Category: Miami Stories

I was born in Nashville and spent the first four years of my life in Tuskegee, Ala.

My father, Dr. John O. Brown Sr., moved to Miami in 1955 to begin his practice in ophthalmology. To this day, I’m glad he did.

We had neighbors who were white and black. Our next-door neighbor was an older white lady who inspired my mother’s love for growing orchids and my brother’s passion for collecting butterflies.

I attended schools — Jackson’s Toddle Inn and Floral Heights — that were all black. I remember those as happy years.

My life changed dramatically when I started sixth grade at Gladeview Elementary, the year desegregation was implemented in Dade County. I was too young to know this was a victory for my father and the other parents who had filed a lawsuit against the Dade County School Board in 1956 to make this possible. I only knew that I was sick every morning and that I was not happy there.

It got worse when I attended Miami Edison Junior High. In my first year, there were only three Negro children in the school, and one left after a short time. I felt different, disliked by some of the children and just tolerated by the teachers — because of the color of my skin.

It was not until the ninth grade that many more students of color enrolled and I finally I had friends. I continued at Miami Edison Senior and led a peaceful “sit-in” in my senior year to protest discriminatory practices.

My years of experience being the “token” Negro child propelled me to leave Miami in 1968 to attend Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville.

The summer before I left for college, the riots of 1968 exploded. I remember our family being on the floor of our home off 62nd Street, frightened by bullets fired at the National Guard tanks parked in our front yard, from the residents in the projects across the street.

I recall working for the U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization in the summer of my first year in college. I was responsible for processing the visas for new arrivals from Cuba. I remember being instructed to type on every visa under the heading of race the letter “W” for white, despite the accompanying photo being of a person much darker than myself. It reminded me again of the second-class status of African Americans.

I graduated from Fisk in 1972 and returned home to Miami. Life seemed uneventful until the riots of 1980. I had just returned home from the hospital with my newborn baby. We had to evacuate our home due to the lootings, fires and loss of electricity in Liberty City. I remember being on the floor of our car, holding my baby for safety.

We were seeking refuge at my brother’s home in El Portal, where residents were barbecuing and watering their grass, oblivious to the civil unrest only a few miles away. Later that year, I moved to the Bahamas, where I spent the next 15 years.

I found it ironic that Bahamians referred to me as an American, an identity I had never been identified with in the United States. All through my life I was “colored, Negro, black, Afro-American or African-American” — never only American.

When I returned to Miami in 1995, it was a very different place. People of color were no longer African-Americans, but were from the Caribbean, Haiti, Trinidad, South America — with different languages and cultures.

I take pride in growing up in Liberty City. To this day, I find myself defending it against those who only see it as drug- and crime-infested and fear going there. Overlooked are the many success stories of Liberty City.

I remember my father saying that he chose to build our home in Liberty City — when we could have afforded to live elsewhere — because he wanted to be among the people he was fighting so hard for.

My father fought tirelessly to help bring about many of the changes in Miami we take for granted today. We can attend any public school, shop wherever we want, eat wherever we choose and go to any movie theater — all because of the barriers he helped to bring down. He sacrificed time spent away from his four young children, which in his later years he regretted.

It saddens me that there are no streets named after him, nor schools or community centers to honor his contributions. But in my heart, I know that because of him and so many others like him, this country now has an African-American president and he is smiling and saying it was well worth the fight.

I was born Martha Anne Peters in Victoria Hospital on Dec. 20, 1937, a second generation native-born Miamian.

My daddy, Hugh Peters, Jr., was born in the family home, on the corner of 75th Street and Northeast Second Avenue.

My paternal great-grandparents, Solomon J. and Sidney Martha Peters, moved to Miami-Dade county in the fall of 1896 from Lady Lake in Central Florida, where the Big Freeze of 1895 had killed their orange groves. The entire family of eight sons, ranging in age from 8 to the mid-20s, and their 16-year-old daughter Mattie, came with them.

The youngest boy, Hugh (Pat) was my grandpa. Solomon and all but three of his sons farmed — primarily tomatoes. The three who pursued other interests were Edgar, who became a doctor; Arthur, who was active in real estate; and my grandpa, Hugh (Pat).

Grandpa was a county commissioner for more than 20 years and was commission chairman when the Dade County Courthouse was built and when the county bought Vizcaya, the Coconut Grove estate of Chicago industrialist James Deering. He also was in charge of roads and bridges in Dade County.

One of my cousins, Thelma Peters, was a well-known historian of Dade County.

My maternal grandparents, Abner and Annie Hearn, moved to Dade County in 1911. They had five sons ranging in age from 6 to 21 and a 2-year-old daughter, Annie, who would become my mother.

Mama was born in Dunedin, a small city near Tampa. Grandpa Hearn owned several packing houses there and in other locations, primarily on the West Coast of Florida. Their oldest son, B.E. Hearn, my uncle, was a Miami City Commissioner in the 1950s.

When I was born, my family lived in Little River in a house built on the original family property. I have one brother, Gordon, named after the doctor who delivered him, Dr. J.G. DuPuis. We moved to Miami Shores when I was 11 and I have remained a Miami Shores resident ever since.

In 1958, I married Harley G. Collins, Jr., now deceased. His father served one term on the Dade County School Board. We were blessed with one daughter, Cheryl (now Calhoun). She and her family live in Miami Shores, as well.

Daddy owned a paint and glass business for many years. Mama was the registrar at her alma mater, Miami Edison Senior High School. My brother and I both graduated from Edison. Daddy, however, graduated from Miami High, which made for a very interesting Thanksgiving day and night, considering the rivalry that existed between the two schools.

I am a retired teacher, having taught high school English and Reading for 27 years.
I have been truly blessed to live in this special city all my life. I am proud of my family and what they have contributed to the growth of Miami. I am especially grateful that they had the good sense to move here.

Our family came from Havana, a beautiful city that some have called a tropical paradise.

My brothers and I came to Miami on a Pan American flight and were taken to a campground that the Pedro Pan organizers had set up in Kendall, near where Town & Country Mall now stands. We were there for about two weeks before being sent to Albuquerque, N.M., where we were taken in by the family of Dr. Eugene Purtell.

The Purtells had six children ranging in age from 14 (Kathleen) to 2 (Timmy). I was 12; my brothers were 11 and 10.

The Purtells helped us learn the language, comforted us and allayed our concerns over whether our parents would be able to leave Cuba.

My father was a vice president for Upjohn Pharmaceuticals. He worked in Cuba; the company was based in Kalamazoo, Mich. Upjohn staged a high-level meeting in Mexico City to convince the Castro government to issue my parents a temporary visa to attend the meeting.

The Cuban government did. When they arrived in Mexico City, they learned there was no meeting and that Upjohn, along with the American ambassador to Mexico, had secured resident visas for them to live in the United States.

We lived in Kalamazoo for about 1 ½ years, until my father retired from Upjohn after 25 years. We moved to Miami, which was small then.

In those early days, it was difficult. My brothers, Ramon and Rafael, and I delivered newspapers for The Miami Herald, waking up in the pre-dawn hours to deliver on our bikes. We kept those jobs throughout high school. I came to Miami when I was 14.

We attended LaSalle High in Coconut Grove. We were taught by many of the same brothers who had been our teachers in Cuba, which helped us reconnect to our culture. Later, we attended Miami Dade College.

While there, I got a job at Burdines as a merchandise handler. Burdines was a company that helped the Cuban community by giving them jobs and extending credit. Burdines, now Macy’s, has been, and still is, my only employer for 40 years (other than the paper route).

Miami is where I met my wife, Ivonne. Her father and uncle took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. We married in 1972 and have always lived in Miami.

Our two children were born here. Our daughter graduated from Nova Southeastern University and is a psychologist; our son graduated from the University of Miami and is an attorney. We have two grandchildren, and a third is on his or her way.

Thank you, Miami, for all you have meant to my family and me.

My father, Ernest Peyton Jones, worked for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was his campaign manager for the southeastern United States and became the associate commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration. My mother, Betty Schwab Jones, was the secretary for Sen. George Norris of Nebraska.

They married in 1936 and lived in Washington.

When Roosevelt died in 1945, they packed up my brother Eric and me and moved to Coral Gables. My father said Miami was the land of opportunity. He opened a loan company.

My brother and I attended Coral Gables Elementary, Ponce Junior High and Gables High. We were lucky that our teen years were in the ’50s and early ’60s. In 1953, I was student council president at Ponce and there was a girl vice president as well, which was very forward-thinking then. In fact, I was the only girl at the state convention.

Coral Gables was a great community to grow up in. My parents were very active, especially in the Garden Club and Rose Society. They were in the first Sister-to-Sister Group from Coral Gables to Cartagena, Colombia.

In 1949 our parents built a home in Coral Gables. The home still stands; it’s near the Coral Gables Youth Center. My son, Andy Elwell, lives there with his wife, Susan, and their two children, Alex, 11, and Katherine, 9. So, four generations of my family have lived in the same house.

I met my first husband, Walter Elwell, at Shenandoah Presbyterian Church. He graduated from Miami High; Sen. Bob Graham was in his homeroom. We had two sons, Andy and Timothy, who lives in California with his wife, Carol Ann Kelley, and their 3-year-old daughter, Audrey.

I eventually divorced Walter, and in 1989 I married Frank Zagarino, who graduated from the University of Miami. He loved Miami for its weather, sailing and golf. He was a photographer for Life, Time and Sports Illustrated. He was a member of the Coral Reef Yacht Club.

After Frank died, I was lucky enough to buy a house directly behind Andy’s. I have my family and friends close by, and I continue to keep my Gables High Class of ’57 together.

I can imagine my dad’s excitement leaving gritty Newark behind him and hitting the highway in his old Studebaker bound for paradise . . . Miami Beach. I can see the bathing suit postcards guiding his way and hear the ocean calling his name: M-I-L-T-O-N B-R-A-N-D, come on down!

The year was 1948 and young Milton was not welcome everywhere down here. He saw signs that said, “No Dogs Or Jews Allowed,” and got polite rejections in places that had no signs.

That didn’t deter my dad. There was enough to tantalize him in places he could go to: the racetrack, the beach, a few fine restaurants and hotels and the “after-hours” clubs my dad discovered in his meanderings through Miami’s nightlife.

It was in the portals of these watering holes that my dad’s future was carved out. Through the force of his larger-than-life personality, he made friends everywhere. A year after he arrived, he opened a bar and store-fixture business.

In his flush years my dad had many friends among the cities’ business leaders, politicians and entertainers. And he was familiar to a subculture of characters he knew from his gambling and nighttime cavorts: touts, bookies, loan sharks, party girls and of course, “tough guys.”

They all called him “Big Milt” or “Milty Boy.” He would regularly pick up the tab and dole out $20 tips. He got front row seats at the Fontainebleau and the fights and his car curbed everywhere. His name somehow jumped to the top of the page at the toniest restaurants.

Like Miami’s story, my dad’s had its share of pathos. He had a fall from grace for a while, lost his hold on the glamour life and was forsaken by many of the “fair-weather” variety. But like Miami, there was a depth of charm and character in my father that no rising and falling tides could wash away.

My dad’s last years were spent in an efficiency apartment off West End Avenue that he called his “pad.” “Big Milt” was well over what he’d lost in life and very much focused on what he had: a son and daughter and their spouses who adored him, grandkids, nieces and nephews, a job he enjoyed a few days a week, the track on weekends, his beloved Chevy (“White Beauty”) and friends everywhere he went.

My dad had nicknames for all. One of the names he especially liked was “Dr. Brown.” This is the name he always used at Joe’s Stone Crab. Some, even famous or brandishing large bills, have been told they have to wait. But anyone who accompanied “Dr. Brown” will attest to the fact that after greeting the maitre’d and being told to wait in the bar, within five to 10 minutes “Dr. Brown” was summoned to his table. Invariably, when someone in the party would marvel at the quick seating, my father would say, “You have to have the ‘Dr. Brown’ attitude.”

My brother and I jazzed up dad’s pad the week he was in the hospital knowing he would never want to spend his terminal days anywhere else. He told us he was thoroughly enjoying his “abode” and that hospice sent him only “the good-looking” nurses, as he had requested.

When he could, he sat in “White Beauty” and listened to the radio. He had visits galore and enough goodies to open a bakery. I have photos of him gaunt, but smiling from ear to ear with grandkids piled up in the bed with him.

Miami came to him in the night and he was gone with the place he loved so much. It didn’t matter what had been lost or changed. Always, his endearing spirit remains.

I was in the right place at the right time. I graduated from school with a business administration degree in Spain and I wanted to come to the United States for an master of business administration degree.

At the same time, my father wanted to open a branch of the family business here. We have been in ceramic tile, manufacturing and sales, in Spain for three generations. He always thought the United States’ market was so big — you couldn’t just come here and sell; you had to open a company.

So my father came to Miami to open Iberia Tiles with a partner, and I came to attend the University of Miami.

It was January 1980, the same year as the Mariel boatlift. Two weeks after we arrived, the partnership didn’t work out and my father found himself with no one to help him start the business.

My father said, ‘Instead of paying for the MBA, I’ll give you $100,000 and you’ll do your MBA in practice instead of in theory. You can be president of a nonexistent company.’

All we had was a signed lease in a warehouse in the northwest part of the county. My father stayed two more weeks. We incorporated, and then my father left for Spain.

I was here alone. I didn’t know what to do. I had to start somewhere. I don’t think about those days, as they were very stressful.

My father told me two things: First, don’t worry about the money. I have already lost it, he said, and I’m still happy so don’t worry. I was very concerned that $100,000 is a lot of money, especially when you are 22.

The second thing he told me: Anytime you have a doubt and you want to call me, call me. Anytime. It was very reassuring. It wasn’t the father I had known when I was growing up in Spain. You didn’t bother him every five minutes.

In the beginning, I called a lot. Whatever question I asked him, he would ask the question back to me. So, after a few weeks, I stopped calling.

You are going to make a lot of mistakes, he said. But every time you make a mistake, pay whatever you must to fix it and don’t tell anybody.

One of the first things I realized was that I didn’t speak English very well. When you are young, you think you do everything well. My accent was British, and I didn’t understand the American accent. I hired a teacher, and I really learned the language.

I met a guy in 1983, married in 1984, and in 1985 I had my son, and in 1987, a daughter. I had been here for seven years and I had a business, two kids — the dog came later. Until 1990, all I did was work and have a family.

By 1990-91, I could lift my head out of the water and started looking around the American landscape. I didn’t have any American friends who had been to my house for dinner. I lived in Key Biscayne, with a lot of Hispanic people.

I realized I was not part of the community here. So I started to get involved in organizations. First the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, and then the board of trustees at Florida International University.

I have grown to love Miami. It’s a beautiful place and the crossroads between North America and South America.

I realized Miami was a very new city, and any contribution a person would make could make a real difference. In Barcelona, it’s a great city, but everything was already done.

Here, everything remained to be done. The more you do for a person, the more you love that person. A community is like that. Now, if someone asks me where I’m from, I say ‘I’m from Miami.’

For me, the most important journeys have led to South Florida.

The journey that started in December 1959 involved a move from Cuba, north to freedom. Forty-two years later, in July 1992, a return trip from Virginia with our 4-year-old son Peter completed a cycle that molded several generations of our family.

Our exit from Cuba in 1959 was without great fanfare. My mom, grandmother, brother and I boarded a Pan American flight to Miami. My father would join us later.

The move was temporary, or so was the belief in our small Cuban community, and poignantly confirmed in my parents’ correspondence with family during that time. My mom faithfully listened to broadcasts from Cuba on her Zenith Transoceanic short-wave radio and remained hopeful of a resolution.

In April 1961, those hopes were dashed not only for my family, but for scores of newly arrived Cubans. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion sealed our fate in our newfound land.

I remember my mother announcing that the United States was our home now and that as soon as possible we would become citizens, a promise kept in 1966.

My brother John and I learned about Cuba through the stories, music, photos and movies that we managed to get out when we left. My mom made it very clear, however, that although we were proud of our heritage, we were now Americans. She disliked the hyphenated Cuban-American term because she felt it divided us and that we had to respect the country that gave us safe harbor.

My parents never missed the opportunity to vote, and that made a lasting impression.

And after losing their home in Cuba, they found a home in Coral Gables, one that they enjoyed and shared with us until they died.

Our son Peter was born in 1987 in Richmond, Va., during a graduate school hiatus from South Florida, a stay that would last six wonderful years. T.S. Eliot in his epic poem The Four Quartets states that, “Home is where one starts from.”

And for me, in 1992, on a dreary winter’s day, it was the place where I needed to return. So in July 1992, amid a Miami summer and one month before Hurricane Andrew, our small family arrived at my parents’ home.

We are still in Coral Gables today. Many events, many stories, happy ones, sad ones and funny ones all intertwined. The things that make a life filled with love possible.

Peter, who just graduated from college, recounts in a recent remembrance of an “ever deeper appreciation of the gifts that had been bestowed upon me by my grandparents; not only their invaluable support, but even more so their elegance, their unwavering ethical compass and their love of family.”

Because of their generosity, our son had the benefit of a superior education, both in high school and college. Marta and John Anderson’s love and sacrifices have borne good fruit.

My son Peter will be leaving home for a journey north to a new job and boundless opportunities. I am excited for his new adventure and heartsick that we no longer will we spend summers together just hanging out and talking and watching Wimbledon.

There will be a new rhythm to all of our lives, one that will bring fresh revelations.

Moving into these unchartered waters, I remember all that has happened to our family.

Many important days that have molded us and made us strong together. Many important days that have changed the way we live, love and experience life. Many important days to come, remembering the time-tested adage that it is not the destination but the journey that makes all the difference.

My maternal grandparents, Sam D. and Ida Ellen Roberts Johnson, were born in Harbour Island, Bahamas. It is believed that their foreparents were among the millions of black slaves forced from West Africa and sold in the West Indies.

Papa was Samuel David. He was born in 1872. His parents were John David and Matilda Johnson, descendants of ancestors from Haiti and Barbados and considered a wealthy planter.

By comparison Mama’s family was poor. She was born Ida Ellen Roberts to Horatio and Letitia Roberts in Harbour Island. The Roberts family’s ancestors may have lived in Bermuda.

When their parents divorced, Mama and sister Dora were raised by an aunt who was the cook for the island’s medical doctor, a white man trained in England. He encouraged them to learn to read and write.

About 1897 Sam D. and Ida Ellen were married on Harbour Island in the St. John Wesleyan Methodist Church. Seeking better economic opportunities, Papa moved to Key West, became a sponger and sent for his bride. Two children were born in Key West, Samuel Hensdale and Elaine.

Papa relocated to Miami’s Colored Town (Overtown) where his sister Alice and her husband, Thomas Bullard, had already settled.

In December 1903, Samuel and Elaine left Key West with Mama for Miami aboard the steamboat Shinicok and landed at the P and O dock, now 12th Street and Biscayne Boulevard.

They lived in Colored Town adjacent to the developing white downtown.

Other relatives had already relocated to Coconut Grove. Mama, however, preferred to live in the city. One of the neighbors originally from the Bahamas, Shaddy Ward, encouraged Papa to buy land and build a house. Eventually three houses were built two blocks north of the Lyric Theater: 159 NW 10th St., 153 NW 10th St. and 1004 NW First Ct.

Before 1910, Miami’s Colored Town was a bustling community with family grocery stores, barber shops, beauty shops, schools, churches, a milliner and drug store. Family and friends from Lemon City (Little Haiti), Coconut Grove and neighborhoods traveled to shop and dine in Colored Town.

Five other children were born: Roberta, Frederick, Dorothy, James and John. Papa called them his “bunch.”

By 1909 Papa was an officer at Mount Zion Baptist Church. He was a laborer at several construction sites, a gardener at the James Deering Estate (Vizcaya) and caretaker for prominent families, including the Chafee’s cousins of John D. Rockefeller and William Jennings Bryan, a three-time U.S. presidential candidate.

Papa and his sons worked on the Bryan estate, Villa Serena. The Bryans encouraged Papa and Mama’s desire to educate their children. Once, Mrs. Bryan gave Papa an old suit for Samuel as he prepared to go away to school. Another time she gave Papa a copy of Horatio Alger’s book, Store Boy.

Educating all seven children was Mama’s goal. In the early 1900s in Miami, black children were only allowed to finish eighth grade in public school. They had to work or leave Miami in order to finish high school. Mama and Papa sent Samuel to high school in Jacksonville at the Florida Baptist Academy, now Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens.

The seven children all graduated from college and were Miami-Dade County’s first black family to educate seven children through college before 1945.

The accomplishments of Samuel D. and Ida Ellen Johnson and their children mirrors the history and development of Miami. Their efforts inspired the grandchildren: dentist, Dr. J.K. Johnson Jr.; retired attorney, Judge A. Leo Adderly; retired educators Jewyll Wilson, Betty Jones, and Joyce Silver; and archivist and historian, Dr. Dorothy Ellen Jenkins Fields. The goal set forth by the fore parents continues to their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and cousins through the Harbour Island Family Reunion. The Harbour Island Family Reunion promotes education by giving scholarships to family.

Somewhere in the middle of 1951, my father, Cpl. Norman Segermeister, emerged from his commitment to the U.S. Army.

After he was discharged, he met up with his parents, who had moved temporarily from Long Island to Miami Beach so his mother could escape the winter months and nurse her health.

Never living in a tropical climate before, my dad explored the area with the help of the city bus. One of his adventures took him up Collins Avenue to the Bal Harbour Shops, which was as far as the bus would go because Haulover Bridge was not built yet.

As he walked into the mall, he noticed a sign that read, “No Blacks, No Jews, No Dogs.” This was a new concept to him; he figured that if you were a black Jewish dog, this was not the place to be.

Since he was a recent veteran, he felt the sign did not apply. About three months after he arrived in Miami, his parents were ready to return to New York.

Before heading back to New York on the train, my father suggested to his father that they should buy some land in Miami as an investment. His father remarked, “This place will never amount to anything.”

My dad made a commitment to himself to return one day. While living in New York, someone came up with the idea of going to the Catskills. It was most likely his father; they wound up buying some land outside a little town named Ellenville, N.Y.

Talk about a place that never amounted to anything. It was about 11 acres and they built a bungalow colony so they could rent out cottages to city slickers.

My dad got a job in Ellenville, met my mom at a Christmas party in 1953, married in January 1955 and started having kids.

Life was good in rural upstate New York, especially if you were a kid. Every once in a while we would go on a trip, nothing expensive, just three- or four-day getaways. Then came the big trip. We went to Miami during spring break in 1967 in my dad’s new Ford Fairlane 500. It was a two-week trip and it took three days to drive each way.

Yes, we stopped at South of the Border, where I purchased illegal fireworks and hid them in my suitcase. I was 12 and my sisters were 8 and 4. We returned home and things settled in until one day in January 1970. My dad left for work; we stayed home because school was closed from heavy snow.

About an hour after he left my dad returned home without his car. The car got stuck in the snow and he had to walk back home. When he entered the house, he shouted, “Faye, we are moving to Florida.”

I don’t remember much between that day and when we left on Oct. 5, 1970. That is the day my world changed from a country life to metropolitan adventure, where every day has been a new experience.

My dad is gone almost 10 years now. This was my tribute to him — he took a chance on our future and sought an opportunity for a better life.

Every day I wake up with a spirit of excitement and anticipation of what the day may bring, in large part because of the incredible community that has become my adopted home, Miami.

It is the kind of community where dreams are made; where the sun, the sand and the vibrant mix of cultures come together to create an atmosphere that is like none other I have ever encountered. When I first arrived in the United States, it was via New York City. I had recently graduated from high school in Portugal and after working for a summer I had saved enough money to travel to the United States. I came from a poor family and America represented opportunity, the chance for a better life.

Like something out of a movie perhaps, I took odd jobs on construction sites, in restaurants and hotels, working my way across this great country, marveling at each locale. But it was not until I arrived in South Florida that I felt a truly special connection.

I was born in Portugal, and so ingrained in my heart is a natural love of the ocean. But it was more than that. Miami’s people were warm and colorful. It was the early ’80s, there was richness in the air, a mix of sights and sounds, of languages and music that as a young man I found electric. Miami had grabbed my soul, and I knew then that here is where I wanted to stay.

I settled in and worked hard going to school, learning English and becoming a part of the community. I found the people of South Florida only too willing to open their hearts, share their stories and offer a helping hand when needed.

One day while working in a restaurant, I had the good fortune to meet U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw. We chatted, and over time he learned that I was working my way through school. He offered me some advice that I have never forgotten: “One’s future tomorrow is not limited by their condition today.”

This congressman, who took the time to get to know someone who poured his coffee, really drove home to me that America was indeed a country where a person’s destiny is limited only by their desire to achieve and willingness to work hard. Eventually, my path led me to Barry University, where I studied biological sciences, but began to discover a love of teaching as well. I have fond memories of Barry and of its caring faculty, including Sister Karen Frye.

Sister Frye was another example of the spirit of giving found throughout Miami. At one point, as many other working students do, I faced a shortage of funds. Sister Frye lent me $2,000, giving me the opportunity to complete my degree. When I graduated and began teaching at Miami Jackson Senior High, paying that money back was a priority, and with my last payment, one of my proudest moments.

Another of those moments came with my first interview at Miami Jackson, with then-Principal Freddie Woodson, a former Miami Dolphins player and seasoned school leader. I was very young at the time, and probably looked younger. I remember how he smiled when he asked me why he should take a chance on a kid like me, and how he would be able to tell me apart from his students.

At that moment, I assured him that I would wear a tie every day and give my students 110 percent. With that, he shook my hand and welcomed me to his staff.

To this day, I wear a tie daily, and I still give all my students 110 percent. The joy and acceptance that I found in Miami as a young adult, coupled with the values instilled in me as a boy by my mother and father, established a strong foundation for my career in education.

My days as a teacher, and later as a school and district administrator, gave me the opportunity to reach out to many children, to show compassion, provide support, and yes to educate. In much the same way the actions of my family, Rep. Shaw, Sister Frye, Mr. Woodson and others pushed me forward, I now have the opportunity to do the same for others.

I believe education is the great equalizer, the bedrock of our democracy and a truly noble profession. As Superintendent of Schools, I still believe that my role is to educate, to fight for those who may not have a voice, to give back to Miami all that it has given to me.

So Miami is my home now. I recently bought a house in Miami Shores. I have a family, many good friends, and my daughter has begun her journey as a young adult, entering college this year. I have much to be grateful for. Each segment of Miami’s diverse community has made me feel welcome, from the cafés of Little Havana, to the churches of Little Haiti and the burgeoning communities of South Dade.

Over the years, I have grown, and I believe that Miami has as well. Our community accepts all and blends each distinct culture together into what must be one of the world’s most interesting and exciting places to live and work. Miami is like nowhere else on earth; it is, and will remain, my home.

Alberto Carvalho is the superintendent of Miami-Dade Schools.