Category: Miami Stories

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.

My great-grandfather, Joseph Rapisardo, Sr., was a farmer in Chester, New York, with my grandfather, Leo Nicotra. As the cold and nasty winters arrived every year making crop growing a challenge, they decided to move to sunny Florida in 1950.

After arriving in Florida my great grandfather and grandfather built a home in Homestead, Florida on the corner of NW 8 Street and 6 Avenue. On the adjoining property they decided to plant onions. The crops grew well in the South Florida’s sunny winters. In 1950 the area was rural and Homestead only contained 4,573 residents.

After being so cold in the winter, South Florida was a piece of heaven and that is why for more than 50 years the family has continued to live in South Florida. At first my great-grandfather and grandfather tried to settle in Naples, Florida, but did not care for the area or the soil. They both agreed to move to the small town south of Miami known today as Homestead. It was a perfect fit for raising a family and starting a farming business.

After the elder Rapisardo and Nicotra were deceased, the children and grandchildren continued the family tradition. My father, Gaetano Talarico married my mother in 1962 in New York and in 1967 he also moved to Homestead, Florida. After falling in love with the area he started F&T; Farms, which is now over 40 years old.

I, too, went to school here in the winter and also in New York for the summer to continue the planting of the onion seeds. My uncle, Joseph Nicotra, continued the tradition that his father, Leo Nicotra, and grandfather, Joseph Rapisardo, started back in 1950.

The seeds were planted in December and the plants were pulled in April. Joseph and Leo made the long trip back by truck to Chester, New York, where they were planted again only to be re-harvested in July.

In 1953 the Homestead Air Force Base opened and grew the community to 9,152 residents and became a national center of attention since it contained the closest jet fighter facility to Cuba. With the new growth in Homestead, it still remained a part of an agriculture spot as it is today.

The property to date, now on the corner of NW 8 Street and 6 Avenue, houses duplexes that are still owned by the family. I have now lived in Homestead for nearly 46 years and was so proud to be a part of the Nicotra-Rapisardo family and learning the history of the planting seasons.

I got here by way of birth, born in Victoria Hospital, which was built in 1924. My mother, Louise Guckert, came from Louisville, Kentucky, and she married Ralph Yount, also from Louisville.

My mother was a trip; she never counted this first marriage because today people would just have lived together. The only reason I know about it is because Ralph’s mother remained a friend to us and was there when I was born. Ralph worked for a cruise line that was based in Miami, and the ships went from Miami to Cuba and back to Miami. My mom and his mom would go on the cruises. Can you imagine what a ball this was in the 1920s?

Between marriages my mother worked for Smith, Richardson & Conroy. Her second marriage was to Verne Vivian Buell, born August 23, 1902, in Ft. Pierce. He was the owner of a dry cleaners located just over the Flagler Street bridge. They were married in June 1935 in Louisville. I came along the following year. Mother attributes her one and only pregnancy to the June Taylor dance studio where she took tap lessons. Mom was third-generation American.

My father is another story. He was the last child of Lula Mae Summerlin, born January 8, 1867, in Florida, daughter of Capt. John Alexander Summerlin, Confederate, 1st Regiment, Florida Cavalry. My father’s father, whom I never knew, was Sylvania Selvester Buell, a Union soldier. My lineage goes back so far I lost patience, but stories have been handed down that these two men could have some very heated conversations.

Mother never told her correct age on anything — my birth certificate, her marriage license, her driver’s license, or her voter registration. We lived on 12th Street near the Orange Bowl. There were no gates to keep people out so this was my very early playpen. Mom would take me there and I’d run up and down all over until I was exhausted.

We moved to Southwest 32nd Avenue between 8th Street and Flagler. I went to school with Indians and white Americans at Orange Glade Elementary, located on the corner of 27th Avenue and 8th Street. The buildings were little wood houses. My second grade teacher, Ms. Rice, thought I was such a pretty little girl she entered me in an audition for the opera Carmen. I made it. The opera took place at Miami High’s auditorium.

I remember riding a trolley car on Flagler Street. It went from 32nd Avenue to downtown. My mother would take me to Burdines, and on my birthday, I would get a special princess ice cream with a porcelain doll that sat on top of a flowing skirt of ice cream, trimmed with silver candy beads.

I loved school, especially when first and second graders got to bring a blanket to school and lie down under the pine trees after lunch and take a nap while listening to classical music coming from a gramophone. I would give anything for all you who came later to know what it was like.

Sometimes my mom would pick me up after elementary school and we would go downtown to Richards Department Store and for a dime the jitney would take us to South Beach.

First we would stop at a street corner juice stand and have a fresh-squeezed orange juice. We then walked a block to the ocean and you could look down the beach, and as far as you could see the water was crystal clear blue. The sand was clean, so white it hurt your eyes, and not a high rise in sight. There were very few people then and you felt like you could run free.

The war broke out, for those of you too young to remember World War ll. It didn’t seem to faze us much until south Miami Beach, full of Art Deco hotels and small apartments, became a training ground for American soldiers. This didn’t stop my mom’s family; they were snow birds of the first degree. The little motels and Art Deco hotels became barracks and the rest was left for vacationers.

The family always rented a place for winter and Mom and I would join the relatives. Wolfie’s was the choice for lunch pickles in a bucket and sauerkraut in another. Soldiers marched all around the apartments. Remember, I was very small but won’t tell tales out of school.
Early in the morning two soldiers would come by and pick me up and take me to the beach where binoculars were available. They would lift me up to see and sure enough there were submarines close to the land. I don’t know if they were kidding or not but they told me they were German submarines.

I would ride my bike to school and go home a different way, and sure enough the bike was always where I left it.

I’m still here, married to another native Miamian. He shot missiles to the moon, went to MIT and owned Clifford’s restaurant. We both remember when.

The Chandler clan arrived in Miami early in the 1920s so that my father’s father, Thomas Chandler, could make a living working construction in those boom years of early Miami prior to the big hurricane of ’26 that destroyed it all. The family, including six children, lived in the Allapattah area enjoying the fruits of the tropics and fresh-caught fish from the-then pristine Miami River.

The maternal side of my family arrived in 1944. My mother, then 23, had had enough of the cold Indiana winters and longed for warm breezes and the glittering nightlife that was Miami. She arrived by train, suitcase in hand, $75 in her purse along with the phone number of a friend’s grandmother who might be able to put her up for the night.

It was with this journey that Velma Ruth Villwock of Indianapolis became Ruth Villwock of Coral Gables. Always one to dream big, my mother took the bus downtown and, looking skyward, saw the towering Alfred I. DuPont building on Flagler Street and declared that she would work there.

I don’t think that my mother ever took no for an answer, and consequently worked there a short time until seeing another impressive building that called her name. While living on Alhambra in Coral Gables and renting a room in the home of a wealthy elderly couple, “Mom and Pop Rhoads,” she became acquainted with the majestic Biltmore, then an Army Air Force hospital.
Once again, setting her sights high, she gained employment as a medical secretary in orthopedics at the hospital.

She changed her residence to an apartment within walking distance of the fabulous edifice. Thus began her magical “Biltmore days,” eating lunch by the pool, watching celebrities like Johnny Weismuller and Esther Williams come and go, meeting wounded GIs, and dancing with soldiers at USO parties. Her photo album is filled with lovely, smiling young women and handsome men who crossed her path and are ever immortalized in fading black-and-white photos, names unknown.

A highlight of those days was a reception given at the Biltmore for General Dwight D. Eisenhower where, as a date of her boss, Mom shook the hands of the general and his wife, Mamie. Miss V., as Mom was known to her boss, was dressed to the nines and was as glittery and sparkling that evening as the event itself.

In 1947 at Coral Gables Methodist Church, she married a handsome young Marine, my father, Joe Chandler. In 1950, they bought a house on the GI bill for $50 down and $50 a month in West Miami. It was there they began their family, which included my brother Bob and me. They raised us in Riverside Baptist Church in a city where we could walk to the corner Grand Union for groceries and play outside until the street lights came on.

In 1960, when our first Cuban neighbors moved into the house next door, my mother made them feel welcome and mentored the young mother in the ways of our city. Neither spoke the other’s language but as mothers, they communicated with the same language of the heart with a little help from their children and much pantomime.

My father was busy building a business, Craftsman Commercial Interiors, which was located on the Palmetto Expressway near Hialeah. The business built and installed interiors for restaurants and bars. It couldn’t have existed at a better time. Miami was growing and prospering, as was the Bahamas. Dad frequently flew on a small plane to the Bahamas for installations. His business had among its clients Chippy’s restaurant on Miracle Mile, where the New York-style cheesecake was out of this world. Our family got a kick out of sitting in the booths that were our dad’s handiwork.

As the business prospered, my parents wanted more for their children, so we moved to a new pool home in the Westchester area where Bob and I could attend the new, all air-conditioned Miami Coral Park Senior High School.
Miami grew and changed quickly; when my parents retired in 1975 they, like so many others, left for northern Florida. In 1992, my mother returned as a single woman because Miami had never left her heart. She closed on her condo in Kendall the weekend Hurricane Andrew arrived.

After six months, she was able to move in and lived in her condo 20 more years, enjoying all that Miami had to offer. Her connection to the Biltmore continued as she went for tea in the lobby and had brunch on the terrace. She especially loved the 4th of July fireworks at the Biltmore and even took the tour inside, adding details of the Biltmore’s war days to the docent’s speech.
My mom’s love of Miami never ended and her tales of the magic of being young in Miami during the war years live on with her children and grandchildren.

We gather back in Miami for her funeral this week and to celebrate her life. The balmy breeze and slanted light of autumn remind us that for everything there is a season. This magic city grew in my mother’s lifetime from a winter vacation playground for northerners to an international metropolis. It changed with each decade as we did. What doesn’t change is the clear, clean air from the ocean, swaying palm trees, the vibrant green of our tropical plants, explosion of color from bougainvillea and hibiscus, along with stories and memories of our beloved and unique home. We all attest to the fact that Miami with her flair and charm is in our hearts always.

We hauled my parent’s aluminum canoe off the roof-rack of his 2002 Mitsubishi Montero and onto the grass near the edge of the Biltmore canal. I grabbed the essentials from the trunk and tossed them into the canoe: two wooden paddles, a foldable, plastic seat, a faded, waterproof cushion, and a couple of well-worn life-jackets.

Larry—the tall, Colombian-American I had just been introduced to a few weeks before—adjusted his maroon FSU hat and repositioned his thick-rimmed eye-glasses before reaching down to help me lift the canoe.
My water bottle rolled towards the stern as we lowered the boat down the grassy bank to the water’s edge. I glanced over my shoulder at Larry, trying to keep the giddiness I felt from showing on my face.

“You ready?” I asked, eager to embark on our first date adventure.

“Let’s do this,” he replied.

I held the canoe steady as he stepped in and made his way towards the back of the boat. Once he was seated, I nudged the boat so that it slid further into the water, until all that was left on the rocky shore was the tip of the bow, just enough to let me climb aboard without having to get my feet wet.

I had been in this canoe countless times before. Growing up in Coral Gables, my parents would often take me and my brother out for a Sunday afternoon stroll along the waterways that snaked their way through our neighborhood and out towards Biscayne Bay.

Our usual route would lead us from the starting point near our house to a spot where the canal dead-ended across from the football fields of Coral Gables High. There, we would spot manatees that had come in from the bay in search of more tepid waters. In the winter time, when cool air graced a muggy Miami and the ocean temperatures dropped, the warm waters of the canal offered a sanctuary for these marine mammals.

From the edge of the water, on-lookers often congregated to count the rounded backs of these dormant sea-cows, which emerged from the surface like buoys. Every few minutes a pair of circular nostrils appeared as a manatee brought its nose up for air. From the canoe, however, it was easier to see through the murky canal water and observe what went on beneath the surface.

With a few quiet strokes of our wooden paddles, we let our canoe glide right up next to them, stuck our hand in the water, and caressed their slimy, algae-covered backs. It was easy to spot the older ones, who were often coated with barnacles and striped with scars from motor boat propellers. The younger ones were more curious, and came right up to the side of the canoe, rolling belly-up and lifting their flippers out from the water as if to offer a high-five.

As Larry and I paddled through the canal on that cloudless, summer day, I was hoping that we would get to see a manatee up close. Larry had grown up in Miami as well, but had never canoed through these parts before, and I was excited about showing him a side of his home town that he had yet to discover.

From the few times we had hung out since our first encounter on a South Beach dance floor the previous month, I already knew he was the type of person who, like me, enjoyed being in nature and staying active. In our first phone conversations, he’d told me about his years playing basketball and running track, about his days owning a longboard and surfing the waves on the northern coast of Florida, and about his plans to hike in Patagonia with some friends that fall. While getting “outdoors” in a city like Miami sometimes felt like a challenge, this, I thought, would be a great way of doing it.

Cruising passed the unique Spanish-style homes that lined the waterway, with their lush, tropical landscaping and beautiful backyards, it wasn’t long before we noticed the wildlife that called the canal their home: a great blue heron perched on a mangrove; a charcoal Anhinga drying out its wings; a giant iguana sun bathing on the coral rock.

At the edge of the lawn to our left, a family of ducks wandered towards the canal, squawking a dissonant tune as they hurried passed the canoe. On the opposite bank, a slender white egret waded in the water, keeping its eyes and beak fixed on the ground below its branch-like legs as it crept towards a potential meal.

And as we drifted down the canal, I thought about how comfortable I felt spending time with Larry. Perhaps it was his laid-back personality, or how he’d been so eager to join me on this canoe ride through the Gables.

Perhaps it was the way he joked about almost anything, and how good it felt to laugh so much whenever we talked. I never expected to find myself starting a new relationship weeks before moving overseas to teach English, but that day in the canoe, as we explored the hidden outdoors of the “City Beautiful” together, I couldn’t help but recognize that being with him just felt right.

And as we slid past a “no wake” sign and turned the corner towards the high school, hearing nothing but the sound of water hitting the sides of the canoe, my eyes fell upon a pair of rounded, barnacle-covered backs emerging from the surface. There in front of us, floating near a dock at the end of the canal, a pair of manatees rested in the tropical waters of Coral Gables.

Growing up in Miami has been an experience for me. You never realize that where you live can have such a great impact on your life. Living in Miami has taught me some things — through struggles and hardships, to moments of rejoicing and opportunities, it has taught me that with endurance and faith I can achieve anything.

Living in Miami has made me versatile. My mother was a single parent raising my sister and me; sometimes we struggled and fell on hard times. We moved several times, so I got exposed to different areas of Miami such as Opa-locka, Carol City, North Miami, Miami Lakes, Hollywood and Pembroke Pines. I went to schools that were predominantly African American, Hispanic and other cultures, and I met students from a mix of these. This experience not only helped me to learn and understand other cultures, but I gained a mixed diversity of friends from various backgrounds.

I have participated in several activities and programs that were located in various parts of Miami. My mother believed in exposing us to different things. I participated in the Lamplighters, which is sponsored by the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity (Sigma Alpha Chapter, Miami), a program for minority young men ages 12-18, “Focused on Helping Shape & Develop Tomorrow’s Future Leaders.”

I participated in the Manhood Youth Development Camp and Educational Institute, a community-based, non-profit organization that provides personal development education, counseling, and mentoring services to youth and families. Their mission is to increase the young male’s potential of leading a productive, responsible, and self-disciplined life crossing into manhood. Through this organization, I had the privilege to go to New Orleans to help victims that experienced devastation due to Hurricane Katrina.

Other programs I participated in were Teen Upward Bound; its mission is “to build strong families, youth and teens through education and faith.” I participated in the North Miami Beach Teen Summit, volunteered at Alonzo Mourning’s Overtown Youth Center, and I am currently on my last year of a three-year internship with Teen Miami. Teen Miami is three-year research and collections initiative on the history of teen life and culture in Miami-Dade County.

My mother also encouraged us to participate in school activities. I joined the band, chorus and the drama club. Through the Flanagan Senior High School drama club, I had the privilege to go to New York and attend workshops, as well as see Broadway shows. I also got the opportunity to go to Statesboro and Savannah, Georgia, to learn about the history of my grandfather and the history of both states.

My experiences living in Miami have been inspiring, informative, interesting, with some low and high moments. Through my experiences in Miami, I have learned to take hardships and struggles, my moments of rejoicing as my learning grew, and my opportunities as a blessing, and to live my life to the fullest.

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.

I always felt special because I was born in Miami. My parents, like so many others, came from someplace else.

My father Jack Moore grew up in Waycross, Georgia and my mother Anne Parker in Maysville, Kentucky. My grandfather, John J. Moore, a lawyer and judge, moved to Florida during the great 1920s boom and settled in Stuart. My father moved to Miami as a young lawyer in 1930. It was at the height of the Great Depression. Times were tough he always reminded us

My mother came to Florida to attend Florida State College for Women, now FSU, in 1929. With the luck of the draw, she roomed with my father’s sister. She stayed only a year in Florida and graduated from the University of Kentucky and became an elementary school teacher there. During the summer of 1936, she visited her old roommate in Miami and at that time met my father. After a whirlwind romance, they married.

When I was born, the Moore family, which included my sister Pat and brother Bill, lived at 1367 SW Third St. in an area then called Riverside, now Little Havana. Our home was a wooden bungalow with a screened-in front porch. It was a perfect way to live before air conditioning. There were many children in the neighborhood and we spent most of our days outdoors — skating, biking and playing kick-the-can. I walked to Riverside Elementary and even came home for lunch.

We frequented two neighborhood shopping areas — one on Flagler Street and the other on what we called the Trail, now Calle Ocho. Every Saturday, my brother, sister and I walked to the Tower Theater to watch movies, cartoons, news reels and adventure serials. Twenty-five cents would buy admission, a drink and a bag of popcorn.

My family went to a downtown church so from my earliest years I was in downtown Miami at least once a week. As a result, I feel very much at home in downtown Miami, even today. There were four churches within walking distance of each other and their members frequently went to Luke’s Drug Store between Sunday school and church. Attending a downtown church made it possible to know people from all over Greater Miami. In high school, we even dated across town through friends we met in church youth groups. Because of these friends, I always saw Miami as a whole and not just as a sum of many parts.

When I was in the fourth grade we moved to Miami Shores. I thought we had moved to Jacksonville. Although this was considered an upward move for my family, I missed the old neighborhood and my friends. But I made new friends in Miami Shores, especially my best friend, Adele Khoury. We were the two tallest girls in the class and liked to call ourselves “back row” girls because we were always together on the back row in school pictures. We rode our bikes everywhere. We also went downtown on Bus 11 for a day at the movies and lunch at Royal Castle where hamburgers cost five cents. She remains my closest friend today.

I got my sense of history and my passion for Miami from my father. He always had his nose in a history book, taught me historical facts, a love for the constitution and took me around and told me things about Miami. “Remember this,” he would say. He ran for the City of Miami Commission when I was 5 and I remember passing out brochures at a rally in Bayfront Park. He and my mother set a good example by being involved in the community.

My family was ethnically Southern and I could talk and eat Southern-style. When it came to race, however, they were unlike most others who lived in then-segregated Miami. I was taught to respect everyone regardless of their race, religion, gender or ethnicity. My father often spoke out against segregation and anti-Semitism. Once, I remember being very embarrassed when he spoke out in a restaurant because the management would not admit black patrons. Years later, I realized how remarkable he was and how blessed I was to grow up in such an inclusive environment.

I went to college and my first career was an American history and government teacher. I taught at Miami Edison Senior High, my alma mater, the first year it was integrated. I also had a large group of young Cuban refugees in my class — many of whom had been sent to Miami without their parents. They taught me through example to respect the Cuban exiles who were moving to Miami. Many invited me to come visit them when they returned home to Cuba. Little did any of us realize that they would not be able to return for many years, if ever.

How lucky I was to be born and grow up in Miami.

Miami taught me to be open to change and to adapt to the unexpected. It taught me to accept people and welcome newcomers. It gave me an eagerness to learn. When I began writing Miami history and working to preserve its important places, I called on all these memories of people, places and events to help me. When I write about Miami, I always include everyone in the story. Each day, I realize more and more that there is no better place to live if you want a jump start on America’s future and always have a great story to tell.