Category: Miami Stories

I am sitting here in our den and weathering another tropical storm. Fortunately it is one of the smaller, less significant ones, but interestingly enough, it is on the 20th anniversary of Andrew.

I was born in Miami and so storms and hurricanes are just some of those things that we have to endure for the pleasure of living here all the rest of the year.

When I was a child, I lived in Shenandoah. My Aunt Anna had moved here when she married a man I never knew, William Mankes. They started a bottled gas company on Flagler Street, near the courthouse, which was the tallest building downtown at the time. It was also close to the train station, our major source of transportation. I remember sitting in front of the store on a curb watching the Orange Bowl Parade. We had great seats.

William Mankes passed away very shortly after they moved here and my aunt was left to run the business. She had a large family in Connecticut and she sent for my father Robert Brenner to come help her. Soon after, almost everyone moved here.

My aunt married a man named Ben Meyers, and in doing so, she became Anna Brenner Meyers. She had been a teacher and a nurse before she came here, and at some point she also became an attorney. She later met many political figures, was involved in politics and once ran for mayor. I remember handing out leaflets and stomping for her. She did not win, but she did serve on the Dade School Board for many years. She also received many, many honors (too numerous to recount). In her later years, a building in downtown Miami was named for her.

One of my best memories of my mom Rose was our Saturday girls’ outing to Burdines Tea Room. She would always order a Snow Princess for me. It was an ice cream sundae with candy pearls on it. After lunch, we would go into the bookstore and I could add to my collection of the orange-covered Bobbsey Twins set. After that, we would go to the Olympia Theater (now, Gusman). We would see a stage show and then a movie — our rendition of Radio City. Some years later, I would take my little sister, Helene, on the number 9 bus. It was so safe; I was 10 years old.

Also, when I was 9, my dad was on a radio show. I don’t remember the name, but he decided I should go into show business and he put me on the show. That did hook me into theater for quite a long time. My Dad used to put on shows at the Coral Gables Jewish Center, and other venues later on. He continued acting and directing for many years. Early in his life, he had been in vaudeville and the Federal Theater. The Federal Theater, which was created during the Depression, had many actors who later became very well known.

We had moved to Coral Gables and lived around the corner from the Coral Gables Youth Center. My sister grew up loving that place and later worked there. Also, living around the corner were our good friends, the Barrishes and the Skops. I was encouraged to send my story after reading other Miami tales.

I choose to remember the really good things about Miami, but there was a lot going on in those days. I remember “KKK” on temple buildings, signs where certain people could not be seated in restaurants, waiting for colored water to come out of the fountain, and some people purposely walking to the back of the bus to be seated. But the great thing was, there were so many other people to counteract that.

When I rode with my bus driver, Paul, after dark, he would drive me off his route on Le Jeune to deposit me safely in front of my house. I have been fortunate enough to have spent my entire life here, watching Miami grow and seeing cultural changes that have totally enhanced our jewel. These memories of my Miami will stay with me forever.

“In the Everglades there´s a way of life.

There´s a way of peace without stress or strife.

There´s a natural danger and a man to face.

Lincoln Vail of the Everglades,

The man on patrol in the Everglades.”

Before there was Flipper, before Gentle Ben, way before Miami Vice, there was Lincoln Vail of the Everglades.

Vail was one of my first childhood heroes. The television show on which he appeared was called Everglades and it was also among the earliest television programs to be filmed entirely on location in South Florida.

In the early sixties, having only recently arrived from Cuba, my brothers and I learned about life on the “River of Grass” and about good and evil from watching the show. I even started learning English with Vail. One of the first phrases I picked up in my adopted language was, “This show brought to you by…” Who says TV is not educational?

I sometimes thought that the only people who ever watched the show were my brothers and me, as nobody else seemed to remember it. Vail was a law enforcement officer in the Everglades. He patrolled his territory aboard an air boat, defending it from criminals, poachers and other evil-doers. I clearly recall the words and music of the excellent theme song, which I have always been ready to sing for unsuspecting and usually unappreciative audiences.

In later life, I sometimes asked friends, acquaintances and even perfect strangers who were about my age if they remembered the show. If they seemed at all interested, I would even burden them with my rendition of the theme song. To my surprise, it would be a long time before I found anyone who remembered the 1961 series.

In the mid-nineties while attending a nephew´s birthday party at Gator Park airboat rides out on Tamiami Trail, I asked the attendant, who was about my age, if he remembered the show. With a bored look, he told me he was from New York. I suspected that he was thinking that I should “get a life.”

In that pre-Internet age, I set out to find whatever information I could about the show. I wanted to confirm that we had not imagined the whole thing.

My initial efforts led me to the Miami Herald archives, where at least I was able to find the TV listing for the program. It was shown on Sundays at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 4. The librarian suggested that I try the Wolfson Media History Center. The technician for film and video archives at Wolfson, who was extremely helpful and understanding, had grown up in South Florida but had never heard of the show. He was, however, able to send me some information. He also referred me to the Florida Department at the Main Library. Here at last there would be a break in the case.

At the Main Library, I spoke to Steve and explained what I was trying to do. To my delight, he immediately said, “Oh, Lincoln Vail of the Everglades!” and proceeded to recite the words of the entire first verse of the theme song. (There were two verses.) He asked me if I knew the name of the lead actor and then said, “No, no, I remember… it was Ron Hayes.” I knew this already, but I was very impressed. It was exciting to finally find someone who remembered the show. He recalled the day and time when it aired and said he thought it was a great show. At that moment I thought that perhaps Steve should also get a life.

Everglades was a syndicated program distributed by ZIV-United Artists, made by Schulberg Productions and actually filmed on location in the Everglades. It premiered in October 1961. As Steve correctly remembered, Lincoln Vail was played by Ron Hayes, who was described in one review as “a distinctive young actor”. A total of 38 episodes were made.

Thanks to information provided by the library, I discovered that all of the episodes were still in existence. They were on 16mm film and stored in the archives of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Video. I called the center and asked if there was any way I could view the shows. They said yes, but that I would have to obtain permission from the owner of the programs.

The owner turned out to be MGM. I went as far as writing a letter to MGM´s Legal Affairs Department and made the request. They responded that it was “not their policy to authorize screenings for such purposes.” My purposes, while honorable, were not particularly serious.

The first episode was called “The Escape” and featured a then-unknown actor in an uncredited role. That actor was Burt Reynolds. The episode dealt with Lincoln Vail´s efforts to recapture a convict who had escaped from a road gang. It turned out that the convict had run off to be near his dying father and help his impoverished wife and child. Vail caught the “cracker” criminal, but with what was described in one of the reviews as “too much innocence.” This all sounded pretty good to me. The critics rated the show as “a notch or two above the standards of its breed.”

I have sometimes wondered why the memory of this particular show has stuck in my mind the way it has. I now think that I would have loved for my three boys to have enjoyed a show like this when they were growing up. I wonder which show or shows they will remember in a similar way when they get to be my age.

At the risk of sounding sappy, perhaps that was a more innocent time. At least the very survival of the Everglades was not in question then. It would be very sad if rather than being a quaint piece of “Floridiana,” the show would come to serve as a celluloid record of the Everglades that once were.

One of the reviews I was able to find said that the show “suffered, when it suffered at all” from excessive talk and “from the effete theme song, which it would be better done without.”

“As they fight for rights,

and the homes they make,

simple grassroots people of the Everglades,

there´s a fellow there who protects their rights,

Lincoln Vail of the Everglades,

The man on patrol in the Everglades”

Effete indeed!

My parents, John and Muriel Greist, my sister, Judith, and I were all born in New Haven, Connecticut. The Greist name was pretty well-known in the area because the Greist Manufacturing Company was a major producer of sewing-machine attachments.

I don’t remember much about New Haven because I was only 3 when our family moved to Miami in 1948, coming via train, except for my father, who drove from Connecticut.

My dad had a chance to pursue some new banking ventures in South Florida that were very promising. He eventually ended up at the Pan American Bank of Miami on Southeast First Street in downtown Miami. The bank was founded in the mid-1940s by P.J. Serralles, a Puerto Rican sugar planter. The story is that he decided to open a bank due to his difficulty cashing a check in Miami because almost no one spoke Spanish.

One of my earliest memories of Miami was Hurricane King in October 1950. We were living in our new house on Irvington Avenue in Coconut Grove, and my dad was in the hospital when the hurricane hit. I remember kerosene lanterns guiding us through the power outage during the storm, which was one of the strongest to strike the Miami area since the 1926 killer hurricane.

Other early memories of Miami included Christmas holiday fun at the Burdines in downtown Miami, with a merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel on the fifth-floor level bridge connecting the two sections of Burdines over South Miami Avenue; the annual New Year’s Eve Orange Bowl Parade, including some great views from the Walgreens’ second-floor cafeteria on Flagler Street; and the old Miami Baseball Stadium, where I got to sit in the Brooklyn Dodgers dugout in March 1956, the year after they won their first World Series.

In the summer of 1955, I had attended a Dodgertown camp in Vero Beach, where my counselor was Peter O’Malley, son of Dodger President Walter O’Malley. The following year, I was invited to attend a Dodger spring-training game at Miami Stadium. The Dodgers trained there before the Baltimore Orioles moved in a few years later. I got to meet many of the Dodger greats: Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges and Duke Snider, my favorite player. What a thrill for a young kid 10 years old.

In addition to the summer I spent at Dodgertown, my sister and I attended summer camp a few times in North Carolina. One of our trips was “immortalized” on the cover of The Miami Herald’s old “Fun in Florida” Sunday magazine on May 30, 1954, as we prepared to board the train for our journey to Eagle’s Nest Camp in Piscah Forest, N.C. The cover photo was taken by Herald photographer John Walther, and the inside cover story was written by “Fun in Florida” magazine editor Betty Garnet. (Full disclosure here: I think the photo was “posed” because we didn’t actually go to summer camp until sometime in June.”

I attended first through sixth grade at Coconut Grove Elementary School. Our principal was Oliver Hoover, a native-born Miamian and longtime educator. An elementary school in The Hammocks is named after him.

During elementary school, some of the “Old Grove” memories included after-school trips for sodas at the Liles Pharmacy and the Florida Pharmacy in the Engle Building and Saturday matinees at the Coconut Grove Theatre (yes, it was a movie theater before it became the Coconut Grove Playhouse).

Another favorite spot in the Grove was the Krest 5&10 next to the school. That 5&10 store sold almost everything one could imagine, and it stayed in business for over 60 years. I also spent a lot of time at Bryan Memorial Methodist Church on Main Highway, from my younger years all the way through college. A minister from that church performed my wedding ceremony.

After spending seventh grade at South Miami Junior High, I attended the newly constructed Palmetto Junior-Senior High School in Pinecrest beginning in eighth grade. My sister was in the first graduating class in 1961, and I graduated two years later in 1963. The school celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008, and the class of 2011 will be the 50th graduating class from the school. My senior year in 1963, I was newspaper editor, president of the Key Club, chairman of the Dade County Student Traffic Safety Council, and was the school’s Silver Knight nominee in journalism.

Favorite hangouts in high school included the Hot Shoppes at U.S. 1 and Bird Road; Jimmy’s Hurricane at Bird and Douglas Road; the Burger King on U.S. 1 just south of Dadeland; the original Shorty’s; Royal Castle, where we could easily consume a six-pack of Castleburgers along with their birch beer; the Krispy Kreme on SW 8th Street; Suniland Shopping Center; A&W; drive-ins; and Central Stadium on Coral Way, where Palmetto’s home football games were played.

Local area attractions included Bill Haast’s Miami Serpentarium; South Dixie Bowl-O-Mat; Dixie and Tropicaire Drive-Ins; Colonial Palms Golf Course; and, of course, the Parrot Jungle. Before multiplexes, there was the Coral, the Gables, the Miracle and the Riviera theatres. We loved the aromas from the Holsum Bakery in South Miami. Restaurants included The Flame, Grentner’s, Flynn’s Dixie Ribs and the Dixie Belle Inn.

My best friends in high school are my best friends 50 years later, even though they were in the class of ’64. Those friends include Ron Lieberman and Dexter Lehtinen – both still practicing attorneys in Miami – and Fred Luss, a retired Chrysler financial executive. Another member of the class of ’64 was Vicki Campfield. I didn’t know her in high school, but she would eventually become my wife.

The first paycheck I ever received was for a one-day job as a press-box assistant for the 1963 Orange Bowl game won by Alabama over Oklahoma 17-0. The game was attended by President John Kennedy. I was near the locker room under the stadium when the game ended and JFK was leaving. I reached out to shake his hand but was rebuffed by the Secret Service. The president smiled and waved at me. Sadly, just eleven months later, he was gone.

I met my wife, Vicki, in 1967 and married her a year later. Vicki had a wonderful career in pediatric nursing at Miami Children’s Hospital and the state of Florida Children’s Medical Services. After almost a decade with Burger King Corporation and Florida Power & Light, combined with some part-time sports broadcasting on local radio, I spent the remainder of my career with Miami-Dade County. Vicki and I raised two sons, John and Patrick. Both attended Sunset High, Miami-Dade Junior College and Florida International University.

My overall favorite Miami memory was the many years of watching University of Miami football at the Orange Bowl, from the 1950s with my parents to the years with Vicki and my sons in the West End Zone family section, to the last event ever held there. That was a flag-football game in January 2008 between former Miami Dolphins and University of Miami players. The event was extra special because my two grandchildren, Zachary and Taylor, were with me. It was their only time at the Orange Bowl, and it represented the fourth generation of the Greist family to attend an event at the Orange Bowl.

Vicki passed away too prematurely in 1997, but we were blessed to share 30 special years together and many happy experiences in Miami raising our two sons.

My 60-plus years in Miami have been filled with a lot of wonderful memories. In a strange way, I guess you could say I owe all my Miami memories to a Puerto Rican sugar planter who opened a bank in Miami in the 1940s due to his difficulties cashing a check because almost no one spoke Spanish.

I was born in New York City to Hispanic-American parents. Osvaldo Hernandez, my father, arrived in the United States in the 1940s, served in the U.S. Army and met Maria, my mother, in 1950.

They married and two years after my birth we traveled to Havana, Cuba, where I stayed and was raised by my grandmother, a Canary Islands native. I lived in a middle-class Havana suburb and attended Cambridge School, where I received English and Spanish instruction.

Unexpected changes in Cuba occurred, however, when Fidel Castro took over in January 1959. In 1962, seeing that the situation on the island had worsened, my father requested my departure, through the Canadian embassy.

On Jan. 25, 1963, at age 11, I returned to the United States on the last American Red Cross flight for U.S. citizens. I have never forgotten my unpleasant exit from the Havana airport, where militia men searched me, kept my valuables and called me gusana (a disrespectful term for Americans that means “earthworm”) and gringa before I prepared to board the plane.

I traveled alone, but was warmly received at Miami International Airport by my father, aunt, uncle and cousin, who were residing on Alton Road in Miami Beach.

The city of Miami Beach became my new home. My father and I were the only American citizens who spoke English in my immediate family. My school days happily unfolded at Central Beach Elementary. At Ida Fisher Junior High School, I learned how to swim at Flamingo Park’s pool and practiced tumbling at the school’s gym.

My saddest experience at that time was hearing the announcement, over the loud speaker, that “President Kennedy has been shot!” It was Nov. 22, 1963.

During the 1960s, South Beach consisted mainly of small stores that sold beach wear, surf equipment and souvenirs. When I was 12, I would assist a souvenir store owner by arranging the merchandise and assisting tourists with their purchases – for 25 cents an hour.

After my part-time job, I would join my friends at the Cameo Theater on Washington Avenue and 14th Street for an ice cream and a movie. The 25-cent ticket admitted me to popular films of the time, such as Psycho and The Great Escape.

A half-dollar Kennedy coin was my weekly allowance. When I had saved a dollar, I would embark on a visit to downtown Miami on Saturdays, via public bus. I loved viewing the store window displays of Kress, McCrory’s, Woolworth’s, Sears, Burdines, Baker’s, Lerner’s and Jackson Byron’s. Shopping trips with my father to Baker’s always led to a new pair of shoes with a matching handbag.

We also munched on sauerkraut hot dogs at the Sloppy Joe’s shop, next to the Tower Theater. At Jackson Byron’s, I bought my first 45 rpm record for 49 cents and began to collect music memorabilia. An ultimate treat was to watch a movie at any of the downtown theaters: the Olympia Theater, the Tower Theater and the Paramount Theater.

My most cherished Beatles experience occurred at the Paramount Theater where, with more than 100 other teenage girls, I eagerly watched the Beatles’ first feature-length motion picture, A Hard Day’s Night. I still have the admission ticket from this event.

The Beatles’ revolution in the United States had a profound influence on my musical preferences. On Feb. 13, 1964, I remember hearing on my pink transistor radio that the Beatles had landed at Miami International Airport to tape their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

A local Miami radio station, 560 WQAM, and its announcer, Rick Shaw, heavily promoted the Beatles’ arrival. I purchased a promotional pamphlet of The Beatles from WQAM for one dollar. Many students did not attend school on that day, hoping to catch a glimpse of them.
I fondly remember twisting with other teenagers to the sounds of Chubby Checker, The Beach Boys and The Beatles at the Miami Beach Recreational Center on Tuesday nights.

The Miami Beach High School Ensemble and the Acapella Choir fulfilled my interest in music. Rehearsing for school performances and singing at the Fontainebleau Hotel were standard practice for all chorus members. My overnight stays at the San Souci Hotel – to prepare for district music competitions – were exhilarating.

In June 1969, the Jackie Gleason Theater was the host of my graduation ceremony. Throughout my teens, I had visited the theater, attending rock music concerts by Three Dog Night, The Who, Chicago and Rare Earth.

I used to ride a tram from Alton Road to Washington Avenue, through the Lincoln Road Mall. As we traveled aboard the tram, we eyed the variety of luxury stores such as Lillie Rubin, where TV personalities purchased exclusive evening wear.

Finally, my recollection of the Miami Beach Lions Club is of utmost importance. The Lions Club funded a college tuition grant that enabled me to further my education at Miami Dade Community College and Florida Atlantic University.

I majored in education, began as a teacher, and now serve as a director for the public schools. I will always appreciate how the Miami Beach Lions Club helped shape my future.

The city of Miami has been my home for the past 36 years. I still hold a deep affection, however, for the Beach.

I now work in downtown Miami and own a condominium in South Beach. I cherish my precious preteen and teenage years’ memories of South Beach during the groovy and colorful ’60s.

My father, Osvaldo, passed away in 2005 at 84. He last lived on Meridian Avenue. He truly loved the Beach as much as I did.

The question, “Who will remember?,” comes to mind when I think of the fragments of Miami history that never made it to the popular prose about my hometown, our “city of dreams.” Who will remember these times, these people, from decades before digital news and social media? Here is my short epitaph to some of those long gone.

The city of Miami Police Department in the 1940s and ’50s was the focus of stories my father told me of his many exciting cases as a uniformed officer and later, detective. The Miami Herald and Daily News followed some officers’ careers surprisingly closely in those days, when the police force was still relatively small. All the stories I heard growing up were verified when I received hard copies of news stories many years ago, thanks to a Herald archivist. Stories my young mind had made mythical turned out all to be true.

Those fascinating times my father spoke of included recovering stolen cars, and investigating Voodoo cult activity and the Ku Klux Klan. Most of his career was in the auto-theft bureau, but this focus led him and his various partners to bank robbers, murderers, and domestic abuse on the dark side, and to lighter duties like finding lost children and catching escaped monkeys!

My father was Charles M. Johnston, Charlie. His career as a Miami policeman began in 1944 and was summed up in 1963 by Chief of Police Walter Headley, who wrote, “He compiled an outstanding record which will probably never be equaled in the recovery of stolen automobiles and the apprehension of felons… His service record is filled with commendations from Federal Bureau of Investigation, State Attorney, and grateful citizens.” By then my father had well earned his sobriquet — Eagle Eye.

One of the most celebrated cases that my father “solved” was that of Cleveland bank robber John Wesley Hux, who on Jan. 11, 1950, robbed $35,000 (over $348,000 in 2016 money) from Cleveland Superior Savings. The FBI traced his movements south for 50 days, ending in Miami where agents asked assistance from Miami Police. Within five hours of that request, my father saw a car with license plates matching Hux’s parked at The Turf Club on Northwest Seventh Avenue and 79th Street. He and his partner, John Resick, blocked the car in, drew their guns, and arrested Hux as he exited the club. Hux had a loaded .38. Remarkably, Detective Resick recognized Hux as a classmate from a Cleveland High School they had both attended. Much of the bank money had already been lost, as Hux had bet heavily and lost at the Hialeah race track and The Bahamas, a gambling club at 3890 Northwest 36th St.

The Ku Klux Klan was active in Miami in the late 1940s when they “invited” Herald reporters to a meeting and promptly assaulted them and stole a camera, all in retaliation for honest reporting that the KKK felt was damaging to its public image. The ruckus, as reported in an article by Jack Anderson (not the syndicated Jack) in The Miami Herald, happened at the John B. Gordon Klan No. 5 Woodman of the World Hall at 2800 Bird Ave. My father was first to arrive as part of a police riot squad. He and his partner, Patrolman P. Lipscomb, confronted the Klansman, rescued the reporters, and recovered the camera. Anderson wrote eloquently in the Herald story, ironically comparing the Klan’s “hooded bigotry” and burning cross invitation card to the contrasting Red Cross, “a service which renders help and first aid to humanity without regard to race, creed, or color.”

There is also the story of an 11-year-old boy my father found huddled in a pasteboard box at West Flagler and 23rd Street. He’d gotten lost during a house-hunting trip with his parents. My father tracked the parents down before they even noticed that their son wasn’t in the car with them.

My parents had a social life focused on police friendships, and my Mom had worked the police microphone at the Division of Communications for the city of Miami, so it was not uncommon to have families of other officers at our house on Southwest 118th Street. This was a great source for hearing stories I still recall, like a Twitter feed of Miami crime stories and city politics. All those memories and more came alive when I was given a photocopy archive of news stories from the Herald’s basement many years ago. Who had saved just these stories in a manila file, all about just one officer? Who had diligently gone through and circled just my father’s name in each story? It’s doubtful we’ll ever know, but this was the template that preserves this small history, with my gratitude to the Knights of the Fourth Estate. There are so many stories it is hard to count– long and short, all about these early days of police work in a Miami that no longer exists. I hope this short essay will allow others to remember.

When I was in college, I made a vow: I would NEVER move back to the Catskills and I was NEVER going into the hotel business. I also learned an important lesson: Never say never!

As luck would have it, I married my high school sweetheart David Etess, an internist, who decided that the Catskills was the perfect place to set up his private practice. Of course, the fact that his parents and mine were nearby was a major factor in the decision.

I had grown up in the Catskills, daughter of the famous hotelier, Jennie Grossinger. My grandparents, Selig and Malke, had left New York City’s Lower Eastside in the 1920s when my grandfather became ill. His choice was to relocate to Connecticut and grow tobacco or live in Sullivan County, New York, as a farmer. He chose the agricultural route, but the land was not fertile.

Thankfully, my grandmother was a fabulous cook and they decided to take in boarders. Their business was so successful that, by the second summer, they needed to pitch two additional tents in order to house all the guests. The Grossinger’s Catskills Resort Hotel was officially off to a promising start with my parents and grandparents as partners.

It has been said that our hotel, one of the many famous family-style resorts that dotted the Catskills’ landscape, was the inspiration for “Kellerman’s Mountain Resort” featured in the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing. There also are claims that we were the first to use artificial snow for the ski slope, create a day camp, host a singles weekend and promote future stars such as Eddie Fisher and Freddie Roman.

As proud as I was of our family’s fame and success, I decided I was not going to work there. As a teen, I had worked the front desk as a key girl, helped out in the golf club and ran the switchboard (my favorite). My plan was to be a typical doctor’s wife and join the garden club while staying home with our children.

The problem was that I was bored. I asked my brother Paul, general manager at the hotel, for a task. The task became a job and by the time Grossinger’s closed in 1985, I was executive vice-president of the hotel and secretary- treasurer of the American Hotel and Motel Association (en route to becoming its first woman president).

In the meantime, my husband and I already had established ties in South Florida. In the 1940s, the Grossinger family had built a hotel on 17 Street and Collins Avenue. The army took it over for rest and recreation and then returned the property to us. We sold it and opened the Grossinger Pancoast where the historic Seville Hotel on Miami Beach is now located. But my brother had young school-age children and was finding it difficult to commute, so we gave up the notion of a southern branch.

I never gave up my Florida connection. In fact, our first vacation home was located in International Village at Inverrary, near Forest Trace, the resort retirement community where I now serve as director of hospitality. When my husband could no longer handle the bitter cold New York weather, we bought a condo in Highland Beach where he spent the winter while I commuted to the Catskills. When I retired, we bought a home in Boca Raton so we could be close to our many friends who had relocated to South Florida.

I am a country girl by nature, but I do love the sights and sounds of the big city. That’s why I love South Florida. We can enjoy the amenities of a small town at our local bank, dry cleaner and restaurants where everyone knows your name. But we also have the advantages of a big city with plenty of cultural activities and numerous universities.

I also love the national and international mix of people that is a signature feature of the South Florida melting pot. It reminds me of the hotel where we attracted guests from everywhere, and from every walk of life. Did I mention that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt used to serve pickled herring from the Grossinger kitchen?

Once we moved to Florida, I vowed I was never going to work again, until I was asked to serve as director of hospitality at Forest Trace. The resort retirement community, which opened in 1990, was seeking to duplicate the high standards that made Grossinger’s a success – lavish food, top-notch entertainment and wonderful amenities. I was so taken with the community and with Stanley Rosenthal, who still manages the property, that I came out of retirement and have been part of the team ever since.

Florida in the 1980s was good. Florida in my eighties is NEVER better.

In the 1950s, while I was still a young child, my family moved to Miami Beach from Woodbine, N.J.

When we arrived in Florida, our household was an extended one. There was my mother, Rose, my father, Kalman, and my mother’s parents, Morris and Sophie Silberman. We opened a shoe store (Don’s Bootery) on Washington Avenue shortly after arriving in Florida.

At first, the whole family lived in a rented apartment at Ninth Street and Collins Avenue. A few years later, we purchased a small apartment building at 620 Jefferson Ave., where we all lived. The old Hebrew Academy was located across the street and I remember students playing softball in a vacant lot next to our apartment. On Friday nights, I would go roller skating at Flamingo Park.

Many hotels had large dining rooms or coffee shops where guests on the American Plan ate their meals. I worked as a bus boy at the Algiers Hotel Coffee Shop where I got to deliver trays of food to the Miss Universe contestants staying at the hotel. I also transported baked goods from the in-house bakery to the coffee shop. When I dropped an entire frosted layer cake on the floor, the baker re-frosted the cake and sent it on its way back to the coffee shop.

I paid more attention to clothes than I do now. I remember buying genuine pigskin Hush Puppies shoes with their own brush, and a “bleeding madras” shirt with special washing instructions. Darwin’s was the place to go for the latest men’s fashions, such as tight-fitting, beltless DAKS pants.

For entertainment, we enjoyed taking evening strolls along Washington Avenue. At the Mars Juice Bar, I drank coconut milk from cone-shaped paper cups. There were “fruit shippers” and other stores where tourists could buy baby alligators, little wood crates of orange-colored chewing gum or turtles with painted shells.

There were several movie theaters on Lincoln Road. One of my favorites was the Caribe, which had a live parrot on a perch. On Saturdays, I went to the Colony Theater to see horror movies. The Beach Theater hosted the “Summertime Fun Shows” where you could buy “mystery boxes” hoping they were the lucky ones containing coupons for prizes.

Miami Beach was once referred to as the “winter crime capital” of America. Meyer Lansky attended services at Beth Jacob Synagogue, the “gangster shul,” where I was bar mitzvahed. Illegal bookmaking was prevalent. My grandfather never had a telephone in our shoe store, but some bookmakers wanted to put one in so that illegal bets could be taken at that number. This was an offer he DID refuse.

Many events were held at the Miami Beach Auditorium. The night Dick Clark’s Saturday night “Beechnut Show” was broadcast from the auditorium, I saw Brenda Lee sing “Sweet Nothings.” When Jackie Gleason relocated to Miami Beach, the auditorium was renamed the Jackie Gleason Theater. At the Jackie Gleason show broadcasts, I was on a first-name basis with announcer Johnny Olsen and bandleader Sammy Spear.

Previously open to vehicular traffic, Lincoln Road (between Alton and Washington) was converted to a pedestrian mall in the early 1960s. There were fountains, band shells, colored lights and trams running the mall’s length. In the large Woolworths on the corner, you could buy everything from a parakeet to a banana split. Also on the mall was Saks Fifth Avenue, which piped perfumed air into the street.

Because of easy bus access, downtown Miami seemed to be an extension of the Beach. The Sears Department Store on Biscayne Boulevard had its own restaurant, gas station and candy counter where you could buy bags of nuts and rock candy. Christmas time, we went up on the Burdines roof for carnival rides. At Bayfront Park, I could buy peanuts to feed the pigeons and walk though the “rock garden.”

Before Art Deco came in vogue, the hotels on Ocean Drive were inhabited primarily by senior citizens, some of whom migrated from Eastern European shtetls (villages). Along Ocean Drive were benches and makeshift stages where elderly people played instruments, sang songs and told stories in Yiddish. At Lundy’s Market you could buy lox, knishes, and smoked sturgeon. Butterflake Bakery sold kichel, taiglach, rugelach and onion boards.

Eventually, our shoe store (Don’s Bootery) went out of business, in large part due to the changed demographics. Since my father had worked at the shoe store, he had to look for another job. Eventually he found employment with the City of Miami Beach Parks Department where he worked until the time he retired.

My mother went to work at Burdines on Miami Beach and is still enjoying her lifetime employee discount. Many of the places I mentioned have vanished, but their sights and sounds remain vivid in my mind. Suffice it to say, growing up on “South Beach” was a unique experience that I remember fondly.

My father, Jacob Siegel, came to Florida from Livingston Manor in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. That was in 1925 during the boom in Miami. He and a friend started a concrete block plant in Little River. He went back home to see if the family was well in 1926. He had my mother, brothers George and Harold, and my sister Frances and me. While he was gone the great 1926 hurricane struck and completely wiped out the concrete block plant. He loved Miami and always wanted to return.

In time he had three gas stations on Route 25 in New Jersey: two in Rahway and one in Avenel. When the Depression hit in 1929, the banks foreclosed the mortgages on the three stations and he lost everything again. At that point he decided to start a new life in Florida. My brother George was working on a ship that went from Miami to Argentina so my father brought my mother, my brother Harold and me to Miami. He bought a gas station on Northwest 7th Avenue in Little River.

I was 10 years old and no one wanted to rent a room to anyone with a child. My father then bought what was called a railroad shack in Little River on 79th Street and it had an outhouse in the back yard. Within a week we had indoor plumbing and a bathroom. There wasn’t anything my father couldn’t do. We lived there for about a year and I went to Little River School.

He was looking for something he could do to make a living. He had been a painter and decorator in New York before moving to New Jersey so he started a painting company in Miami, Siegel Painting Company. He painted the Army barracks in Jacksonville and several other Army installations. He had painted some buildings in Clewiston and made many friends there.

One weekend when he was getting ready to return to Miami, he stopped at a gas station and asked them to check a tire on the car. He thought that it was low and might have a slow leak. When he left the station it was getting dark. As you drive past Clewiston there is a small hill. As he was coming down the hill the tire flew off and the car crashed sideways into a tree.

It just so happened to be close to a home where a friend lived. The man heard the crash and came running out. A paint can had fallen from the back of the car and hit my father on the head. The man recognized my father and called out “Oh Mr. Siegel, are you alright?” He helped my father, cleaned him up and took him to the Greyhound bus station so he could get a ride home. When my father got to Miami he just took a bus home. When I saw him come in with a banged head and bloody shirt, I nearly died. He came in the house and took a shower. He then got dressed and sat down to have dinner. He was famished. He ate like he had not had food in a week.

He bought a new car on Sunday and was ready to go back to work in Jacksonville on Monday. This was way before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We were living in a house that my cousin owned on Southwest 20th Road. My mother was taking care of my cousin’s two children. My father was a member of the Workmen’s Circle and on the Board of Jewish Education in Miami. I was going to Ada Merritt School. We lived there for about 2 years. Later we moved to Southwest 6th Street and 22nd Avenue. I finished at Ada Merritt School and then attended Miami High School.

I used to go to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) and play ping pong and dance to the songs on a juke box. When we were teenagers we would go to 8th Street to the Puritan Ice Cream Parlor and get ice cream cones and sit outside at a table. While we were sitting there, William Reiser and another boy came and rode their bicycles with their ice cream cones around our table. Bill’s ice cream fell out of the cone. We all laughed but I guess it wasn’t funny. After that Bill started coming to the YMHA to dance with me.

Bill and his parents lived on Ohio Street in Coconut Grove. When they first came to Miami in 1934, they lived near Southwest 27th Avenue. Bill used to go across the street and shoot rabbits in the woods on the west side of 27th Avenue. Bill’s father was a WWI veteran and he belonged to the Harvey Seeds American Legion Post and played a bugle in their marching band.
Bill learned to be a dental technician and worked in a dental laboratory in the Huntington Building downtown. Miami was still a very small town. Then after Pearl Harbor, Miami and Miami Beach became a training area for the Army and Navy. The band from the aircraft carrier Yorktown was sent to Miami to wait for a new Yorktown to be commissioned. It took so long for a new Yorktown to be built that they were afraid to send them back to sea. They became the 7th Naval District band and played at service centers where the servicemen danced. The girls had to be sponsored by an official in order to dance there. Bill enlisted in the Army.

Bill went through maneuvers in North Carolina and when he was ready to be sent overseas, a desperate call came from Camp Cook in California for dental technicians. They had a lone dentist who needed a technician to make gold crowns and inlays for the men who were going overseas. Bill was also an artist and it was simple for the dentist to teach Bill to do preps for the crowns as well.

When he was sure that he was staying at Camp Cook, he came home on furlough and we got married at my parents’ home by a rabbi. We went back to Camp Cook and stayed there until the war ended. We came home to Miami when he was discharged by the Army.

At 92, I still call Miami my home and although times have changed, I still love it here. This is a picture of me with three cousins on South Beach in 1934. That is the “Million Dollar Pier” in the background with the Minsky’s Burlesque sign.