together. We scurried next door to the Baker’s house. Soon their roof started to go. We went over to Pa Johnson’s home. The lull came and we all thought it was over. Then the winds picked up even stronger than before. Soon Pa Johnson’s roof started to go.

Behind our house was a new house that had just been completed. Some people from the North had it built for a winter home. My dad and the other men broke into the house and carried my mother and Aunt Essie, who was pregnant, to the home, where we spent the remainder of the storm.

We returned to our home, which was filled with water. My dad bore holes in the floor to let the water out. Everyone in the neighborhood had outdoor toilets and hand pumps. Most of the pumps were broken. The only car we ever had was a Model T Ford, which was destroyed along with the garage.

The Russell family, who owned the Russell House Movers, lived across the street. After they moved away the Cecil Turner family moved in. He was county commissioner for many years. Our families became very good friends.

We were in the Great Depression then so everyone did what they could to earn a little money. Aunt Laura was a single mother and she baked cupcakes. She packaged them two in a package for 10 cents. I had a little cart on wheels and I would go all over the neighborhood selling them. She paid me 10 cents a week.

On Saturdays at the Biltmore Theater on Northeast 40th Street they had the Mickey Mouse Club, followed by Westerns and cartoons. If you were one of the first to arrive you would get a free candy bar. Needless to say, I was always first in line. It cost 10 cents for admittance.

The theater was located on what is now Decorator Row. The area north of Lemon City was Little River, where the Rosetta Theater was located. If we had a dime, we would walk there on Sunday afternoon.

I started school at Lemon City kindergarten in 1923. I remember when I was in the fourth grade and I watched them build the auditorium and gymnasium for what would become Edison High.

It was a great privilege being able to attend the same school for so many years. I was fortunate to have had teachers like Mrs. Knoll, Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Annin, and Mrs. Majors, who kept us in line. I loved playing basketball, baseball, acrobatics and croquet.

My sister Birdie graduated from Dade County Agricultural High School in 1930 and my sister Stella in 1931. In 1933 the name was changed to Miami Edison High School. I graduated in 1937. My sister Mary in 1940, and my sister Bertha Dean in 1944.

On Saturdays I worked for W.T. Grant Co. on Flagler Street. In my senior year I worked part time at Binswanger Glass Co. on Northwest Fifth Street. After graduation I continued full time. My next job was at Peninsular Life Insurance Company in the Seybold building in downtown Miami. I worked there until I got married in 1940 to Harry Brown of Homestead.

In 1940 I moved to Homestead, where Harry lived and sold insurance. His father was an agent for the Florida East Coast Railroad, when it went to Key West. He had been the agent in Marathon in 1935, when the railroad was destroyed by a hurricane. He had ridden a handrail car from Marathon to Key West and took a boat to Miami. It was a week before his family knew if he had survived the hurricane.

During the war we lived in Charleston, S.C., where Harry worked in the Navy Yard. At the end of the war we moved to Perrine in time for the 1945 hurricane. There was one highway in Perrine – U.S. 1, a two-lane highway. We lived on Franjo Road in an old Dade County Pine house with three of our four boys. In those years there were many old time residences as well as many small businesses along U.S. 1 such as Barfield’s Department Store, Dent’s Drug Store, Golden Rule Grocery, and The Street Car liquor store.

In the early 1950s Harry went to work for Dade County Fire Patrol, which became the Miami-Dade Fire Department. Two of our sons later worked for it as well. Station 4 was in our backyard and for the next eight years, I relayed messages from the Miami Fire Department for calls south of Perrine.

The 1945 hurricane destroyed the old wooden Perrine Baptist Church, so we met in the community house that was built by the Works Progress Administration. The building still sits in its original location on Datur Street and Perrine Avenue.

The northbound highway was built in the 1950s. I would walk my three boys across the highway to visit their grandparents, who lived on Cleveland Avenue facing the railroad. Harry’s father was the station master at the Perrine Railroad Station.

Perrine Elementary School was on southbound U.S. 1. It went to sixth grade. Students often would go to Ponce de Leon Junior High School for seventh and eighth grades. My son and his friends then attended South Dade High School, from which he graduated in 1958.

In 1958 Palmetto High School was built and I had two boys graduate from there in 1963 and 1964. My youngest son chose to go to Southbridge High School, from which he graduated in 1977.

In 1958, we built a house on Southwest 174th Street and 90th Avenue, which was mainly woods. There was a large strawberry field west of 87th Avenue. There was a big potato field off Richmond Road, where Perrine Elementary School was built.

In 1958 I went to work for University of Miami Cancer Research Laboratory located at the old Richmond Blimp Base. The director of research was Dr. Wilhelmina Dunning. She had brought the first research grant to the lab at the University of Miami, which years later was moved to Northwest 23rd Court. It became a part of Papanicolau Cancer Research Institute and today it is the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. I retired from cancer research in 1978.

I am still living on 174th Street and attend Christ Fellowship Church, the old Perrine Baptist Church, where I taught Sunday School for 46 years.

I feel very blessed to have lived in Miamah all these years.