In the winter of 1937, when I was 5 years old, my grandparents took an apartment in Miami Beach for the winter. The apartment was on the corner of Española Way and Meridian Avenue. Our family was from Youngstown, Ohio, and we would drive down for a visit and spend a few days on the […]

I moved to Miami Beach in 2009 from Naples, Florida, with my boyfriend, in search of better career opportunities. I grew up in Massachusetts, however, and lived in Massachusetts until 2005. When I first moved to Miami Beach, I was not a happy camper. It took me a while to adjust to the craziness of […]

My family moved to Kendall in the fall of 1975. Both from Ohio, my parents settled here with a pioneer spirit, building a home together in an old pine tree forest at a time when the area felt like it was at the edge of civilization. A reserve filled with Dade-County pine trees now surrounded […]

I was born in Havana, Cuba on July 4th 1956, and came to Miami in January of 1962. For years I thought I came to Miami as part of the Freedom Flights, until I later discovered that those flights did not start until 1965. As young as I was, I remember boarding the plane with […]

Miami and Dade County in the late 1970s and early 1980s had a different atmosphere and environment than they have today. Truth be told, I was a vastly different person then, too. In those days I was a full-time undergraduate student (living off-campus) at Barry College (which became a university in November 1981) before it […]

Spanglish. I do not know when I first heard that word, but it pretty much summarizes how I feel about growing up in Miami during the 1970s and ‘80s. To me Spanglish is not just a mixing of English and Spanish; it is the mixing of two diverse cultures. It is a culture unto itself. […]

The year was 1973, the beginning of October, and for our Indian-origin family of five, the beginning of our new life. I had just turned 6 and my first memory of our new hometown was actually one of fear. Everything here looked so big and spread out. The city’s bright lights especially scared me. Before […]

Yes, I am a Miami native, born in 1951 at St. Francis Hospital on Miami Beach. My dad was in dental school at St. Louis University and my parents came home so I would be born in Miami. My dad Jerry Denker a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., attended Miami Beach High and played football there […]

My family came to Miami from Holland after World War II. My father had first visited the United States during his youth while working for the Holland America Cruise line. He knew the United States was the land of milk and honey. So after the war, in April 1947, my parents, my brother (6 years […]

I was born in a wood frame building on Miami Beach in 1924. My parents were Greeks, born in Turkey. My father’s parents raised silkworms that were sold to the local factories in Bursa. A wealthy Turkish merchant in the silkworm industry who did business with my grandparents, made frequent business trips to the United […]