Category: Miami Stories

I was born in Atlanta in 1942, but my father was the band leader at the Biltmore Hotel.

He also worked during the day at the Veterans Hospital as a physical therapist. Because my brother, George, had asthma, the doctors thought a warmer climate would be better for him, so we moved to Miami in 1946.

It is hard to know where to begin describing all the changes I have seen over these past years. Sure, life seemed so much simpler then. No I-95, no expressways or turnpikes. And yet it took less time for us to get from Miami Beach to the Gables than it does now.

We used a rotary phone, which were eventually replaced with “princess” phones. We still had a party line where one long ring meant the call was for us and three short rings meant it was for the people who shared our phone line. Phone numbers started with letters: our phone number was HIGHLAND 84321.

When we finally got our first television set, I was around 10. It was a black-and-white picture and you only got three stations: Channels 4, 7 and 10. No remote control. Yes, you actually had to get out of your chair and walk to the TV to change to another channel. And the antennae were just rabbit ears on top of the TV, which constantly needed adjusting. But we felt like we were millionaires because we were one of the lucky ones who even had a television set.

When I learned how to type, it wasn’t on a computer. I learned on a manual typewriter with a ribbon. Heaven help you if you made a mistake typing on one of those. No cut and paste in those days. (I kept my 1946 typewriter all these years, but I gave it to a friend to fix it. Now this friend has disappeared, so if he reads this article, please return the typewriter, even if it is not fixed. It is a wonderful keepsake for my grandchildren.)

I grew up in the Gables and during the summer I would walk to the Coral Gables Youth Center, which used to be one block south of Miracle Mile on Le Jeune Road. My brother worked at the A&P food store, which used to be located across the street from the Publix on Le Jeune and Andalusia. (There aren’t any more A&P’s, are there?)

In the afternoon my brother delivered the afternoon newspaper, The Miami News. On Saturdays, we attended religious school and services at what started as the Coral Gables Jewish Center in the 300 block of Palermo Avenue with Rabbi Morris Skop. It later became Temple Judea, which years later moved to its current home at U.S.1 near Granada Boulevard.

After services, we packed a lunch and spent the day at one of the three movie theaters in the Gables – usually the Miracle Theater, but we also went to the Coral or the Gables Theater.

One thing I remember is the numerous delicatessens in Miami as I was growing up. You had The Stage Deli, Wolfies, Juniors, Rascal House, The Famous Deli, Rubendales, Gold Start and Corky’s to name a few. Each one served delicious and large corned beef sandwiches and kosher dill pickles. Where have they all gone?

Once a week my family would eat at the Coral Way Cafeteria, which later became the Biscayne Cafeteria on Miracle Mile. (I continued that tradition with my husband, three children and even with my grandchildren until the cafeteria finally closed.)

For special dinners (maybe once or twice a year), we ate at the Ember’s Restaurant on the beach or the Pub on Coral Way. Of course, you can’t forget the Studio Restaurant on 32nd Avenue off Coral Way. I can still taste the special garlic bread and onion soup. The Miami Springs Villas had a restaurant that served prime rib that was second to none.

When we were young and would go out on a date we had so many wonderful places to go. We would go in large groups like a swarm of bees. Red Diamond Inn on Le Jeune had to be one of our favorites; the pizza was the best. On Miracle Mile we would go to Jahn’s Ice Cream and get the “kitchen sink.”

How can I forget the hot glazed, Krispy Kreme doughnuts when the bakery was on Tamiami Trail? It is amazing how easy it was to eat a dozen hot donuts then.

A favorite any time of the day was Royal Castle. For those who never experienced Royal Castle, you really missed a treat. Small hamburgers, grilled with onions while you were there, served on a fresh roll with the best birch beer in an ice-cold mug.

As I noted, my father was a physical therapist, and he worked at the Veterans Hospital during the day. Back then, the hospital was located in the Biltmore Hotel.

At night my dad, Shep Barish, worked as a musician and band leader. He opened at most of the hotels on Miami Beach, including the Sorrento, the Algiers, The Fontainebleau, The Eden Roc and the Doral.

Back then all the big stars came to Miami Beach. I remember when he was telling me about a “newcomer” he had played for: Frank Sinatra. I got to watch from the control room on many occasions and my favorite was Vic Damone. I never knew where my dad was going to play each night.

I remember one particular evening, when I was up for Sweetheart of my boyfriend Steve Morris’ fraternity, AEPi. After I had gotten dressed in my formal, I wanted to show my dad how I looked. I still remember the proud look on his face. He was just leaving to go to whatever gig he was playing that evening.

When Steve and I arrived at the Eden Roc Hotel, they held the candidates for Sweetheart and their escorts in a back room until the music started to play and each couple was announced.

As they announced my name and I began to walk out with Steve, I received the surprise of my life. Unbeknown to either my dad or me, his band was the one playing that evening. I could not have been happier.

I did not become the sweetheart of AEPi but I did end up marrying my escort a few years later. Steve is an optometrist in South Miami and last summer was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Optometric Association.

This June we will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Yes, we have seen a lot of changes, but change is good, and we love Miami.

Imagine you are a 26-year-old girl who has just graduated from a teaching college in Minneapolis and arrived in Miami on Sept. 17, 1926, the day before an unexpected Category 4 hurricane!

That was my mother, Lyla Waterbury Haynes, who moved here to take a teaching position.

She was planning to live with her mother, Margaret Waterbury, and her grandmother, Eva Townsend, in their old Florida wood-frame house with a screened-in front porch. They were two early Miami pioneers who came down from Wisconsin to enjoy the balmy climate.

In those days there was little or no warning of impending hurricanes and most Miamians were taken by surprise. My mother tells about how frightening it was when it struck the morning of Sept. 18, 1926, and the small frame house was pounded by wind and rain. The old homestead was located on Northwest 24th Avenue in Allapattah and was only a stone’s throw from Comstock Elementary School, which is still located in the area.

As mother recalled, most Miamians had not been evacuated because the warning did not come until a few hours before the hurricane struck. And many residents did not fully understand the fact that the hurricane was not over when the eye passed over their houses. Some people the family knew had their clothes blown off when the other side of the storm struck. After they found shelter they later returned home in empty barrels they had found.

Toward the end of the storm the roof on the garage blew off and there were other damages to the house, but it held up pretty well, considering the power of the storm. In those days the houses were built for the best exposure to the breezes; there was no air conditioning in contrast to today, when loss of electricity is really an issue.

I remember how we suffered from the intense heat after Hurricane Andrew in August 1992 without air-conditioning. The old-timers did not miss what they had never had.

My great-grandmother tells the story of her concern when the iceman did not deliver ice for several weeks. In those days refrigeration was dependent on large blocks of ice. Finally she caught up with the iceman and asked him why he was not leaving ice. He replied, “When I would call, someone answered ‘No ice today,’ so I didn’t leave it.”

The mystery was solved when the pet parrot sung out the same phrase and everyone had a big laugh. Polly the parrot was a colorful Mexican Yellowhead and lived 75 years.

My mother started work in 1926 at one of the first kindergartens in Miami Beach. She directed a Christmas program with a cast of 1,000 elementary-age youngsters. That would be a tall order these days. The Christmas gala was held in Flamingo Park on the new municipal stage at Jefferson Avenue and 11th Street.

Years later, at age 86, my mom was still working with children and listening to them read at Coral Reef Elementary, where I was an administrator for 11 years. She also volunteered at Whispering Pines and was honored as Dade County “Senior Citizen of the Year” at a luncheon, where she was recognized for her service by Barbara Bush.

She returned to Minneapolis to marry young lawyer James Haynes, and I was born there. The depression was hard on my family, and mother and I returned to Florida when I was 4 while dad looked for work and mom taught school again.

I was allowed to be in her kindergarten class but never got special privileges because I was the teacher’s child. There were 80 children in my class, which would be unthinkable today.

I remember the biggest treat was going to a five-and-dime store on Flagler Street and sitting at the counter having a hot roast-beef sandwich with mashed potatoes. I also remember being taken to beach parties on the Atlantic Ocean in Miami Beach with mother and her friends. They would light a fire and we would roast hot dogs and marshmallows. One man had a pet baby alligator that he would always bring with him.

We lived in Chicago for many years, but frequently returned to Miami to visit my grandparents. When Dad retired they moved to Southwest 128 Street in Miami. I followed with my husband, Loren Henkel, and our two small children, Julie and Richard, in 1962. It was then I started teaching fifth grade at the old Perrine Elementary on South Dixie Highway.

The Cuban Missile Crisis hit home in October and we asked the students to bring canned goods in case there was a war. It was planned that the school might serve as a shelter. We could see train cars filled with army equipment passing by on the nearby tracks.

Everyone was nervous about the prospect of a nuclear war, especially with Miami’s proximity to Cuba. Later I experienced the integration movement when I was transferred from Howard Drive Elementary to Frank C. Martin in Richmond Heights.

It became a sixth-grade center and sixth-grade teachers from five feeder schools became part of this unique configuration.

My daughter, Julie Henkel, has followed the family tradition and teaches second grade at Gateway Elementary in Homestead. My son, Richard Henkel, instructs pilots at Dean International Flight School at Tamiami Airport. So you might say, the family history of educators goes from 1926 to the present day.

My brother and I left Cuba on Aug. 23, 1961. He was 15 and I was 16.

We left our parents behind, not sure of when or if we would be together again. My mother later told me that on the trip back to our hometown of Florida in the Camaguey province, she decided they would immediately start getting the necessary documents to leave the island. They were finally able to leave in May 1962.

Meanwhile, after spending a few days with an uncle in Hialeah, we left for our final destination in New York City to live with another uncle, who was the one who had processed our papers. While we were welcomed warmly by our uncle, aunt, and two cousins, I felt as though I was navigating someplace in midair.

The cold weather did not agree with me and I was often sick. In March 1962, when my uncle was notified that I would not pass the school year due to absences, I was sent to Hialeah to live with the uncle who had welcomed us to the United States a few months before. Two months later, when my parents arrived from Cuba and found me in Hialeah, they decided against their original plan of settling in the New York/New Jersey area in favor of the milder Miami climate.

In time we became acclimated to this city, which was in some ways very similar to our homeland 90 miles away. One month after my parents arrived, my brother joined us in Hialeah after having finished the school year in New York. The four of us moved into a tiny apartment near where my uncle lived. By then a third uncle and his family had come from Cuba and lived nearby making our family group larger and stronger.

By the time I was 17, I was feeling strong and needed to look for work and help the family get ahead. That’s when my mother, who had never worked outside of the home, clearly let me know that I was to go back to school and that she would be the one looking for work. My father found work on the night shift of an aluminum factory near Flamingo Plaza, a couple of miles away from our home. We did not yet own a car so around 2 p.m. every day my father would walk to work, lunchbox in hand, and at 11 p.m. one of my two uncles would pick him up.

My mother found work sewing at a factory and my brother and I enrolled in Hialeah High School. After we got a car, a 1953 Chevrolet that cost $250, my mother and I would drive to downtown Miami some Saturday afternoons and frequent Richard’s Basement, Lerner’s, Three Sisters, and Woolworth’s. We would treat ourselves to a slice of cake with a scoop of ice cream like we used to do when I was growing up in Cuba.

The Sunday treat was going downtown as a family to eat at a restaurant where a plate of chicken with rice and sweet plantains would cost 50 cents and an order of fried rice would be 75 cents. Truly a treat! I don’t remember the location of the restaurant or the name, only that it was advertised as owned or operated by “Rafael and Federico.” Another popular eatery was El Morro Castle, which still exists today on Northwest Seventh Street. We also went to the location that is now La Carreta on Southwest Eighth Street.

Near the Versailles Restaurant was Trios, famous for its open-face sandwiches of roast beef or turkey. Little by little, with effort and diligence, we made progress and after a few months were able to rent a house in the vicinity. Two years after that, with a loan from my uncle, we were able to purchase our first home which, marvelously, came equipped with all the necessary furniture. For the small appliances we relied on collecting stamps given out at grocery stores and gas stations. Two of the stamp companies that come to mind are Top Value and S & H Green Stamps. Filled books could be exchanged for toasters, mixers, blenders, clocks, etc.

By then I had graduated from high school and we decided, in the old custom, that we would all work to help put my brother through school. That is how, in spite of our modest means, my brother graduated from the University of Miami with an engineering degree in May 1968.

My first job was as a clerk at the Cabanas office of the old and beautiful Roney Plaza Hotel on Collins Avenue and about 23rd Street, later transferring to the sales office.

I remember the small Miami airport with the terrace where we would go frequently to greet family and friends who arrived. It was common for groups of people to go to the airport to greet the new arrivals, a welcoming committee of sorts.

My father religiously went to “La Casa de la Libertad” searching for familiar faces to offer them some assistance. Mostly it was people who had just arrived and were waiting to be relocated to another state, so my father would bring them to our home for refreshments and a couple of hours of relaxation and unwinding.

For leisure, it was typical for two or three families to get together on Sundays and spend the day or the afternoon at Crandon Park Beach or Haulover Beach enjoying the time together and reminiscing about Cuba. An activity that I enjoyed very much was attending the shows of “Añorada Cuba,” a musical program put on by young people, many of whom were students at Hialeah High or attended the Church of the Immaculate Conception, under the direction of Father Bez Chaveve.

The changes in greater Miami area over the past 50 years have been many and amazing. To the west, Miami basically ended at 57th Avenue. The old Tamiami Airport eventually became FIU and the Miami-Dade Youth Fair. For the most part, Hialeah was a cow pasture.

In 1966 I found love at first sight and in January 1968 I married a wonderful man, with whom I just celebrated 44 years of marriage. We have two daughters who grew up in Miami. As they formed their own families, their jobs took them away from the area but they regularly come back to spend time with family and for a taste of Miami.

In the early years in Miami I postponed my career plans to help my brother, and later, my husband. When my oldest daughter started college at the University of Miami and my youngest started high school, I went back to school and got a degree in education. I fully enjoyed teaching and being a part of my students’ lives as a member of the faculty at Miami Springs Senior High School for 16 years, until my retirement six months ago.

That’s how, 50 years after leaving Cuba, I consider Miami my home. There is in my heart a special love for the land where I was born, but my roots are firmly planted in Miami.

I cannot see myself living anywhere else but here. Miami will always be home to me.

The migration of my family from Cuba to Miami began in the 1800’s, possibly because of the Spanish-American War, which caused many people to leave Cuba for Florida. One set of great grandparents went to Tampa and another to Key West.

My paternal grandfather, Jose Marcelino Garcia, was born in Key West, and my paternal grandmother, Ana Maria Silva, was born in Tampa. My grandparents met when my grandfather traveled between Key West, Cuba and Tampa as an escogedor (a person who selects tobacco leaves) for a cigar factory in Tampa.

Both of my parents were born in Florida. My Cuban-American father, Aldo Garcia, was born in Key West while his mother was visiting there. My Irish-American mother, Margaret McMillan, was born in National Gardens, Fla. They met in Ormond Beach where my father got his first teaching assignment after graduating from the University of Florida. My mother was one of his students.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my father joined the Army Air Corps. He attended officer candidate training in Miami Beach. The graduation ceremony was in August, 1943 at the Miami Beach Golf Course, formerly known as Bayshore Golf Course. The golf course had been leased by the Army Air Corps as a training facility during World War II. When his tour of duty was over he and my mother moved to Miami where dad had a job teaching at Edison Senior High.

They had two daughters when they moved to Miami: me and my sister, and later had a son. They purchased a home at Southwest 39th Street and 68th Avenue, with the help of the G.I. Bill. There was a goat farm on the corner.

When we left home to go to Coral Gables or downtown Miami, my father would drive east on Bird Road to Red Road or 57th Avenue. On the southwest corner of Bird and Red was Allen’s Drugs, one of the landmarks that still stands. Turning north we would go to Coral Way and turn east. The ride along Coral Way under a tree-lined canopy is very much the same today.

We knew we were getting close to downtown Miami when we saw the birds circling the courthouse on Flagler Street – at that time the tallest building in the city. If you take the same drive today you won’t see the birds or the courthouse until you get very close, as it is dwarfed by skyscrapers.

Sadly, our mother passed away in 1948, leaving my father to raise three children under 6. He sent for his mother, my Cuban-American grandmother Anna Maria Garcia de Silva, who came to Miami to care for us.

She too had been widowed at an early age, leaving her with six children that she supported by working in a cigar factory in Ybor City. Although our grandmother was born in Florida, she never learned to speak English, which is why my siblings and I learned to speak Spanish. I couldn’t know then how important it would become to speak Spanish.

When I was a child I remember looking in the phone book for our number and being surprised to see that there were five Garcias. One was my father and another was my uncle. No one could have foreseen the many pages of Garcias now listed in the phone book.

My father taught at Edison while attending law school at the University of Miami in the evening. When dad finished law school (graduating magna cum laude) he decided to move to Allapattah so he could be closer to his teaching assignment. His dream of practicing law was never realized because he wasn’t able to give up the security of a full-time teaching position. He did, however, take on cases for friends, one of which he argued before the state appellate court.

Abuela, or “Granny” as we called her, took us to Bayfront Park every Sunday on the No. 17 bus. The bus took a circuitous route past the house on Northwest Seventh Street and 22nd Avenue that is built of coral rock. At the park we would walk along the bay from the band shell to Fifth Street, pausing occasionally to climb trees. The band shell was where my sister and I performed a duet during a dance recital by Bunny Stirruz Dance Studio of Miami Springs.

At the end of Fifth Street, we watched fishermen as they brought in their catches of the day and filleted them for sale to the public. On Saturday nights, Granny would attend what we teasingly called “old folks dances,” which I think were held in the building now known as The Freedom Tower.

Another strong memory is of going into Burdines in downtown Miami to visit “Toyland” during the Christmas holidays. The excitement would startwith the first glimpse of the walkway decorated for the holiday that connected both sides of Burdines department store on the second floor.

Also, long before Krispy Kreme brought hot doughnuts to Miami, you could purchase one at either S.H. Kress’s or McCrory’s on Flagler Street. Christmas shopping for our teachers (usually Evening in Paris perfume) was always done at Shell’s City on Northwest Seventh Avenue, a precursor to stores like Wal-Mart.

The movie theater on Northwest 36th Street between 17th and 18th avenues, where we attended Saturday afternoon matinees, is now a discount furniture store. Warm summer nights were often spent outdoors under the watchful eyes of parents and grandparents who sat on their porches while children played tag, Simon Says, or red-rover red-rover. When the sun set we tried to catch fireflies in jars. It has been a very long time since I’ve seen fireflies in Miami.

In the mid 1950s we moved to North Miami, which seemed very far from Miami. Since then, other cities like North Miami Beach, Miami Gardens, Aventura, and Miami Lakes, where I now live, have incorporated. My siblings and I attended North Miami High School. It is the same school my children, who are fifth-generation Floridians, later graduated from.

It was while we were living in North Miami that the Cuban Missile Crisis began. I remember convoys of military vehicles, including tanks, driving south to Key West along Biscayne Boulevard. Because my father was bilingual, he was recruited as a translator to assist many of the Cubans who came to Miami in those early years. I have kept a gift he was given by one of the grateful immigrants he helped – a liquor bottle that through the endeavors of an enthusiastic artist had been changed into a Charlie Chaplin-like clown, complete with wooden shoes. While it has no monetary value, it obviously meant something to the giver.

By far the biggest change I have seen in Miami is the successful integration of the many immigrants who have arrived. The Spanish language that I learned from my grandmother has now become a dominant language.

My dad, Mike Nola, came to this country from Lebanon in 1911 and peddled merchandise door-to-door along the Florida-Georgia border. He served in the Army during World War I, which earned him United States citizenship.

After the war, he returned to Lebanon to marry my mother, Chafica Sawaya. Upon returning to Florida, they opened a grocery store in Live Oak. After their first child died in 1925, they moved to Miami and opened a grocery store on the corner of Northeast Second Avenue and 22nd Street. They lived in an apartment near Biscayne Bay.

During the 1926 hurricane, the bay flooded their apartment. My dad put my sister, Josephine, who was several months old at the time, on his shoulders and walked to higher ground. The store was damaged and merchandise was scattered in the street. The neighbors gathered the salvageable merchandise and returned it to my dad. The wholesalers also restocked him, which helped him recover. He was able to open another store on the corner of Northeast Second Avenue and 25th Street. There is still a market there today.

At the beginning of the Great Depression, my dad went into the hospital for surgery. During his time in the hospital he let two neighbors, who were brothers, run the store for him. In their attempt to impress him, they put all the money they took in into my dad’s bank account, and they charged the groceries. Unfortunately in a tale all too common during the era, the bank failed and all the money was lost. Again, the wholesalers restocked him on credit, and he was able to survive.

I was born in 1930. In 1932, my parents built our home on Northeast 25th Street between Second Avenue and what was then the Florida East Coast Railroad tracks. It was a classic Miami bungalow built of concrete block and stucco, with a screened porch all the way across the front.

The construction cost was $3,000, and the lot was $600. My mother lived in that house until her death 60 years later. My parents never owned a car. The streetcar ran down the middle of Northeast Second Avenue, and it went to wherever we needed to go. One day, my brother Willie and I were taking the streetcar to town to see a movie that cost nine cents; we were counting our money and came up a penny short.

An elderly African-American lady overheard us and gave us the penny. It was an act of kindness I have never forgotten. Sometimes, after seeing a movie, my brother and I would walk to the aquarium at the North end of Bayfront Park. The aquarium had been built into a ship, The Prins Valdemar, which had sunk in Biscayne Bay in January of 1926, and was refloated later and turned into the aquarium.

The admission was 25 cents, which we did not have, but the attendant would sometimes let us in for free.

After the aquarium, we would walk back toward Flagler Street to Pier 5, to see the afternoon catch. About 30 charter fishing boats lined both sides of the pier, and the catch was always awesome.

There were no fishing regulations and “catch and release” was not yet practiced. The skippers kept everything they caught and displayed it on the dock to advertise for the next day’s charter. Once they brought in a 10-foot manta ray.

Biscayne Bay was my playground, and I spent many happy days catching snook and Jacks from the County Causeway (which was later renamed MacArthur Causeway) and catching pompano in a cast net from the Rickenbacker Causeway.

The bay was not always as nice as it is today. In the early days, raw sewage poured into the bay from sewer lines that ran under each street leading to the bay. We did not eat fish from the bay in those days. During WWII, there were many months when the bay was covered with a film of black oil from ships that had been torpedoed off the coast. Then after the war, there were several years when the water was muddy from dredging being done to even out the shore line, and to dig deep canals to make waterfront property.

But the bay did survive to become the beautiful place it is today.

Before Interstate 95 was built, Northeast Second Avenue was a busy thoroughfare. The Budweiser Clydesdale horses, pulling a beer wagon, used to come down Second Avenue and stop at all the taverns.

Before homes were air conditioned, it was a thrill to go downtown and walk past the open doors of the Olympia Theater and feel the cold dry air pouring out. At the Olympia, you could see a first-run movie and a live stage show for 50 cents. In 1956 I remember seeing Elvis Presley there, live on stage for $2.

I attended Miramar Elementary, Robert E. Lee Jr. High and Tech High which later became Lindsey Hopkins Vocational School.After my dad died, I ran the grocery store until I entered the Army in 1952. When the other GIs talked about their hometowns, I remember how proud I was to be from Miami and actually felt sorry for those who were not.

After the Army, I enrolled at the University of Miami and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. My son graduated from UM 30 years later with a degree in architecture.

I met my future wife, Grace Geraci, when she was our across-the-street neighbor on Northeast 25th Street. We married at St. Rose of Lima Church in Miami Shores. Soon after, I took a job in the space and rocket industry, eventually settling in Huntsville, Ala. I retired from NASA 36 years later.

During our early years in Alabama, when our three children were young, we would return to Miami twice each year to spend time with family, often arriving late at night. It was always a welcome sight to see the red blinking lights on the radio towers that line U.S. 27 coming into Northwest Miami.

After retiring, we headed back to Florida and were going to work our way to Miami to look for a place to spend the winters. We didn’t make it past Stuart and have had a home there for 18 years.

We visit Miami often and are in awe of its growth and beauty. It has come a long way from the city of 150,000 when we were young.

We traveled to Miami Beach often, before deciding to move from Cuba for good.

The motivation? My father rejected an influential Cuban politician’s demand to lead his Masonic lodge, and was kidnapped for it. After paying the ransom, we boarded a Pan Am flight, and landed in Miami in the summer of 1943.

We rented an apartment, and I enrolled at Ida M. Fisher – Beach High was not yet built. We lived south of Fifth Street because Jews were confined to that area of Miami Beach, nicknamed “Little Jerusalem.”

African Americans had to leave before sundown, and hotel signs advertised: “No Jews, Blacks or Dogs.”

I spoke little English, and was teased for being one of only three Hispanic kids at school. Back then, being Cuban was rare! I graduated as president of the French Club, and was one of the first Hispanics inducted into the National Honor Society. I went on to graduate from the University of Miami, completed an M.B.A., and then a law degree, and became a professor there.

Life in Miami Beach was simpler then: fishing off the Fifth Street pier and catching grouper in Biscayne Bay. I worked as an usher at the Cameo Theater and as a bellhop at the Marseilles Hotel to save up for a boat. You cannot buy much of a boat from tips, and on the fourth sailing, my boat sank a mile offshore. Luckily, I swam back to shore with the incoming tide.

My wife and I married in a civil ceremony, officiated by the only notary public we could find – our mailman. We joined Temple Beth Sholom, became active members of the Mr. and Mrs. Club, and met lifelong friends. We dined at The Famous, went to races at the dog track on the Beach, and ate ice cream at the Saxony Hotel.

Most of all, we traveled. We started small, taking our Chevy Bel Air and $100, and drove all over the country. We are still going strong, having traveled now to every country in the world, some of them many times over.

In those days we lived in a single room on the roof of the Ocean Reef Apartments, next to the building’s boiler. We may have had to wash dishes in the bathroom, but we had a marvelous view of the ocean.

In addition to teaching, I worked as an accountant for a $1.50 an hour. My office was located on Eighth Street and 27th Avenue. Life changed after the Cuban Revolution. I helped many Cuban arrivals with the loss of their homes and businesses, even traveling to Washington, D.C., to facilitate a new tax rule to recoup Cuban losses. I also campaigned at the UM to allow me to teach newly arrived Cubans to become accountants in Florida.

And we raised a family. Our four children grew up roller skating at Crandon Park (then the zoo), and boating to Rope Island (before it became Fisher Island) to watch bald eagles nest.

Looking back, we’ve traveled the world, our children graduated from Beach High, went on to Ivy League colleges, and some of them have returned to raise their own families. One of my grandchildren even attends Beach High. Is another UM graduate in our future?

I arrived in Miami on a bright August day in 1993. I was 8.

I was born in Dallas, and had moved with my parents to Caracas, Venezuela, and Santiago, Chile, by the third grade, and then we ended up in Miami. I started at Bay Harbor Elementary that September.

My parents were nomads: my father was from Colorado and my mother was English – they met in South Africa in their 20s. It did not look like they would ever settle down.

But Miami touched my mother, Wendy, the way no other city ever had or would. That first week, when I was in third grade, we lived at the Newport Beachside hotel while we waited for the moving trucks. My mother was out on the pier, marveling at the pelicans. She watched a woman capturing one of them.

That woman was Darlene Kelton, and that meeting changed my mother’s life, and my own.

Darlene ran a pelican rehab center with her husband, Harry, in Pelican Harbor Marina. They had just recently moved their operations from a tool shed to an actual building. My mother, always an animal lover, started volunteering. By the time I was in the fourth grade, she was bringing me along.

Harry and Darlene’s work was not limited to pelicans. One December night I came home to a new family member – a baby skunk. My mother had not been able to find a home for it, but my father was adamant – no skunks in the house. My mom named her Petunia, and wouldn’t you know it, Petunia and my dad fell in love. Petunia got a Christmas stocking with carrots and broccoli a few weeks later.

Growing up at Pelican Harbor Seabird Station was a special experience for me. I did not have many friends. And my mother’s passion was infectious. As “the kid” I got to do the fun stuff – climb trees to rescue entangled pelicans, sit on the pier and scan the horizon for birds. It was my sanctuary, too.

I started at Miami Beach High School in 2002. I still remember how excited I was to get my driver’s license – not to go joy-riding with friends but to pick up injured seabirds all around Miami.

When I was a junior, my mother got a call to go pick up 25 pelicans injured in Hurricane Dennis up the coast. We filled our Kia Sportage with supplies for other centers devastated by the hurricane, and brought back all those pelicans to raise here. My mother was so proud to make a real difference to the community here – to contribute to keeping Miami a safe place for wildlife.

I went away for school – biology, of course – but came back in the summers to work.

I remember one call from a teacher in Liberty City asking us to come pick up turkeys – turkeys! – in the school parking lot. I thought she must be mistaken, but I trekked out there and sure enough, there were two turkeys in a day care center parking lot.

I caught the female first. That one was easy, but the male saw what was coming and was not about to go quietly. He was a strong one. And the most embarrassing part?

After putting him in the crate, I looked up to see a long line of 5-year-old faces laughing hysterically at my takedown by turkey.

When I finished my master’s degree, I came back to Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, and to my mother’s dream.

By then she was the executive director of the station, with big plans for a bigger facility. She was also president of the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association and was training rehabilitators as far away as the U.S. Virgin Islands.

We were also the recipient of about 40 birds contaminated in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Last year, we took in 1,665 animals of 128 species – more than 20,000 animals since the Seabird Station opened in that old tool shed.

We have also had some great adventures, rescuing pelicans from the most unlikely places: the Miami International Airport short-term parking lot, the pool deck of the Canyon Ranch hotel – during a tropical storm, and the clothing-optional Haulover Beach (the pelicans fit right in)!

In November 2010, my mother got her second – and terminal – cancer diagnosis. She passed away Aug. 6, 2011, and I was elected executive director on Aug. 7, 2011.

I write this article for her. Miami and its wild residents were so tremendously special for her. They gave her life and purpose. And in turn, her love for this place was passed down to me.

My Miami story began on March 24, 1944, when my father’s B-24 Flying Liberator, the “Thunder Bay Babe,” was shot down while on a mission to bomb the railroad marshaling yards at Steyr, Austria. Flak hit one of the bombs over Mostar and the plane exploded. Out of a crew of 10, my father was one of the four survivors.

He was captured by the Germans and interned at Stalag 17-B in Krems, Austria. In April 1945, he was liberated by advance units of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army. After 13 months of captivity he was sent to Miami Beach to regain his health.

My mother had moved to Miami Beach in 1944 to recover her health after a battle with rheumatic fever. She was working as a telephone operator when she met my father on a blind date.

Six weeks later, on Oct. 18, 1945, they were married at St. Patrick’s Church in Miami Beach by Father Francis Dunleavy.

They moved to a small cottage in Coconut Grove across the street from the fire station. My father worked for Burdines, Morgan Pianos on Biscayne Boulevard, Truly Nolan and then Eastern Airlines. My parents moved to Hialeah, to a small flat-roof house by the race track. My dad’s supervisor at Eastern Airlines wrote a letter to the phone company asking if they could install a phone line to my parent’s neighborhood. My dad was a flight attendant and his supervisor needed to reach him by phone.

My father had served as an altar boy in his youth and was very familiar with Latin. During his time as a POW, he studied foreign languages and became fluent in German, French and Spanish. Capt Eddie Rickenbacker, the president of Eastern Airlines, heard about this young flight attendant who spoke fluent Spanish and made sure my dad was part of the flight crew that accompanied him on his tour of South America. My dad also served as an interpreter.

My maternal grandmother, Gladys Long, moved to Miami in the late 1940s. She got a job with the Dade County Building Department and worked on the 15th floor of the old courthouse. The Dade County Jail occupied the upper floors of the courthouse.

My father taught me how to drive a stick-shift car in the Woodlawn Cemetery. He said we could not hurt anyone there.

I was born Oct. 11, 1951, and my parents Jack and Valerie Newman adopted me through the Catholic Charities Bureau.

My mother, an only child, depended on my pediatrician, Dr. Wesley Nook, for advice on how to raise me.

I recently attended Dr. Nook’s funeral at Plymouth Congregational Church in Coconut Grove. He was 100 years old.

The first house I remember living in was at Oak Avenue in Coconut Grove. I went to kindergarten in an old stone building in Peacock Park. I walked to Coconut Grove Elementary School to attend the first grade. I remember going to Liles Pharmacy, the Florida Pharmacy in the Engle Building and best of all, the Krest Five & Ten store next to the elementary school.

In the late 1950s, my father got a new job as a traveling salesman for Northan Warren Co., selling nail care products and cosmetics to women.

We moved to a new house at 8770 Caribbean Boulevard in Whispering Pines. This was our first house with central air conditioning! I rode my bike with friends to Perrine Elementary School.

We had been going to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Coral Gables, but there was a disagreement over the building of a new sanctuary and many of the members left, including my parents.

We now attend Christ the King Lutheran Church across the street from the old Parrot Jungle. The founding pastor was the dynamic Carsten Ludder. George Williamson, owner of Williamson Cadillac, also a member, made sure that Pastor Ludder always had a bright red convertible Cadillac to drive.

We used to cook breakfast at Matheson Hammock Park or go swimming at the protected pool. My favorite beach was Tahiti Beach, with its floating raft that had a great diving board.

In the early 1960s my father was promoted to regional sales manager and we were transferred to Atlanta. The Northan Warren Co., had been sold to the Chesebrough Ponds Co. I attended Margaret Mitchell Elementary School. I will never forget that school because I was sitting in class taking a Weekly Reader test when another teacher walked into our classroom and whispered something to our teacher. The date was Nov. 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

I eventually graduated from Stetson University in 1975. I shared the bathroom and the telephone with William Bryan Brock III and Louis Wolfson III, who both still live in Miami.

After graduation, I found a job as a “fuel allocation engineer” at the Shell gas station on Le Jeune Road across the street from the National Airlines hanger.

I returned to Christ the King Lutheran Church and was a member for almost 25 years. My grandmother and I could usually be seen in the same pew every Sunday. One day, Jim Harris, the personnel director of the Dade County Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, called and asked me if I was still interested in a job. On April 13, 1976, I was hired as a correctional officer to work in the county jail system. I had many interesting assignments: housekeeper, booking desk, courts, transportation, training bureau supervisor, firearms instructor, operations, supervisor of Ward-D at Jackson Memorial Hospital and shift commander at the Women’s Detention Center. I was appointed to the board of directors of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association. Sometime later, Nelson Perry, then president of the PBA, asked me if I would be willing to serve as the chaplain.

I did not feel that I was qualified but he assured me that all I would have to do is open the meeting with a short prayer. This began the happiest 18 years of my life.

I retired in 2006, after 30 years of service to Miami-Dade County’s citizens.

I love Miami and never plan to move away.

No matter where I go – whether to Versailles, Vizcaya, St. Patrick’s Church, the Biltmore Hotel, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden or Lincoln Road, I have wonderful memories of living in Miami.