Category: Miami Stories

My father, John Mantell, was born in 1898, somewhere in Romania. At age 16, he emigrated to the United States and was employed by relatives as an apprentice in the parquet and flooring craft industries.

Industrious and of high intelligence, he quickly became skilled in this craft, learned to speak impeccable English, and adapted quickly to American culture.

Saving his earnings and seeking to capitalize on his newly acquired skills, he accumulated enough to start his own business. In a relatively few years, he developed one of the largest wood parquet flooring company in the United States.

When Dad discovered Miami Beach in 1922, he bought a bungalow with an unobstructed view of the ocean. In those days, people were hesitant to build too close to the ocean, so there were no buildings on Ocean Drive. In effect, our home on the east side of Collins Avenue and Second Street was oceanfront.

Almost all Miami Beach single-family homes at the time were built with coral rock or Dade County pine wood. Our pine home had wide, screened openings around the perimeter instead of windows, which kept out bugs. Canvas covers were rolled down on pipes when it rained.

Even though there was no air conditioning, ocean breezes kept us comfortable even during the hottest summer days.

In those times, no one had dogs or cats. The pet of the neighborhood was a Japanese chicken, which came with the purchase of our house. The chicken lived under our house, which sat on concrete blocks two feet high off the ground.

There were no airlines or interstate highways at the time, so our vacation travels alternated between two available coastal liners. One went from Miami to Savannah to Norfolk to New York, and the other from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas, to New York.

Our family was up north on vacation in September 1926, when a major hurricane hit. Upon our return we fortunately found the bungalow intact, except for some of the screening. Amazingly, the lonely Japanese chicken was still under the house.

The banks caved in that year and the stock market crashed. Dad had retired at age 32, but lost everything except the Miami Beach bungalow in the market crash. So the extended family moved in and Dad went back to work, this time as a general contractor and realtor.

Dad worked with leading architects, building Art Deco hotels, apartments and homes — Flamingo Plaza, Shorecrest and Chelsea Hotel, to name a few. At one time, he was one of the five biggest contractors in Florida. With the help of Seminole Indians and others, Dad had 20 jobs going at once. He built and managed the Mantell Plaza Hotel. Then World War II changed Miami Beach.

In 1942, the U.S. Army Air Forces took over all the hotels, including the Mantell Plaza, for housing Army Air Forces personnel. Miami was troop-training headquarters for U-boats. We would watch soldiers marching the streets, including famous actor Clark Gable. We were very patriotic and I sold war bonds at the local movie theatre. Lucky for us, the Mantell Plaza was the first hotel released by the Army and was the only operating hotel on Miami Beach for a year.

While my father was working to recoup the family fortune, our dear mother Anna was running the household and raising the three children: Murray, Sally and me. We had carefree early childhoods spent barefoot on the golden sands of Miami Beach. I have early recollections of jumping boulder to boulder on the government rock jetties, later the 14th Street beach.

I attended Miami Beach Elementary and Beach junior and senior high schools. It was a small student body; we all knew each other. We had small classes and great teachers. Many thanks to them for all they did for us. After class, there were fun-filled afternoon patio dances and championship basketball games.

In high school, eating off-campus was “strictly forbidden,” so lunches at Joe’s Broadway were dangerous, thus especially delicious. Weekends were for sunburns on the sandy 14th Street beach.

Most weekends, kids took the short jitney to Miami for the movies and big name stage shows at the Olympia Theater (now the Gusman). The favorite lunch spot was Burdines.

My sister Sally also went to Beach High and then University of Miami where she played violin and was a member of the UM symphony orchestra. She met her husband Dan Raylesberg during the war while he was stationed at the Biltmore Hotel.

To date, my brother Murray is the oldest living graduate of Beach High. He studied and got a degree in civil engineering.

During World War II, he was a naval architect, and after the war he became the founding chairman of Civil Engineering at UM, where he taught for 57 years and received numerous awards for teaching excellence.

I started college at the University of Miami in 1946. During my senior year at UM, while doing my teaching internship, the mother of one of my pupils arranged a blind date for me with Norton Pallot. We were married three months later.

Norton was associated with his father, and later his brother and brother-in-law, in the operation of Norton Tire Company, which sold to Goodyear in the 1980s.

Life in Miami has been good. The city has grown and changed beyond recognition, and we enjoy it all the more — and perhaps also because our three children and spouses, and our four grandchildren all live around us in Coral Gables.

(This story was compiled by Laurie Appignani Pallot, as recounted by her mother Gloria Mantell Pallot).

In 1949, I first came to Miami to check out the University of Miami.

I hitched a ride from New York with my Uncle Pat, who drove the boss’ shiny black Cadillac down south every fall to be the chief mutual racetrack teller through the winter season at Hialeah and Tropical racetracks. Leaving New York on a sleety day, we cruised the whole way down on U.S. 1 and arrived, almost magically it seemed to me, in warm, sunny Miami.

As everyone promised, it was heaven!

Then it was Miami again in ‘52 when my parents and I joined Pat for another southland sojourn — this time including the necessary tourist stop at Silver Springs. But I ended up at NYU part-time and was lucky to land a great job at IBM, so Miami had to wait until 1954 when my friend Barb and I split our vacation and took a week in August — first to Vacation Valley in the Poconos — and then a week in December back to my warm Miami.

I had booked a package tour with round-trip air fare, seven days at the Lombardy Hotel on 63rd Street, some meals, transfers and tours — for $99.

That summer before, back at Vacation Valley, Barb had been bitten by a black widow spider and had been pretty sick. Now in Miami, the sun activated the poison in her system, and she ended up at St. Francis Hospital on Miami Beach for the rest of our Miami week.

I ended up — by myself — at the hotel pool reading everything in sight, including the classifieds in the Miami Herald and The Miami News. Two ads intrigued me. They were looking for “Qualified Gals” to be stewardesses for Eastern Airlines and National.

I had become friends with a sweet Hawaiian who wove palm hats poolside. He encouraged me to apply — even lending me his old car that backfired all the way across 36th Street to the interviews. I was accepted by both airlines. The Lombardy’s doorman, George, another new acquaintance, said to go with Eastern, and I did.

I graduated — after six days of training — and remained at that great job for 20 years.

In 1957, I bought my first home in southeast Hialeah for $12,500. To go furniture shopping, I rented a car at $1 a day and 10 cents a mile (airline discount). In the middle of that “Other Century,” I wasn’t able to close on the house I bought because I was a single woman, so I called for “back-up” and sent for my mom to come down from New York and co-sign with me. But that wasn’t enough because she was a married woman and — at that time — needed her husband’s permission. I finally settled when Dad came down to sign for me. We’ve come a long way.

In the Miami sunshine, Mother’s arthritis almost entirely disappeared. When Dad came down on weekends and saw her improvement, he, too, became a Miamian, retiring from his job as an innovative production manager with Ever Ready Labels, which served the entire international label industry.

Within the year, they moved to Miami and, instead of living with my parents, the switch happened. They lived with me.

We bought a few more houses — from $10,000 to $17,000 — and rented them out to new stewardesses, and my folks happily became surrogate parents to the homesick girls. Mom, always a terrific seamstress, tailored their uniforms expertly and gave more than a few Italian-style cooking lessons. We became a happy extended family — my parents and all their high-flying “daughters.”

It wouldn’t be a bad idea for a thoughtfully written movie, I think, with worthy actors to play Sinatra and all the other celebrities we met and dined with back then — at Jilly’s on the 79th Street Causeway in those glamorous years.

I married a pilot in ’68, and we moved to Kendall. My husband’s hobby was rebuilding planes, so we bought an acre behind Baptist Hospital where he could have his large airplane parts spread out to work on. We remodeled a one-bedroom cottage to a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home with a separate three-car garage workshop.

My airline job had to end in ’74 so I could be available if and when construction workers decided to show up. It was a sad day when I wrote my letter of resignation. I still had my heart with E.A.L. and became a Silverliner, our national service organization of former Eastern flight attendants.

I only recently stepped down from being Miami’s Silverliners president for 13 years, but I’m still active in our club, though our national membership has dwindled to 850 members and our local chapter from 45 to 11. I also joined the Red Hat Society, which widens my circle of friendships.

Under my mango trees and palms, I count my blessings every day for the good luck and sunny path that took me and my family to Miami.

As a youngster, I was excited to be driving out 36th Street to see my uncle, Dave Click, arrive in an airplane. He was secretary to Florida state Sen. Trammell.

The airstrip was just a small landing area in a big grassy field with a chain-link fence around it. (In later years, I spent much time at the fine new terminal at Miami International Airport, because my husband, the father of my three children, flew for Eastern Air Lines.

We sang Moon Over Miami and loved it. “Stay Through May” was a Chamber of Commerce plea. Flamingoes at Hialeah Race Track were fun to watch. Kids were allowed on one special night to watch dog races at the Kennel Club, and Daddy took us there.

Watching the Orange Bowl parade was an annual event never to be missed. My husband and I had two good stepladders and stretched a board between them for us and our three children.

There was a huge rivalry then between Miami High and Edison. In the 1940s, a friend and I from Miami High attended Edison classes one day and were never noticed. That proved to us that Edison just did not have the disciplined organization of Miami High. Strangers there would have been sent to the office for identification right away. Once, Edison students splashed red paint across the front of our building when they finally beat us in football after 28 years. It made the news.

I received a scholarship to the University of Miami in 1943, but I did not own a car. I waited on Coral Way for a bus on class mornings. When I gladly accepted a ride from a gentleman who had stopped, the man was quite brusque in stating that a young lady should not accept rides from strange men.

I quickly settled in the front seat and said, “But everyone in Miami knows you, Police Chief Quigg.” He seemed pleased with my response and took me all the way to the university.

Coral Gables established its Miracle Mile of shops on Coral Way. The city put plants and flowers in beds in the sidewalks in the business district. Lincoln Mall in Miami Beach had also done this years before. Since I grew up to have a profession in landscape architecture, these places had a lasting influence on me.

My life was very much affected by strikes at the airlines, and they were so bad for our family and the city. I believe it was said that Eastern Air Lines employed 7,000 people in Miami at that time.

The airline closed for good in 1991.

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1932. I had a wonderful time growing up in Cincinnati, playing outside, flying model airplanes and kites, playing baseball, and most everything kids did in that day and age.

My father, an Italian immigrant, came to the United States and settled in Cincinnati. He worked as a machinist and became ill, diagnosed with silicosis, known as dust on the lungs, and was advised by his doctors to leave Ohio to find a warmer climate. My father had a cousin in Miami who invited him down for two weeks. After he arrived in Miami, he called my mother to tell her he had “found paradise” and for us to come to Miami to see if we liked it here.

I was 10 years old when we left Ohio in 1942, arriving in Miami after three days by Greyhound bus. When the bus pulled into the terminal, we could not find my father. Much to our surprise, he approached us in a Hawaiian shirt, hat and sunglasses. We saw the sun, the skyline and water and could not believe the beauty that was upon us.

My father took us to a drugstore with a diner and we had dinner. As we ate, Mom and Dad discussed selling the house in Ohio and moving to Miami. Dad rented a two-bedroom apartment in what is now Little Havana, where we lived while Dad sold the house in Ohio.

Dad purchased two lots in Hialeah, at Ninth Avenue and 12th Street, on the west side. This is where he built our new home. The other lot was plowed and my father kept livestock there and grew fruits and vegetables. In Italy, he had been a farmer, so he used his skills to farm the land. We sold vegetables, fruits, milk, and eggs in order to make a living. We also had chickens and goats.

Mom enrolled me in school and we had a great life while I was growing up in Hialeah. We had land all around us and lots of fields to play in and have fun. We had only one station on television and that was Channel 4. The station went off the air every night at 9 p.m. We had no telephone service, no air conditioning, and did not even have garbage pickup. Dad would bury the garbage in the back yard.

Later, my father bought five and a half acres of land in West Hialeah and began farming that land, too. He sold the crops from the back of his truck in Hialeah every day, and I would help. The silicosis had disappeared and Dad worked hard every day to support me and Mom.

The years passed and I began high school. I played football for Edison High, ran track and field and played basketball. There was a little soda shop across the street from Edison and all the guys and girls would gather there after classes for sodas and just hanging around with all our friends, listening to music and talking. Saturday was date night with our girls, and there were dances and parties all the time. I worked in a laundry that I helped build so I could get enough money to buy a car.

I built model airplanes and flew them at the Hialeah Recreation Park at night on the ball diamond. My friends and I would fly our free-flight models on the weekends in the cow pastures on Hialeah Drive.

We fished in the canals and would hunt in the woods around Hialeah and down in Kendall, where it was no man’s land. We hunted rabbits on Okeechobee Road, and in the Everglades for ducks and pigs. We would bring our game home for my mom to cook, and boy, could my mom cook. Mom was also Italian and she would put on a spread for an army.

My teen life came to an end and I joined the United States Air Force and was a sheet-metal mechanic. I was stationed in Texas, California, Japan, Georgia and the Korean war zone. After four years in the service, I returned to Miami.

My family and friends gathered for a party and I met my wife Vilma, a beautiful Italian woman I fell in love with from across the room. We dated for a year and married in 1955 at Blessed Trinity in Miami Springs. I built a house in Hialeah and we had two children. I worked at National Airlines as a sheet-metal mechanic for a few years while studying at the New York Institute of Photography to become a professional photographer, beginning at the Home News newspaper in Hialeah.

I spent many years as a professional photographer in Miami and worked for many major corporations – Grand Union, Winn-Dixie, many developers, and companies of the food-trade industries. I had the pleasure of photographing and meeting the mayor of Hialeah, Henry Milander, Senator Bob Graham, President John F. Kennedy, Moshe Dayan, and many other dignitaries. I flew aerial assignments all over Miami, and photographed the wonderful skylines of Brickell Avenue and downtown Miami.

My years have caught up with me now and I no longer can do what I did. But what memories I have of this beautiful Miami that my father called paradise. I love the paradise he found and what I helped shape in such a little way.

In 1986, Miami International Airport was pretty scary for a first-time traveler coming from Guyana, a small country in South America. The escalator comes readily to mind when I think of that overwhelming experience. Although I saw others stepping on it, I was deathly afraid of this incredibly long, moving staircase. I just stood there, my fear weighing me down and keeping me rooted in place. The gentleman behind me gently suggested that I step on and he would stay close. I made it down safely and have been living in Miami since that beautiful July 4th day.

I came to Miami by way of marriage. Whenever I’m in conversation with anyone who wants to know how my husband I met and I tell them that we had an arranged marriage, many of them balk and I can see the questions tumbling around in their minds. Most times, it’s a high-pitched, capitalized, one-word question that is punctuated with endless question marks, “REALLY” A smiling “yes” will always be my response.

In the course of the conversation, I would often get this one, “Do you guys fight?” Of course, we do! Which marriage is without its ups and downs? As we continue chatting, the million-dollar question comes out, “Were you forced into this arranged marriage?” It is at that point that I have to explain that not all arranged marriages are forced. In my case, my husband’s parents met with my parents and marriage was discussed. I made the final decision.

I met my husband in February of 1986 when he visited Guyana for a week. I gave him a resounding “yes” the day after I met him. He returned to Miami and we got to know each other through our letter writing. He went back to Guyana in June of that year, we got married, and he returned to Miami on his own a week later. I followed on July 4th.

My husband and I lived in West Kendall in a condo on 157 Avenue and Sunset Drive. There were only fields west of 157 Avenue. Today, that area is a vibrant, highly populated neighborhood; it is hard to believe that it was once quiet and tranquil.

My first year of marriage was the “dating” year – it was the time my husband I and got to know each other. We went on a lot of dinner and movie dates, sometimes catching a double at the movie theater. We were frequent visitors at the Don Carter bowling alley. Not knowing anything about the sport, I cheered myself on even when a single pin fell. Often, we were tourists – enjoying the sights, scenes, and recreation of Miami. Many Saturdays we got up at 5:00 in the morning to make the drive to Key Largo to fish. Sometimes the catch was abundant and other times we returned home with an empty bucket.

My first job was at Eckerds (now CVS) as a cashier. I have many fond memories of this first U.S. work experience. A few months into the job, a customer referred me to the manager at Amerifirst for a teller’s position. That job also offered a few “firsts” in my early years in Miami. I took a taxi for the first time ever to the interview. I had my first lie detector test. I wore my first skirt suit. I earned my first “big” paycheck, and I drove my first car.

Keeping with firsts, by our first wedding anniversary, I was pregnant with our first child. Over the next nine months, we took our first Lamaze class. I had my first C-section, and I held my first-born in my arms. Six months after we welcomed our baby girl into the world, we moved into our first home in the Hammocks area.

Over the next five years, we were blessed with two other children – a boy and another girl. Our children have grown up and made warm, fond, memories in this same home since 1988.

At the age of 26, I decided to go to Miami-Dade Community College to pursue an associate’s degree in elementary education. Two years later, I transferred my credits to Florida International University and graduated with a B.A. in December of 1998. In January of 1999, I was extremely lucky to start my teaching career at an elementary school close to my home.

In 2002, I was granted a full scholarship to pursue an Urban Master’s degree at FIU. I took classes in the evening and some Saturdays. At FIU, I interacted with many brilliant professors and students who continue to have an impact on me. Miami has bestowed upon me the wonderful opportunity of education.
Miami has also blessed me with beautiful gifts of friendship.

I have great memories of being welcomed warmly into the hearts and homes of my husband’s friends and relatives. My husband and I meet often with those same friends and some new ones for fundraising for charities, cricket games, and religious and cultural activities.

Some of our most cherished memories with our friends are of the marathons we completed to raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. My husband ran his marathon in 2001 and I walked mine in 2010. In 2011, a group of us participated in the Disney Wine & Dine half marathon to mark our 25th wedding anniversary. My husband slowed his pace so we could cross the finish line together!

Miami is my home. I love the cultural, flavorful diversity here. I love it that nobody notices our Guyanese accent! Miami and all those with whom I’ve come in contact have nurtured me into the woman I am today. I’m glad that my marriage was arranged with a wonderful man in Miami.

Today, although I am no longer afraid of escalators, I must admit that navigating Miami International Airport can still be a challenge!

Some might say that I was made to serve in public office. I don’t know, but I have lived an interesting and good life.

I learned so much doing what I did, what I still do. I looked back at an old calendar from when I was a city commissioner in Miami Beach, the first woman to serve in that position. It was full of occasions and events: meetings, breakfasts, lunches, cocktails, dinners. I loved it and I still do.

I grew up in the Bronx and my husband, Sidney, was from Brooklyn, which was like a planet in itself in those days. We moved to Miami Beach in 1960 because it was just too cold up in New York. My parents were already snowbirds, coming down each winter. It was beautiful. We never closed our doors or locked anything up.

We left a grayish city for the colors of Miami Beach and quickly saw the potential in the city. It was full of retirees in those days and we were in the prime of our 30s.

Miami Beach, and even Miami, was like a secret that just needed to be told.

In the 1970s, we realized the great potential Miami Beach had and, as residents, our vision saw what the area could become for the world.

Once my two oldest sons were in high school and the youngest was starting school, I had a lot more free time and I wanted to get involved. I ran for commissioner because I thought the best man for the job was a woman.

In those days, they were called councilmen, but that changed once they had a woman in office!

I served as commissioner for two years, 1977 to 1979. I look back to the days of campaigning as a time where I was able to get a lot done to help the city, but it was after I left office that I was really able to make an impact. My husband followed and became a three-term commissioner. We were the first couple to both serve in that position.

I served as chairman on the Miami Beach Chamber’s education committee for more than 12 years, the Miami-Dade Cultural Affairs council and so many other positions. My husband and I wanted to see Miami Beach reach its potential and be the city it has become today. I had to learn all about politics; I came from the PTA.

In office and as a private citizen, I always believed in the importance of education. I worked to keep the library in Miami Beach where it is. When they tore down South Beach Elementary, it broke my heart. They didn’t have enough children living in Miami Beach to have a school there in those days. Of course, that has all changed and now Miami Beach is full of families of all ages. It’s wonderful to see.

Today, I am still advocating for my community. I believe that everyone should do their part. I am president of Miami Jewish Health Systems Hazel Cypen Tower tenants’ council and co-president of their foundation’s women’s auxiliary. We raise money to make improvements and I make sure that the tenants’ opinions are heard in an organized manner. I was asked to run for the position after living there only six months; I guess I had made an impression. I’ve been serving for seven years now; there are no term limits here.

I’ve also seen the city of Miami change. Sidney and I had a vision and feel that it has come true. I think that the Latin influence has been a tremendous cultural addition that has enhanced the city so much. It is what makes Miami, Miami. The dream I had of seeing this city become a truly international destination brings me such joy, but there are still advancements that need to be made.

Midtown and Wynwood have changed so very much in recent years; it’s beautiful.

I hope Overtown will be next. It’s a pity that the people who live there have had to suffer so much, but there has always been a vision to fix it up and ensure that everyone has access to the same great education we worked so hard to get around the city. I hope to live to see the day that that plan is in place.

Back during the mid-1950s, my parents migrated from rural Georgia, with five young kids in tow. Seeking a better life with more opportunity for their children, they sold most of their possessions, left family and friends behind and struck out for the big city.

Getting to Miami was quite a journey for us, with many stops along the way. But there was no doubt that our destination was Miami.

We arrived during the summer of 1955. For an African-American family, there were still many limitations in place at that time, barriers that would literally take years to come down. As young kids, we didn’t really understand it all.

My parents would often sit us down and try to explain to us about the harsh realities of life during those times. My father would tell us stories of his life and the many things he’d gone through as a young black man living in the Deep South. Now, living in this strange new city, they kept us very close, not wanting us to ever fall into harm’s way. In spite of this, they were determined to make the most of our new life.

We moved in with my mother’s older sister in Coconut Grove, where my aunt Irene lived in a small duplex just off Grand Avenue. We were all packed into this little two-bedroom duplex, and my aunt made pallets for us kids to sleep on in the living room. It was like a slumber party every night; we had so much fun.

I was third from the oldest, barely 5 years old, but I have such vivid memories of those days. Everything was a new adventure for me. I’d never seen a palm tree before, and I remember seeing my uncle open a coconut for the very first time. My aunt used to make the most delicious coconut candy. Some evenings we would walk up to Grand Avenue just to watch the traffic and see the hustle and bustle of the city.

We soon moved into our own apartment, just off U.S.1 in Coconut Grove. By that time, my father had landed a job working for General Tire Company in North Miami Beach.

My mother was attending nursing school at that time. With five small kids at home, that was not an easy task. My mom did eventually graduate and began working at Mercy Hospital.

There were times when my dad’s car would break down and my mom had to pick him up from work. She would let us kids tag along just for the ride. For us, driving down Northeast 163rd Street was like touring a vacation paradise.

I remember seeing the tourists walking around and frolicking in the pool at the Howard Johnson’s right at the cloverleaf interchange. There was a McDonald’s just down the street (that McDonald’s is still there) and sometimes mother would stop in for a rare treat.

I began first grade, with great reluctance, at George Washington Carver School. I hated school and would have preferred to stay home with my mom watching Captain Kangaroo or Popeye’s Playhouse.

Over the next few years we moved a few more times, until we were settled a bit further north, in an area called West Little River. My parents purchased the most beautiful and spacious home (at least to us) – three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a Florida room. We were in heaven.

We invited friends over and our cousins would sleep over sometimes. By that time, my older sister had married and moved out. I was in middle school by the mid-1960s and had made a few friends, and those relationships lasted many years after high school. I’ve known my closest and dearest friend since second grade.

By then, school was a lot of fun, and I had some of the most wonderful teachers. I especially enjoyed the many field trips to so many exciting places in Miami – the Science Museum, Parrot Jungle, The Serpentarium, Tropical Hobbyland, Crandon Park Zoo and Miami Seaquarium, just to name a few.

My parents really never had a lot of money, but they did manage to give us the most memorable childhood. Thank goodness it didn’t take a lot of money to have a good time in those days. There was always something to look forward to.

We were rewarded with spending money for doing our chores and helping out around the house.

My sister and I would take the Number 25 bus all the way downtown to go shopping. That was such a fun ride. We’d have lunch at one of the dime stores like Woolworths or McCrory’s lunch counter. Those charbroiled cheeseburgers and root beer floats alone were worth the trip. Other times, we’d enjoy Saturday afternoons at Virginia Key Beach with a big picnic basket.

If there was a new movie out, my dad would load us all into the car and head to the drive-in theatre. We wore our pj’s and made our Jiffy Pop popcorn before leaving home. It was so wonderful back in those days with so much to do.

By 1969, I was a senior at Miami Central High and ready for graduation. I registered at Miami-Dade Community College North campus and started work for the telephone company, a job that lasted more than 25 years. Both of my parents and three of my siblings have now passed on, my mom most recently.

Today, my husband and I are still enjoying life to the fullest here in Miami. More than 50 years ago, my parents wanted to provide a better life with more opportunity for their children in Miami, and I must say that was accomplished, many times over.

Today, I enjoy cooking big meals and having my children and grandchildren over to visit. That says it all. Life is great because the best time is now.

It feels like a high speed chase west on the ironically named Dolphin Expressway, veering south on what follows as a seamless string of highway on the “Palmetto,” the Don Shula expressway, and the Ronald Reagan Turnpike, all certifiable assaults on the nervous system.

I pass hurling arcs of overpasses and barrier walls painted in something vaguely resembling sandy or sunset colors. After the Walmart /Home Depot/BJs/ Outlet Center super-section in Homestead, I hook onto U.S.1 southbound and I’m off the highway, in Florida City, closer, at least, to what will become familiar territory for the next month. This drive is happening in May 2014 when I spent the month living in Everglades National Park as part of the Artist in Residence in the Everglades (AIRIE) program.

On the way down, I travel the familiar traverse on State Road 9336, past produce distribution centers, dollar stores, Mexican restaurants, and a church with a gigantic cross reclining on a grassy man-made berm.

As I near the park, the vista opens up at Southwest 192nd Avenue with wide agricultural fields. I can smell the fertilizer. I continue south, turning west at the state prison, past the well-kept migrant workers’ housing, and a small nondescript house with a large driveway that becomes a lively taqueria on the weekends. The variety continues past the Benito Juarez Park, a cluster of orchid growers, agricultural land for sale and a straight shot west across the C-111 (a canal originally built in the 1960s to transport Aerojet moon rocket engines so big they had to be barged). In a few minutes I arrive at the offices at the Ernest Coe Visitor Center to check into the cabin I will call home during the month of May.

My cabin quickly becomes home base after mopping, unpacking and re-arranging of furniture. It’s a piece of a larger housing settlement for park employees, built as part of “Mission 66,” a federal program begun in 1956 to improve the buildings in the national park system after the post-war visitor boom. The project introduced the concept of the visitor center, building the mid-century structures at Flamingo and the observation tower in Shark Valley.

I set up a field office with maps, a coffee machine, and a bottle of bourbon. I dine outdoors for the first two weeks, before the rains start and the mosquitoes emerge with ferocity. I continue the domestication and colonization of my immediate surroundings by setting up a studio in the large screened porch called the “chickee,” using the long string of picnic tables for painting, collaging, and journal-keeping.

Portions of the land-bound park have been domesticated as well, keeping us people in check, by making this subtropical nature preserve accessible through paved roads, cleared trails, and lovely laid-out paths such as those at Anhinga, Gumbo Limbo, and Mahogany Hammock. These carved out areas of accessible nature are places I frequent, and they feel part of my extended “house” in the Everglades.

But most of the park is water. Days I spend on a 24-foot flat boat, in the western boundary of the Everglades via the back-country waters, were glorious ways of experiencing a landscape untethered from the pace of the other coast. I saw rare orchids and animals. I learned that Martha Stewart laundry bags are a favorite for catching live pythons, and about the difficulties of detecting the invasive species with conservation drones (in part, because their body heat is close to the ambient temperature).

The trips were also archaeological tours, past ancient Tequesta and Calusa mounds, homesteaded settlements, factory remains, boat wrecks, shards of what might be pottery, and the hydrology stations themselves.

Tamiami Trail is my route to exploring another network of national, state and local preserves. It’s effectively a dam blocking the natural freshwater flow to the Everglades. At the time I’m there, a one-mile portion has been recently elevated to allow water flow as part of the restoration initiative. The road’s bridging, along with the canal structures and air-boat vendors, are all a part of the constructed landscape.

I’d originally intended to write more about the sublime experiences from within the park, too many to name — things like the bright lime green color of the coastal prairie in late May, or looking for meteor showers at 2 a.m. in Taylor Slough, or the slithering landscape of black snakes and mangrove root systems on the Bear Lake trail, where I was swarmed the first day after the rains started because I didn’t have a clue how bad the mosquitos could get (I counted 95 bites that night).

But my time weaving in and out of the designated park area made me acutely aware of the human intervention that allowed me to navigate these parts, and how we were alternately destroying, preserving, or trying to reconstitute this ecosystem.

My proximity to this part of the Urban Development Boundary gave me a more immediate sense of how the park was pressed, controlled, and restricted from every which way. Wilderness here is a construct, a negotiation between a real need for these sacred places of refuge for all sorts of creatures (including the human sort) with the political and economic imperatives required to make it happen.

I had taken countless photos of the landscapes that never matched up to the experience of being there. Yet I came to see my seemingly boring and repetitive pictures as historic glimpses into this particular version of the Everglades. Past versions included homes to ancient Indians, and later, 19th Century homesteaders. Previous iterations were experienced and impacted by loggers, speculators, mid-century vacationers, and invasive species of all sorts that had become native.

Ten thousand years ago, it was land still under the ocean. It is a landscape that has experienced all sorts of system collapse, but exists in a form that still protects and connects to some deeper part of ourselves.

It was the depths of the Depression, 1937, when my parents Manny and Grace LaCalle pulled into Miami with their two girls in the back seat of the car.

After many jobs and homes in five other states, my father had an offer from Schenley Distillers. They shipped all their belongings and drove to Miami from New York.

He began as a window trimmer, decorating the windows of liquor stores. His hard work was rewarded by promotion to salesman and eventually he was offered the position of sales manager for the state of Florida. It would mean relocating to Jacksonville.

After thinking about it and talking it over with my mother, he realized that people save all their lives so they can retire to Miami. He was here now, why would he leave? He refused the promotion and was never offered another.

Summers in pre-air-conditioned Miami were so hot – especially if you were used to New York weather – that our mom would take us to NYC on the Silver Meteor as soon as school let out for the summer.

By 1940, the LaCalles had saved enough to buy a home. Sts. Peter and Paul Church was new and proposed to build a school, but my parents had experienced similar proposals in New York where the schools were not started for 20 years, so they built their home across the street from Coral Way Elementary School. The following year, Sts. Peter and Paul School opened and my sister and I had to walk more than a quarter of a mile each way to school.

The following year, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The family heard the news on the car radio on a sunny Florida Sunday as we were driving around the Air Base in Opa-locka.

Since my father fell into a very small demographic, too young for World War I and too old for World War II, he and my mother volunteered in Civil Defense, him as an air-raid warden and her as a switchboard operator, as she had experience from working for Bell Telephone.

1941 was also the year that a song my grandfather, Joseph LaCalle, composed rose to number one on the Hit Parade. This song, “Amapola” (Spanish for poppy), had been used by the New York school system for teaching purposes and was included in “The Three Tenors Concert,” the best-selling classical recording of all time. The Three Tenors liked it so much they recorded it in their second concert. Andrea Bocelli also sang it as the first number on his recording “Amore.”

My sister, Dolores, and I attended Gesu High School in downtown Miami because of a shortage of teachers at Sts. Peter and Paul School during the war years. Gesu High was torn down subsequently to pave a parking lot, Miami style.

I studied at Barry College after graduating from Gesu High School and Dolores attended a nursing school in West Palm Beach.

After completing 30 years with the City of Miami, during which time I was the legal administrator to the city attorney, I entered a 15-year career as a professional actress. Most recently, I was a cast member of the movie, “Bart Got a Room.”

Dolores’ family moved to the north part of the state and now live in the Mount Dora area.

My daughter presently resides in Ft. Lauderdale after raising a family in Rochester, NY. One of my sons is an electrician in Sarasota, FL. My other son is an instructor with Miami-Dade Transit; his wife, who was born in Cuba, is the operations manager of a local company.