Category: Miami Stories

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.

I’m one of the rare ones – a pre-Boomer (1942) who was born and raised in “Myam-uh” (natives still pronounce it that way) and still lives in South Florida.

My parents, first generation Sicilian-Americans, were a founding family of St. Michael’s Catholic Church in the ’40s, which celebrated mass in Miami High’s cafeteria, and later in the Dade County Auditorium.

Ours was the fourth house built on Second Terrace and 43rd Avenue – behind the Miami Children’s Hospital. FPL bought the corner in the late ’50s, and the hospital buildings were donated to become St. Dominic’s Catholic Church on Northwest Seventh Street. My parents were asked to be a founding family there, as well.

Mom was a bookkeeper for the fabled Zissen’s Bowery nightclub on North Miami Avenue and 17th Street. A longtime Miami and tourist favorite – sawdust on the floor, insulting waiters, bowls of fresh roasted peanuts and big steins of beer. Everyone got into the act or went “to jail” until the rest of their party bailed them out or they sang a song.

Dad was the sales manager at Modern Beauty Supply along the FEC Railway, north of the Miami-Dade County Courthouse, and then later at Daisy Beauty Supply on Southwest Eighth Street. Later, they owned the Andalusia Beauty Salon in Coral Gables behind the Miracle Theatre.

Me? I was an entrepreneur.

At 10, I had my first shoeshine stand, at Carl’s Market on Flagler and 43rd Avenue. I charged 10¢ a shine and ladies were my biggest customers – “drop ‘em off going in, pick ‘em up on the way out.” By 11, I had five shoeshine stands – 15¢ a shine, four of them manned by others who kicked me a nickel for every shine they did. Trust me, they all paid up – did I mention I’m Sicilian? My personal location by then was the gas station on the northwest corner of Flagler and Le Jeune. Everyone pumped their own gas, a perfect target for the “Shine, Mister?” pitch and, of course, with shines at 15¢ and gas at 25¢ a gallon, the odds of getting flipped a quarter (“keep the change, kid”) were pretty good. You had to be fast and good. I was, and got flipped a lot of quarters.

I went to a series of schools, including St. Theresa’s for kindergarten, Gesu Catholic in 1st grade, Kinloch Park for grades 2 and 3, the legendary Miami Military Academy in Miami Shores for grades 4, 5, and 6 (there’s a story for another time), St Michael’s Catholic School for grade 7, and Kinloch Park Jr. High, grades 8 and 9. Because we lived in a “neutral zone” for high schools, I had several choices. I chose Miami High along with most of my friends from Kinloch. We graduated in the class of 1960. Ours was the last class of our era, with more than 200 attendees at our 50th reunion. GO STINGS ’60!

Depending on which crowd you ran with, you either hung out for lunch (or more) at Shirley’s on Flagler, or Campus Corner, a glorious park in front of Miami High, later turned into a parking lot. At night, you cruised Paley’s Big Wheel Drive-In on Southwest 32nd Avenue and Coral Way, or the Pizza Palace on “The Trail” at 30th Avenue. A hot date was to pile into Dennis Craig’s Olds 88 convertible with our current “steady girls” and head to the Le Jeune Drive-In theater to make out, while trying to sneak in a load of friends in the trunk.

By 11th grade, I dated a girl living on Key Biscayne. It was quite a feat to hitchhike from Flagler and Le Jeune to Fernwood Road on the Key for a date, but hey, teenage hormones can overcome any obstacle – unless she scored her dad’s car and made the trek to the mainland.

The ‘50s in Miami was the greatest time to be a teenager. WWII had just ended, we had a benevolent president in the White House, an economy that was rocking (not to mention rock ’n’ roll), and the most stress you had was an algebra test on Monday.

There was so much to do (yet we always complained, “There ain’t nuthin’ ta do ‘round here”). There was the Monkey Jungle, Parrot Jungle, Matheson Hammock, and the Crandon Park Zoo. Bill Haas milked King cobras at the Serpentarium, and at Coral Castle a Latvian immigrant built a monument to teenage angst. A trip to Homestead down U.S. 1 for key lime pie was an adventure, as the tires went clakity-clak over the rubber expansion strips between each section of the highway.

On the weekends, we had Police Athletic League (PAL) dances at Bayfront Park Auditorium with WQAM’s Rick Shaw or the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) Hall on Northwest 14th Street, where WINZ’s Jerry Wichner would spin.

We saw the Fontainebleau replace the old Firestone Estate at 41st and Collins, cruised Collins Avenue from Lincoln Road to 71st Street, sneaking into the Wreck Bar at the Castaways for great rock ‘n’ roll, and for great jazz to the Johnina Hotel or Play Lounge on 79th Street Causeway, ending at Wolfie’s at 21st Street on Miami Beach for baskets of rolls and coffee.

Sundays, you were on a blanket with your sweetie at Crandon Park or 41st Street on “The Beach,” and you “danced Latin” at the 21st Street Beach Pavilion, near the Seagull Hotel where “Sleepy Time Gal” broadcast till dawn on WKAT.

Yeah… ‘50s Myam-uh… Dem were da dayz!

My mom and dad came to Miami around the turn of the century. The Everglades reached eastward to about where Milam Dairy Road is now located (named after the dairy that used to occupy the land).

The first half of my life was spent watching the effort to drain the Everglades. Without dry land, there would be no place for newcomers to live. Now we are trying to put the water back. When I was born, the Tamiami Trail (US 41) was still under construction. Fill for the roadway was dredged with a walking barge.

My earliest memory is of the 1926 hurricane, which devastated South Florida. The family was gathered in our house, a two-story, box-like wooden affair located at 529 NW 28 Street. We had not received a warning — we didn’t have a radio, but even with a radio, warnings were sparse.

My oldest brother (14 years older than I) was caught in the early part of the storm on Miami Beach at a beach party. He said waves were breaking over the roadway and they were almost blown into Government Cut.

During the storm cleanup, accomplished by residents, there was no looting. The National Guard was deployed with orders to shoot to kill anyone seen looting. An almost-demolished grocery store displayed a sign, “If you can’t pay, pay me later.”

We lived with various neighbors for months, until Dad could build another house – with borrowed money and voluntary labor. The other storms that followed, we tolerated them well.

For the next five years, we lived beside a rock road and had no electricity, running water, sewage, or any of the modern conveniences. There were no welfare programs or government help of any kind. Churches, Salvation Army and Red Cross did the best they could, but neighbors did more. I didn’t know we were poor, because everyone I knew had it tough. Water came from a well with a hand pump.

Dad built a small out house (privy) out back – a two holer with just enough room inside to drop your pants. Some sections of the city did not receive sewage until after World War II. I think the last privy to be removed was in Coral Gables. When the sewer was installed, it was piped underground to outlets along the shore of Biscayne Bay.

It was Sunday school and church every Sunday at Stanton Memorial Baptist on NW 2 Avenue and 29 Street, where my uncle Bill was a deacon. The church has since moved to North Miami. Buena Vista Elementary School was located just a block north. I rarely wore shoes to school, but always to church.

In the second grade I was allowed to work in the cafeteria and earn a free lunch. I must have been about ten years old the first time Dad took me to see the Olympia Theater. I can still visualize the rounded ceiling with twinkling stars and variety shows. The famous, buxom Mae West always drew large crowds.

There were many fishing trips down to the Keys. US 1 ended at Lower Matecumbe and the railroad continued on to Key West. There was a ferry if you wanted to take your car. When a hurricane destroyed the tracks, US 1 was extended along the same route, using some of the railroads supports. The road was narrow and rough, and we had a ball, bumping along on the back of a flat-bed truck. Wild lime trees grew on most of the larger islands, and some of the residents grew rock melons.

In my adult life I have never seen another rock melon. They looked something like a cantaloupe, but tasted better.

My schooling after elementary school was Robert E. Lee Junior High, just a few blocks from home. Like most teenagers in the ninth grade, I went a little bit crazy, skipping school so much it made passing unthinkable. I quit school and suffered a failed attempt to join the Marine Corps. I lied about my age, got a chauffeur’s driver’s license, and a job driving a delivery truck for Biscayne Chemical Co., located on Miami Avenue and NW 37 Street.

Seared into my mind is the memory of delivering, with no help, 50-gallon drums of chemicals to businesses on Flagler Street in the heart of Miami. After that work experience I was more than ready to return to school. Miami Edison High was six miles away. There were only three high schools. Transportation was provided by Mama, neighbors, or hitchhiking.

Miami Edison High consistently had the best football team in the state, sometimes the best in the nation. There was no age limit for football players until about 1938. When I graduated, the age limit was 20. Every Thanksgiving Day, Edison and Miami High played in the Orange Bowl. The game was always sold out, a feat the small University of Miami was never able to duplicate. Betting was widespread.

I graduated in midterm 1940, after flunking English twice. By the fall of that year I had learned the rudiments of welding and was hired by Eastern Airlines as a cleaner.

I was born in 1932 at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. After my first three years at Grandma Rose Fields’ hotel, across from the prestigious DuPont Building, we moved to Miami Beach.

My recollections of those first three years was of me pretending to direct traffic from the arms of a kindly policeman at the corner of Northeast First Street and First Avenue, watching uniformed-dressed, Gesu-parish schoolgirls playing on the cement schoolyard on Second Street, occasional trips up the Miami River to a Seminole village, and watching Pan Am clipper ships land at their seaplane base in Coconut Grove.

As a young teenager, I returned to the hotel to be an assistant desk clerk and telephone operator. It was my habit to treat myself to a two-inch thick bologna sandwich with yellow mustard on rye bread at Albert Deli. It was next to Wilson’s garage, directly across the street from the hotel. Sometimes I walked a block to Royal Castle and had two or three burgers and a birch beer.

Surely some sensory experiences are never forgotten. I can recall the smell of the grilled onions and pickle on those soft tasty buns that sandwiched tiny RC burgers. In 1948, when I was 16, my parents Larry and Sophie Gilbert opened the Town Restaurant on part of the footprint of the New Pioneer Hotel.

“The Town” was to many professional and business people the place to go for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Many of its customers never had to decide what to order. The staff of waitresses knew most customers’ favorite dish for each day and the customers enjoyed being habitually recognized. It was the habit of many families to meet and eat at the Town before going to the Olympia theater for an evening of entertainment.

Miami Beach was the heart of my life. I went from kindergarten through sixth grade at Central Beach Elementary. Officer Bob Loveland worked the traffic light at 14th Street and Washington Avenue to safely cross us kids. The stanchion-pipe housing that held the electrical elements of that device remained standing for decades on the northwest corner of that busy intersection. As the years passed, it was my habit to drive by it and point it out when I took my children and grandchildren on my patented “heritage” tour of the city of my youth.

At Central Beach, Principal Katie Dean set the stage for us to understand the value of being considerate and compliant. Then came WWII. I was 9. We all did what we could to help in the domestic war activities. Shared efforts included air-raid drills and using coupons to buy rationed butter, meat, sugar and eggs.

We collected metallic objects to make munitions. From 1939 until the war started in December of 1941, my family operated the 14th Street Beach Cafeteria next to Sol Goldstrom’s Washington Avenue bakery. The government commandeered it for a military mess hall along with Hoffman’s Cafeteria on Española Way and Dubrow’s Cafeteria on Lincoln Road.

During the war years, my family operated a drugstore and lunch counter on Collins Avenue. Essentially all the customers were recruits. They were housed at hotels along the beach. When I saw them at that time I thought they were so manly; as I think about them now, they were little more than young boys.

As kids on the beaches, we watched blimps patrol the coast for Nazi submarines. We gathered cans of provisions washed ashore from U-Boat actions not far out. We developed unqualified patriotism that has remained my generation’s credo.

Scouting became a central interest to many friends and me when we turned 12. Troop No. 35 met at the American Legion Hall on 18th Street and Alton Road. Overnight hikes to what is now known as Watson Island were memorable events. So were the weekend camp outs at Greynolds Park. Scouting events took us to the old Deauville hotel and Venetian pools for swim competitions.

Life was made full with school programs at Ida Fisher Junior High and Miami Beach High school, semi-organized sports at Flamingo Park, and socializing at 14th Street Beach. Our Flamingo Park teams traveled to Shenandoah Park and to Little River to play.

My four years at Miami Beach High School was the most joyous time of my span of 25 formal educational years. Academically, it prepared me well for higher education. But it was with our teammates in interscholastic sport competition against the five other public high schools in Miami, and many others in the state, that proved to be the glue that bound us closely and from which we remain friends in our later years.

Beach High opened in 1926 on 14th Street and Drexel Avenue. I was a Beach High “Typhoon.” Our colors were black and gold. That school remained there for 34 years until 1960. It was then moved to its current location; its teams became known as the “Hi Tides.” From its opening in 1960 until now, 53 years later, people refer to the present school as the “new” MBHS (Hi Tides) with colors of silver and scarlet. Those same people refer to its predecessor as the “old school.” I think I know why. It’s just a habit.