Category: Miami Stories

I was born in Jackson Memorial Hospital where my mother recalls laboring while Seminole Indian women squatted to deliver their babies. In the late 1940s through the ’60s, we lived in the Shenandoah neighborhood in a modest home where the police often patrolled around on horseback. We shopped at Katz’s Kosher Meat Market as well as Food Fair on Coral Way. We also filled in groceries by selecting fresh produce from a truck that came around, the milkman who delivered to our door, or by walking to Willingham’s Grocery on Southwest 22 Avenue and 16th Street.

Miami was a quiet, clean, safe, small and segregated town. We had a party line at home or could make a phone call from a telephone booth for a dime. Children walked to school unattended. We rode the buses alone and my friends and I often went downtown by bus to shop, eat at Burdines’ Tea Room or go to the Olympia Theater. In elementary school, we took our salami sandwiches to the Tower, Trail, Tivoli, Miracle or Parkway theaters to attend movies for 25 cents. We spent a lot of time at Shenandoah Park where we had a library, swimming pool, tennis courts and a free kindergarten. I was a Brownie and Girl Scout in elementary school and we camped out at Camp Mahachee near Matheson Hammock.

My family often went to Policeman’s Park on Sunday afternoons where there were various rides. Sometimes, we drove across the Rickenbacker Causeway to Crandon Park. While crossing it, we always noticed Virginia Beach (the only beach where “colored “people could swim). We would grill or swim at Crandon Park and sometimes visit the zoo which was located there. Our schools were not air-conditioned and neither were most homes. We were so thrilled when my parents won a room air conditioner at an auction.

At Shenandoah Elementary, the principal, Miss Eloise Hatfield, read from the New Testament every morning over the PA. We were to recite psalms and sing Christmas carols even if we were Jewish. Girls had to wear dresses no matter what the weather. There was a green bench near a staircase in front of the principal’s office where children, usually boys, sat when they misbehaved. We were not allowed to chew gum, smoking was for the “hoods” and parents were involved in the PTA. I never had a “colored” classmate, teacher or neighbor. I did, however, march during the civil rights movement at the University of Florida in 1963-64. Also, when Dade County schools were integrated in 1970, I was sent to teach at all-black Frank C. Martin elementary.

My family attended synagogue at Beth Kodesh on Southwest 12th Avenue and 12th Street. On a few occasions, I remember the sounds of bombs that were thrown on the “shul.” We would go and see the broken chandeliers and windows and the fear in our parents’ eyes. My father emigrated from Poland in February 1939, six months before Hitler marched in and killed the rest of his family.

I went to Shenandoah Junior High where we had P.E. every day and girls had to take up home economics and the boys took shop. Students that misbehaved were paddled by “Mr. K.”

I will always remember the teachers crying during class after they learned on TV that the Russians had launched Sputnik. We had subsequent duck-and-cover drills where we had to get under our desks and cover our heads. Years later, during the Cuban missile crisis, we were terrified as we witnessed American troops marching down Flagler Street.

By high school, most of the Jews at Miami High (approximately 20 percent to 30 percent of the student body) stuck together. The service clubs at the school were predominately Christian, but we had our own clubs through the “Y” on Southwest 17th Avenue or the B’nai B’rith Organization. We hung out before and after school on the east outdoor patio known as “L.J.” (Little Jerusalem). We rarely dated outside our religion and although most of our parents were not college educated, most all of my friends finished college.

One of my painful recollections at Miami High was that the High Holy Days for Jews were unexcused absences. (They later made them teacher work days.) Sometimes, the rabbi at Beth David would write notes asking the teachers to not penalize us for observing our holidays. My friend Miriam and I were in the same Spanish class and were each given an F on a test that was administered on one of the holidays. We went to the department chair and pleaded our case and were permitted to take a make-up exam.

Overall, these were the best of times. Innocent in every way (no birth control yet), we had a blast at the Red Diamond Inn, Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor and formal dances at famous hotels on Miami Beach. We saw Johnny Mathis, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme among other star performers. We went to drive-in movies and often stuffed some friends in the trunk to avoid paying for entry for all of us. I met my husband, Steve, in 11th grade TV history class. He was a great athlete for Miami High and is in the Miami High Sports Hall of Fame. We had pep rallies before football games, which were held at the Orange Bowl. Unfortunately, it was later demolished. At Miami High, the school spirit in that architectural giant of an auditorium was unforgettable. We wore jinx dolls to spook the opposing teams and took pride in our school, which won a national championship. The Stingarees won big in sports and while there, we actually had the first Jewish homecoming queen. We were required in our senior year to take a course called Americanism vs. Communism, which reflected the fears that eventually took many of our classmates to Vietnam, some of whom never came back. However, being kids, our life was simple, people were respectful and we had no clue that almost one-third of our graduating class was made up of newly arrived Cubans.

I love this cosmopolitan city with its beautiful beaches and diverse culture. I also feel so grateful to have raised both of my wonderful sons here. Additionally, I have been blessed with teaching ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) both in Dade County Schools and now at Miami Dade College for over 40 years. My students from all over the world and many different cultures have taught me so much. Miami has changed a lot, but my heart is still here in this balmy metropolis with ocean breezes and life-long friends and memories.

In early 1941, Europe and Asia were at war and the threat of United States involvement was growing exponentially. Not to be deterred, the Bennett family (Mom, Dad and 5-year-old Billy) stuffed its belongings into a cream-colored 1937 Packard convertible and set sail for the land of coconut palms and sea breezes.

With Miami the ultimate destination, the odyssey launched from Upper Montclair, New Jersey, but was impeded by a six-month hiatus in Wilmington, Delaware, for Dad to work and refurbish the family fortune.

On the move again, the 1,161 mile-trip south dictated two motel stops; it was not unusual in 1941 to travel all night and not find an open gasoline station, even on U.S. 1. The first morning, motoring below the Mason-Dixon line, I savored, for the first time, grits for breakfast (I never made that mistake again).

Mission completed, the trip terminated in the Magic City in August 1941, where we immediately checked into a Miami Beach hotel. And what was the first thing a red-blooded American kid would do next? HIT THE BEACH! And Mom and I did — for more than five hours.

All the exposed parts of our bodies were lobster red and we were splotched head to toe with Noxzema and looked like a couple of cherries jubilee. Welcome to Florida.

After a month on the beach, we found a house in Coral Gables, Mom and Dad got jobs, I was enrolled in school and we settled in as Miamians — for the next 50 plus years.

The first marine went over the fence, parlez vous

The second marine went over the fence, parlez vous

The third marine went over the fence

And milked the cow with a monkey wrench.

Hinky, dinky, parlez vous!

Mozart it wasn’t, but this little ditty was an integral part of my musical education in the summer of 1942.

I was 7 years old, living in Miami Beach at 87th and Harding Avenue, one block from Collins Avenue, hotel row and the Atlantic Ocean. The world was at war and the military had commandeered all the hotels on Miami Beach.

Each day, I arose early, ensuring an opportunity to march with the Army soldiers down Collins Avenue. What a thrill and what an experience. I learned all their march cadences, sang their songs and, though young, shared a sense of belonging and camaraderie with them as well. Also, it didn’t hurt that those same soldiers treated the “marching kids” like gems.

The nights, black as charcoal, were marked by darkened street lights, the few cars running with only slits of headlights visible, blackout shades in every home drawn and constant rumors of Nazi subs offshore. A small light from your house earned a visit from the air-raid warden.

A trip to the movies? Gasoline rationed, we walked the several blocks to the Surf Theatre. Of course, in those days we enjoyed a feature, a newsreel, a cartoon and maybe a sing-along where we followed the bouncing ball over the onscreen lyrics.

I lived the remaining years in Miami proper — without blackouts, military exercises and the rumors and much of the fears. But I missed being a part of the training and excitement of our United States military — and, of course, my unparalleled musical education.

I moved 12 times during my 12 years of public school in Miami. The year 1947 found me living with my parents on a wooden 31-foot cabin cruiser at Pier 4 1/2, adjacent to Bayfront Park in downtown Miami. That location placed me smack dab next to Pier 5 where the charter boats plied their trade, taking tourists deep-sea fishing in the nearby waters of the Atlantic Ocean. In the late afternoon, when the fishing fleet had returned, I would walk over to Pier 5 and check out the various small fish tossed on the dock. Occasionally, Mom would purchase a dolphin for that evening’s dinner.

Just as you entered Pier 5, and a little to the left, sat the Tradewinds Restaurant. I remember one night I was perched on a bollard at the end of a dock listening to the Tradewinds’ juke box with strains of “Heartaches,” played by the Ted Weems orchestra, drifting across the shimmering moonlit water. Other nights, I would walk over to the Bandshell in Bayfront Park and join the crowd enjoying a free concert. Not a bad life for a 12 year old.

My only other year living on the boat was up the Miami River just below Musa Isle Indian village and tourist attraction. Not my finest hour, but I would row to the river side of the village, sneak in and without benefit of an admission ticket, watch the alligator wrestling.

Boat living? Bittersweet. Lots of fun going out on Biscayne Bay most weekends and rowing on the Miami River — but little privacy, miniscule closet space, midget head and, regardless of the season, icy cold on-dock showers. Fun for a while but, truth be told, kind of glad to get back in a house.

In the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, the Citrus Grove older elementary and junior high kids, when not playing school sports, played park ball at the Annex. Annex Park, located on the south parking lot of the Orange Bowl, housed a softball field and a basketball court. A well-hit softball to left field might tag an Orange Bowl ticket booth.

Depending upon the season, we played football, basketball and softball, doing fierce battle against other City of Miami parks. Uniforms? Pants, T-shirts, and most of the time, bare feet.

The park supervisor, a local character, answered to (I kid you not) “Itchy.” The kids loved Itchy Schemer, but his greatest claim to fame was probably his brother, “Lefty.” Lefty Schemer played briefly in the “bigs” (New York Giants). Occasionally, Lefty would drop by the park and, farther than we had ever seen, rocket some balls out to right field which was deep and where the Orange Bowl wasn’t. Of course, we were in absolute awe.

The Annex eventually yielded to the need for more Orange Bowl space and the Orange Bowl itself would, not long ago, disappear from the Miami skyline. But for many of us, what will never fade is the memory, in a simpler time, of those youthful and playful Annex Park Days.

Growing up in South Dade in the early years was a great time. I was born in 1923 at home in Redland. My father came to Florida from West Virginia in about 1917. My mother came from Massachusetts.

My father tried tomato farming for about a year, and failed. He then began growing avocadoes. We had about 25 acres where our home was built. My brother John was born in 1920. When I was 5 years old I was sent to Redland Elementary School. They put me in the first grade class, and when I transferred to the Homestead Elementary the next year, I was put in second grade.

We took the bus from Redland to Homestead. We walked about a fourth of a mile to catch the bus. I had great teachers; including Neva King Cooper, who was my sixth grade teacher.

We used to swim in the many rock pits around Homestead. There was a particularly good one west of Avocado Drive. They kept digging out more coral rock for construction, making the pit larger. The town also had a pool east of of Eighth Street.

On weekends, we would go to the beaches around Miami. A favorite was Tahiti Beach. I think it was near Coconut Grove. There was an admission charge, but it was a great place for us little ones. We also swam at the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables.

My aunt lived in the Gables. When I was about 5, we spent a few weeks on Miami Beach in an apartment near Eighth Street. It was a short walk to the beach. When I was six, I was sent to summer camp in Alabama with my brother. The camp was owned by L.B. Sommers, who was the principal of Homestead High School. Later he founded the Miami Country Day School with C.W. “Doc” Abele.

In 1938, we rented a house on 88th Street in Surfside. We were a few blocks from the Surf Club. It is hard to believe that in those days so many places, including large hotels in Miami Beach, were restricted based on religion or race. Key Biscayne and Crandon Park came a little later. Virginia Beach was created for the non-white residents.

We had an annual festival in the Spring in Homestead. The fairgrounds were west of Route 1 off of Campbell Street. A lot of the farmers and growers had exhibits, as well as the commercial establishments. There were sideshows, rides and other amusements for the younger crowd.

My father always had a booth to show his nursery and grove planting business. (He, like many others, became a real estate dealer during the boom years of the 1920s. He had an office in Miami at 28 S.E. First Ave. It, of course, closed at the end of 1929). This festival in Homestead lasted for many years, and I think it was replaced by the festival at Fruit & Spice Park.

When I entered seventh grade, I moved across the street to Homestead High School. When I became a freshman I got a job at Brown’s Drug Store. I worked there after school and weekends until I graduated from Homestead High in 1940. My brother and I took music lessons for several years. I played the clarinet, while he played the trumpet.

I was in the high school band. We always marched in the Orange Bowl Parade and played at the Orange Bowl games. This was quite an honor for us kids from Homestead.

In 1935, one of the worst hurricanes struck the Florida Keys. There were many fatalities and the railroad to Key West was destroyed. The roadbed and the bridges were converted into a highway that was opened in 1940.

My Aunt & Uncle and my Mother and I drove to Key West and spent the night at the La Concha Hotel. We also went to the Aquarium, and that was about all there was to see. It was a very small town in those days. It was quite a trip.

I spent one year at college and returned to Homestead. I worked at the Dixie Drug until 1942. A friend and I went to a camp to study sheet metal work, so that we could get a job in the aircraft industry. We got a job with an aircraft company in Miami. I lived in a boarding house on Southwest First Street.

I enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942, and spent three years in the service. I was in North Africa and Italy. I was discharged in 1945 in Boise, Idaho, and went to Connecticut to visit an old classmate.

I stayed in Connecticut after I found employment with a department store. I retired in 1980. We still go to Florida in the winter. We rent a condo in Venice. I still visit Homestead now and then. I plan to go down there again soon.

The Homestead High School still has a reunion every year. The last class was in 1950, so it probably will end soon. I miss my old classmates, and each year there are fewer. It is true that everything changes with time, but that is the same all over this country.

April is National Poetry Month. In South Florida, that means the month-long annual O, Miami Poetry Festival. As part of the 2016 festival, students from all over took part in programs that encouraged them to write and share their own poetry. These Miami Stories feature poems from some of those students. The poems are based on their lives in Miami-Dade County.

 

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PUT THE GUNS DOWN! THIS NEED TO STOP!

I pray for the children who woke up this morning and lost their life to gun violence
As soon as a tragedy happens the person you call is God
Now people obeying’
They praying’
I’m sayin’.
It’s odd.
Look at the world now
How you going to say it now?
We out here
Just living life
Music is life now
What are we doing for the life of people that’s gone now?
They never coming back
Music is our life now.
My loved ones lost are in the sky with God
Angels with wings on their back
Living a new life
This is why music is life
You got the trap boys living the life
This is a cold world
Music is life
It’s our life now
Too many boys out here
Living this life
Losing their life
We’ve got to come together as one
And make it for our love ones
They are gone and never coming back
Now I’m rapping for y’all and writing these poems
Because I believe in y’all
Music is my limit, while for y’all the sky’s the limit

— Kayla Ingraham, 15, eighth grader at North Dade Middle School

 

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Maybe

I wish I could change my name
Or the frame on the picture that everyone is looking at
From the outside in
They swear they lookin’ deep with
And all they could see is my skin
Maybe I’d change it to something pretty “Lisa” or “Mary”
And then people would approach me and then
Maybe then I wouldn’t look so scary
I could get out my story
Then I wouldn’t have to worry
If I would have to eat alone
Maybe I’d change it to something brave like “Johann” or “Melissa”
Maybe the I could’ve scared away the monsters under my bed
Then they wouldn’t have crawled inside of my head
Or maybe change the frame
I’d put sparkles so you’d think I was pretty
Sign it with X’s and O’s so you’d think I was nice
So tell me when you look at me what do you see?

— Yazzmine (YazzTheGreatest) Brown-Livingston, 14, eighth grader at North Dade Middle School

 

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DREAMS ARE ILLEGAL IN THE GHETTO

DREAMS ARE ILLEGAL IN THE GHETTO
YOUNG KIDS CAN DREAM BIG BUT
THEY ARE INFLUENCED BY DRUGS GUNS
AND VIOLENCE.
PEER PRESSURE
AND THE DEVIL IS THE MAIN FACTOR.
SCREAM LOUD LET EM KNOW
HIT EM WITH THE FOLKS!
SPIN AROUND!
CLAP TWICE!
DREAMS ARE NOT ILLEGAL IN THE GHETTO! CRIPS
BLOODS, GANGS, GANGBANGERS, IS ALL I KNOW BUT
I DO BELIEVE IN GOD AND THE DEVIL CAN’T BRING
ME DOWN.
I WILL DREAM AND I WILL DREAM BIG.
I WILL SUCCEED I WILL NOT FAIL BECAUSE DREAMS
ARE NOT ILLEGAL IN THE GHETTO.

— Da’Juan Bethel, 14, eighth grader at North Dade Middle School

 

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Where I Am From

I am from Miami where the waves go swish,
and people chat, and the highway
sounds like an elephant stampede.
I live in an orange building
that has four stairways and 18 apartments.
My street is near the school (only 3 blocks away),
and a corner store
where I shop for food for the next day.
I am also from Haiti where the people party all night
and use a pool to celebrate birthdays.
And the food tastes like spaghetti with meatballs.
I lived with my grandma and inside it is freezing,
more freezing that the arctic pole.
And my grandma’s cooking smells better
than hamburgers and vanilla ice cream cake.

— Dieneka, fourth grader at Orchard Villa Elementary School

 

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This Is My Home Town

I am from Liberty City
where sometimes the temperature is just right.
I am from a place where the balls
dribble, dribble, dribble all day.
I am not from a place like yours.
I live in a dangerous place.
I am not from a place with bad people.
I hear police sirens screeching.
We also have many parks with red slides
and hurricanes with strong winds.
I am from a place where flowers like to bloom.
and the sky is blue like God loves you.

— Francklin, fourth grader at Orchard Villa Elementary School

 

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What Miami is Like

I am from Miami
where the rain pops

— Jaykayla, third grader at Orchard Villa Elementary School

 

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Ode to the Beach

Yellow sand, blue waves.
The water is so wavy, so wavy
it looks like the spikes of a boy’s Mohawk.
It feels like I am taking a vacation.
It feels like peace and quiet and making
a sand castle with my mom.

— Mia, Culter Ridge Middle School

 

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Odes to the Ocean

Flying up to the sun, falling through
the air like leaves falling from the tree branches,
rain jumps off of the umbrellas onto the ground
cold as the frozen pole, warm as water sweat
as the body movement moves from the pores
running through pipes out from sinks,
sipping water from the water bottle, tastes
like it’s healthy for the body, this is the life of the ocean.

— Tony, Cutler Ridge Middle School

 

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It’s softy wave, calm
is blue.
I get in the ocean
and feel like I’m going
into the world of donuts.
It has fish made of donuts
and shark friends.

— Justin, Cutler Ridge Middle School

 

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“I am warm, wide, I need someone to jump in.”
I jump in.
I see urchins and starfish.
I taste salt.

— Zamare, Cutler Ridge Middle School

Vivid memories of Miami in early 60s

I arrived in Miami with my mother on Friday, July 7, 1961 a little before 7 p.m. I consider myself Miamian, Dade-ian, South Floridian, Southeastern, all of those demonyms.

Bus fare was 20 cents. Newspapers were on wire racks at sidewalk curbs on the honor system with a cigar box or a tin can. The main post office at Northeast First Avenue and Third Street was open until midnight. Domestic postage was 5 cents an ounce and national air mail, 8 cents.

The closest supermarket was a Kwik Chek. Supermarkets gave trading stamps, Kwik-Chek gave yellow Top-Value. I got many gifts with them at Northwest 27th Avenue, including china, luggage and a Bible. Publix didn’t open on Sundays.

Service stations sold Dade and Puritan milk at 98 cents a gallon. “Home” milk, on Northwest Seventh Avenue, had a carton spinning in front and it advertised, “If it were any fresher, it’d moo.” The Walgreens drug store on East Flagler Street and Second Avenue served food on four floors.

Some self-serve cafeterias were Tyler’s and Polly Davis. At the White Castle on Southwest 27th Avenue and Flagler Street, a square hamburger was 14 cents, root beer 9 cents. Richards Department Store on Northeast First Street and First Avenue had six floors, a bargain basement and a coffee shop with green ivy and trellis pattern wall paper. I worked part-time at their jewelry counter in the 1963 Christmas season. The wages were $1.15 an hour.

Homes didn’t have air conditioning. Roberts’ Drug Store on West Flagler Street and Sixth Avenue was open all night and it had a television set in a wooden box in the parking lot across the street with benches for the viewers. Television was black and white, and there were five channels, 4 CBS, 7 NBC, 10 ABC, 2 WPBS and 6 Independent.

My favorite radio station was WIOD 610; others were WGBS, WINZ, WQAM. The main library was in Bayfront Park on Biscayne Boulevard and Flagler Street, and it had an open Bible in a glass case under a banyan tree in front. Vendors sold bags of peanuts to the people to feed the pigeons in the park.

I learned how to drive on the parking lot of the Orange Bowl. Drivers’ licenses were issued by the Florida Highway Patrol, on West Flagler Street at 26th Avenue, and they were pink, typed, and didn’t bear a photograph. I bought my first car, a used cream-colored 1961 Falcon with 5,000 miles, at the Joseph Abraham Ford dealer on Southwest Eighth Street and 27th Avenue.

Gas was around 32 cents a gallon, and the oil companies were American, Standard Oil, Texaco, Atlantic, Gulf, Pure, Shell, Sinclair, Sunoco, Cities Service, Hess, Phillips 66, Union 76. Most gave street maps of Miami and road maps of Florida. The parking meters took nickels. The overtime parking fine was $1.

The telephone company had an office on Northeast Second Street and Miami Avenue where you could consult out-of-town telephone books and place long-distance calls. There were seven movie theaters on Flagler Street, Town, Paramount, Florida, Olympia, Miami, Flagler. In Coral Gables were the Miracle, the Gables, the Coral and Riviera. Federal savings & loan associations gave 5.25 percent interest on their savings accounts and stayed open until 3 p.m., state commercial banks gave 5 percent and were open until 2 p.m.

In the summer, two girl friends and I spent every Saturday and every Sunday at Indian Beach Park on 46th Street. In the evening, we went to the amphitheater in Pier Park on Ocean Drive by Pier 1 to dance. We went to dances at the Police Benevolent Association, the Hungarian-American Club, the Polish-American Club.

There were no shopping malls. There were three arcades downtown on East Flagler Street. There were juice stands. The nearest shopping center was Central Shopping Plaza at Northwest Seventh Street and 37th Avenue.

The population of Dade County, according to the 1960 census, was 935,047.

There were two bus stations, Greyhound on Northeast First Street and Third Avenue, and Trailways across the avenue. There were three railroad stations, Atlantic on Southeast First Street and Second Avenue, Florida on Southwest First Avenue and Third Street and Seaboard on Northwest Seventh Avenue and 22nd Street. Northwest 36th Street was lined with car dealers.

On Fifth Street in Miami Beach, there were many car agencies that would give cars to people to drive up north for, and deliver to its owner, and in one direction, going up in summer or coming down in winter. They provided a tankful of gas. Little booths on Bayfront Park sold boat rides on the bay.

Postal zones had two digits. Is there anyone left who remembers the old telephone exchanges? I remember CEdar, EMerson, FRanklin, JEfferson, MOhawk, MUrray, NAtional, NEwtown, OXford, PLaza, TUxedo, UNion and WIlson.

I got married at Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic Church on Southwest 26th Road. My son was born at Mercy Hospital on South Miami Avenue.

I got an associate in arts degree in business administration at Miami-Dade Community College New World Center, and worked as a corporate banking assistant at Southeast Bank in Miami Springs.

Seventeen. That is when I graduated from high school. I had many choices of where I wanted to go to school, but the university I dreamed of going to rejected me. I ended up choosing a school I had never visited and taking a blind leap.

A couple of weeks after I turned 18, I moved down to Miami to attend college. I never had been to Miami before and I was honestly scared to attend the only university I did not tour on my application list. I have family in the area and I knew that even though my immediate family was just four hours away I could take a 20-minute drive to see my cousins.

I remember the day before I was going to move into my dorm, I stayed up all night in my cousins’ house watching TV and honestly scared out of my mind. I tried to play off the fact that I was scared to move to a place I had never been before and afraid I would not like the university I chose to attend. I wanted my father to see my strength in leaving instead of my fear that first year here.

Now, I’m about to graduate and time never seemed to have passed so fast. My challenges now seem like moments I cherish and take with me as a lesson learned. I do not know what scares me more about finally graduating: the memory of the two beloved men in my life or me actually moving on to accomplish my life goals.

I started my freshman year with my whole family moving me into a dorm with my best friend from high school, and then my father went clubbing with his cousins. I honestly thought my father enjoyed coming to visit so he could party, and he always enjoyed dragging one of my sisters along for the drive. He occasionally came down with my middle sister, but as time went by we visited each other less often. The reason for the broken connection was my boyfriend at the time; he was very close to my father and tended to not like my ways.

My first semester was a success, and I came home for winter break to my loving family and boyfriend with A’s and B’s. Time seemed like it did not change in four months, and each moment I spent at home reminded me why I love my family and why I also went to college four hours away.

The start of my second semester seemed as easy as the first one; I figured college wasn’t so bad. Mid-semester I got eight calls from my boyfriend who eventually reached me to tell me my father had died from a blood clot. At first I thought it was a bad joke. No, it was a harsh reality that I was not ready to face.
I went home that week to find out my father had put me as head of household. I was 18 with responsibilities I thought I would not have to deal with until I was in my twenties. I had to take care of my mother, who was blind, and figure out how to put two sisters through college, along with myself. My family lost our houseman that year as well, and I tried my best, with the help of my mother’s best friend, to manage the family.

Even though everyone tells me I did a great job, I felt I did not do the best I could have because I stayed in college instead of moving closer to my mother. My mother’s best friend did everything possible to make sure her needs were met. I called my mother every night for a year and half to read her stories. She did not remember the four months after my father died.

My sisters spent most of the college fund and ended up doing their own things. My older brother tried to help my youngest sister but she became trouble to him. After two years of being in charge and feeling drained by my family, I gave the guardianship to my middle sister. I wanted to forgive my family for the hurt, and even today I have a hard time with it.

I am now 21 and lost my mother’s best friend three years to the day after I lost my father. He had been a father figure to me and I felt devastated to lose him. He was the man who watched over me after my father passed and made sure I was always okay.

Now, I am getting ready to graduate and all I see is their memory as I am about to walk across that stage, wishing they were here to watch that moment. I cannot help but think Miami will always be a part of me, just like all the great people in my life.

I was born in 1939 in Winston-Salem, N.C. I’m the last of eight children. I was born to John Fair and Mary Lou Fair.

People ask me about the name “Talmadge,” which is an unusual name for me to have. The day I was born, I came home and the insurance broker came by and inquired as to whether or not my mother had named me. She said no. He said, “Why don’t you name him Talmadge?’’

The irony is that Herman Eugene Talmadge, Sr., was a segregationist. [Talmadge, a U.S. senator from Georgia from 1957 to 1981, was one of several Southern senators who boycotted the Democratic National Convention of 1964 after President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.]

I finished high school in 1957. I went off to Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C. The most exciting part about being there was this was when the Civil Rights revolution was beginning. I couldn’t wait to get out of class to go downtown Charlotte and protest.

I went to graduate school in Atlanta. Atlanta was the bedrock of black intellectual society. With all those colleges and students there, we demonstrated every day. When I finished graduate school, I had a master’s degree in social work.

I was 24. My notion was that I would volunteer for the Army, but they wouldn’t take me because of an injury. So now it’s 1963, I’m home and have no job. I went up to the Winston-Salem Urban League and told them I was looking for a job.

The head of the Winston-Salem League asked me to work for the Urban League, which was founded in 1910 to improve the lives of black Americans. He found an opening in Miami. Around August 1963, I took my first plane ride to Miami for an interview.

I don’t know whether or not they intended to hire me, but I intended to be hired. I convinced them that I was like Jesus, that I could walk on water. Even though I had no experience, I had commitment and dedication. Long story short, I got the job.

The director of the Urban Renewal Program was looking for a deputy director, and they wanted the deputy director to be a person of color because the greatest impact of the Urban Renewal Program and I-95 would be on black people who lived in Overtown.

James Whitehead, then CEO of the Miami Urban League, got the job and left. They were getting ready to start a search for a new CEO when the board heard that Whitney Young Jr., the executive director of the National Urban League, was planning on filling the vacancy in Miami with one of his friends.

As a result, the board became upset. Before they let someone else pick the new CEO, they were willing to give it to a young, inexperienced man.

They said, “You want this job?’’ I said, “If you all want me to have it, I’ll take it.’’

I became the youngest president and CEO in the history of the Urban League movement at age 24. I didn’t know anything about running anything. I knew everything about being aggressive about the things that I believed in.

Our role was to begin to do the things to make life better for black people in spite of the circumstances. In 1963, we started with a staff of three people. In less than a decade, we became the largest Urban League affiliate in the history of the movement in terms of employees. We had 476 full-time employees, plus 25 part-timers and four consultants.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had a formula. In whatever city he’d visit, he’d identify the top black lawyer, the top black preacher and the top black activist in that city. When he came to have his first meeting in Miami at Mount Sinai Baptist Church, I was chosen as the activist. I got a chance to meet Martin and I’ll never forget it.

I was the Muhammad Ali of black Dade County and I was talking the talk. I was talking back to white folk, sassing white folk. I couldn’t wait to get to the conference in Louisville, Ky., just step out and say, “Yeah, I’m here! Ol’ bad T. Willard.’’

While I was writing my decade of progress report, it said the Urban League of Greater Miami was doing great but its constituency was not. I realized then that we’re not here to do great for ourselves. We’re here for the people who we’re supposed to serve.

We came up with a leadership Miami component. We began to look at identifying persons to place them on boards. We identified more than 400 young black people. They came through our leadership training classes and we placed them throughout this community. We integrated every workforce in Dade County.

If you were black, you could not work east of Biscayne Boulevard. That was the unwritten code. We changed that. We ran the open occupancy law. We drafted that law and got it passed.

The next step was clearly a step that my parents understood, education. I know today that the only thing that is broken in my community is the will to achieve.

We decided to make the league self-sufficient. Now we can say what we want to say, do what we want do, be who we want to be without the support of other folks. We’re the largest developer of housing in Liberty City, second only to the city of Miami.

We have the freedom to be as aggressive as we want to be in helping change the system. Martin said, ‘Free at last, free at last.’

Well, we’re free, we’re free.

This story was compiled by HistoryMiami intern Lisann Ramos, as recounted by T. Willard Fair

In 1937, when I was nine months old, my parents, Thomas J. Lee Smith and Lila Smith moved from Tampa to Homestead, Florida so my Dad could pursue a sales position with Kilgore Seed Company.

My dad was orphaned at a young age, so settling into an old wood-framed house in a small farming neighborhood seemed like a perfect setting—family, community, and for Mother, church down the road.

Growing up in Homestead, where everyone knew your name and who your parents were, placed an indelible mark on my perspective of life. Deals could be made with a handshake. Your word was your bond. Trust, loyalty and commitment were a part of your core values and beliefs and each of those were equally embraced and sustained.

In 1943, my world of innocence was turned upside down. World War II had reared its ugly head all the way to Homestead, Florida. Dad was drafted into the Army and shipped off to the Philippines. I was seven years old, and Mother was left to raise me and somehow find a way to keep our family intact and financially secure.

Mother got a job in my school as an assistant to the principal of Neva King Cooper Elementary. We walked together to school every day, waiting for Dad’s return so we could once again return to life as it used to be, but it would take three more years before everything returned to normal.

Dad was back home, unscathed by the war, and working once again at Kilgore selling to vegetable farmers.

As the years passed, Homestead started rising above its small town standing with increased construction of strip malls, restaurants and paved roads.

The Homestead Air Force Reserve Base brought in a military population and there was enough of a surge in residents that old Homestead High and Redland High were merged into the brand-new South Dade High School. My parents bought a house behind the First Presbyterian Church—where I sang first bass in the church choir—and I was part of South Dade’s first graduating class.

In the 1950s, my Dad borrowed money from a friend and founded S & M Farm Supply, Inc., with his partner, A. McIntyre. They rented a wooden building for tomato packing on the southwest corner of U.S. 1 and S. W. 248 Street and next to the F.E.C. Railroad tracks. Not long after that they had a concrete-block warehouse and sales store erected right across from the Homestead Electric Power Plant.

After graduating from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture, I joined my Dad at S & M. Years later we acquired Woodbury Chemical Company of Homestead, and both corporations were the local base for the agricultural, pesticide, and fertilizer industries in South Florida.

It’s been a long time since Woodbury was sold and S & M closed its doors. My parents have been gone for years. Homestead is different not only because of time and growth, but also from the tragic destruction of Hurricane Andrew.

Our old house is now bank offices and the church is no longer on the corner. I’m quite sure business contracts have replaced the handshake and the farming industry has waned. But I know that one thing still remains the same: I can stop by a roadside stand, pick some strawberries, close my eyes, and remember what it was like when everyone knew my name.