Tag: Written

My parents were young Norwegian immigrants who had met and married in Chicago.

My father was a skilled carpenter, but there were no jobs available. The Great Depression had caused the banks to fail, and they lost all their savings, so they accepted a job in Miami.

They became the caretakers of the Warren Wright estate, which was located at 5255 Collins Ave. The Wrights only came to Miami when their horses were running at Hialeah Park, so most of the year my parents had the estate to themselves. Looking back on this, coming to an unknown tropical city after growing up in Norway was quite an adventurous thing for them to do.

I was born at St Francis Hospital on Miami Beach and just vaguely remember our home, which was a large apartment over an even larger garage. It looked out over Indian Creek on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.

During World War II, soldiers were housed in Miami Beach hotels. They marched and trained up and down Collins Avenue outside our driveway, and filled their canteens from our hose. We often saw oil slicks and wreckage on the beach from ships sunk off shore by German warships and, because of the threat from enemy fire, we had blackout curtains on our windows and my father was an air-raid warden. My parents were both worried about their families back in Norway, which had been occupied by the Nazis.

When I was 7, my father began working on the construction of the Homestead Air Force base and we moved to Jefferson Avenue and Third Street in Miami Beach , where I met my friend Joan Mooney. We ran wild all over the southern end of Miami Beach, starting at what is now called South Pointe, where we swam in the public pool and went to the movies. I think it cost us about a dime or less. We fished in the bay, played at Flamingo Park or went to Lincoln Road to look at beautiful clothes in the windows of expensive stores.

We spent our summer vacations at the beach where we went almost daily after slathering ourselves with pancake makeup. It was before sunscreens and that was supposed to keep us from burning, but we loved it because we thought it made us look grown-up.

When we were 9 or 10, we often took the bus or the jitney to downtown Miami and went to the movies. We fed the pigeons in Bayfront Park, or rode the ponies which were located where the Omni Mall was built later. If we went to town with one of our mothers, we had lunch at the Seven Seas or Burdines Tea Room, where the big deal was a dessert called a Snow Princess, which I think every old-time Miamian remembers. If we were on our own for lunch, it was the Polly Davis Cafeteria, or a drugstore on Flagler Street across from the Olympia Theatre (now Gusman), where we used to see a movie and a live show.

We were big movie fans, and in those days there were a half a dozen movie theaters in and around downtown Miami, so there was always plenty to do.

In the late 1940s, my parents bought an acre of land in Biscayne Gardens, which was pretty open and uninhabited, and in the early 1950s my dad built our house. It was very different from the close-knit neighborhood I had come from on South Beach – barely five or six houses had been built at that time – but because of that openness, I did get to ride a neighbor’s horse. He was a retired police horse, looking forward to some rest, but he put up with me, and we regularly raced the few cars that ventured along Miami Avenue.

I went to Miami Shores Elementary School, where in later years my three sons also went to school, and even later, several grandchildren. After several years at Horace Mann Junior High, I ended up at the brand-new and barely finished North Miami Senior High. I was a cheerleader and our high school years were right out of Happy Days.

Football and basketball games were major events for the North Miami community, and for pizza and awesome garlic rolls, a place called Marcella’s was our hangout. We seemed oblivious to the outside world, even though we had regular A-bomb drills, and a few older boys had joined the Army and had been sent to Korea.

In my senior year, I had begun to model, and occasionally did some work on some of the early local television shows. I had won a scholarship to the University of Miami, but shortly before graduation my father was killed in a construction accident, so instead of going to college I went to work for the Goodyear Tire Co., down on Biscayne Boulevard, and continued to model.

I met and married my husband, Pete Davis, in Miami Shores, where we later built a home and raised our three sons, who all still live in the South Florida area with their children. During our early years in our home we lived through the Cuban missile crisis, and again, there were troop convoys and equipment in Miami.

In the 1970s, my husband and I became antique dealers and we did shows for years at Dinner Key Auditorium in Coconut Grove, where I remembered going to watch the Pan American seaplanes land as a very small child.

Slowly Miami began changing from the Miami I grew up in, which was a pretty sleepy area from April until December.

It has become a much more diverse, culturally rich city, with so much more to offer than just sun and surf.

I have been fortunate enough to travel and see other places, but always love coming back here. There is nowhere else quite like it.

Our family came from Davidson, Tenn., a coal-mining town. My dad had read many advertisements about coming to Miami, so he and my grandfather came down for a few months and loved it. He never liked working in the coal mines and always said, “You can’t help where you were born, but you don’t have to stay there.”

Anyway, he came back home, packed my mother and his six children in the car and away we went. My youngest brother, Malcolm, was 2, I was 4, and they go up from there.

I remember all the flat tires we had, but we made it.

We got here in August 1926, and we were living in a tourist camp when, on Sept. 8, 1926, the hurricane hit. We were lucky to get to someone’s house. I remember sitting on my mother’s lap with water covering everyone’s feet. People didn’t know about the eye of a hurricane, so everyone started going out and when the hurricane returned, people were caught in it. My sister, Irene, started blowing down the street and a man caught her. My mother asked my dad to take us back to Tennessee, but he never did.

My dad was in the roofing business and, after a few years, he was able to build mother a house. It was on Northwest 49th Street. It is still there and so is the barbecue, where for years our family enjoyed family barbecue and Dad’s vegetables from his garden.

We grew up in the area where the Art District is now. My children and grandchildren often take me down there so I can show them some streets where we lived. We played a lot in Wynwood Park and rode the streetcar that ran from 36th Street and Northeast Second Avenue to downtown. Each Saturday we went to the Biltmore Theater to see a western.

Also, in the late 1920s, a nice neighbor who had a small store on Northwest 22nd Street and Fifth Avenue would take some of us kids and walk to the Seventh Avenue Theater, and on the way home we would stop at a little ice cream parlor and he would buy us a cone. We didn’t really know how bad times were.

All of us went to Buena Vista, Robert E. Lee and Miami Edison High, where my brother, Dub Gracey, was the quarterback. We went to school riding in the rumble seat of Dub’s Model-T Ford. He and I are the only two still living from our family. He’s 93 and when he retired from Delta Airlines, he stayed in Tennessee.

When we were at Edison, a lot of the kids would meet on Saturday in front of the Kress dime store or Burdines to plan our day – whether to go to the movies first, and then the beach or whatever. We loved going to the Olympia Theater; it was so beautiful. I remember seeing Paul Whiteman and his orchestra there once.

We went to the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables for a lot of birthdays. There were a lot of parks and we would go to them, from Crandon and Matheson to Greynolds. In November 1951, about 30 of us from Edison had a picnic at Greynolds Park and we called it, “Our First Edison Reunion.”

I was in Glee Club at Edison and we sang a lot at the bandstand in Bayfront Park. They had lots of events there. My dad was there when President Roosevelt was almost assassinated. Instead, the mayor of Chicago was killed.

In 1939, I had my first date with my husband to be, Bob Freeman, and he took me to Fort Lauderdale to the “Trianon” to see Louis Armstrong.

We married in 1942. He joined the Navy and was stationed for awhile at Opa-locka Naval Air Station, and I worked as a switchboard operator at Southern Bell Telephone Company.

We were out of school before the war started. My brothers, Malcolm and Dub, joined the Navy and were lucky enough to get back home safely.

After most of our boys had joined the service to go war, some of my girlfriends and I would go down to about Fifth Street and Biscayne Bay to see the ships that would come in, and we would talk to the sailors. We would stroll along Biscayne Boulevard, and one night we were in front of the Miami News tower (the Freedom Tower now) when we saw two planes collide. We ran into the Tower and told the switchboard operator about it. One plane had fallen into the arena and was burning. Luckily, there was nothing happening there that night.

My husband, Bob, was stationed at Lee Field, near Jacksonville, and I worked on the switchboard there. When the war ended we came home and Bob went back to work at the post office. He worked there before the war and his job was waiting for him. I went to work for Eastern Air Lines at a two-position switchboard for reservations on the 12th floor of the Ingraham Building. I was foolish and didn’t go to the airport when they moved out there, but I did get another job with the then-beginning of the answering services, where I was supervisor for a few years.

I retired when my first child, Bob Jr., was born.

My husband loved to hunt and fish in the Everglades. After the war he once took me out with him. I had to sleep in a hammock, we ate “swamp cabbage” and drank our water from what I called an artesian well. That’s how clean the water in the Everglades was.

I have lived in Miami and North Miami all of my life and I have been in this house for 62 years. I’m 90 now, and I just wrote my early years in Miami. I’m also writing my memories for my family. I still love Miami and like going downtown!

It was noon, 52 years ago on July 15, 1959, when I walked up the steps at Miami’s Dinner Key City Hall to begin a six-month internship for my master’s degree in governmental administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Dutch Willard was the city manager, and I had no inkling that I would work in that building over the next eight years, nor that I would come back 36 years later as city manager during a time of intense distress.

How I got there is an amazing story that really began in the Air Force in 1956 when we flew a low-level training mission from Fort Pierce to Key West and back to Palm Beach. Fortuitously, that flight took place on a magnificent, sunny, cloud- less Florida day during which, having been an avid fisherman since I was 5, I fell head over heels in love with all the blue green water. It was on that flight that I determined that Florida was where I wanted to work and live.

Internships at Wharton were awarded based on class ranking, and because I was ranked third in my class I was able to select an internship in Fort Lauderdale with City Manager Bill Veeder. Leaving my wife and two daughters on Long Island, I rented a U-Haul trailer and was packed and ready to go when I received an urgent call from Dr. Steve Sweeney at Wharton asking me to come to his office. Dr. Sweeney told me that the Fort Lauderdale city commissioners had, the night before, fired their city manager and canceled my internship. Dr. Sweeney also said that all the internships had been awarded and there were none left.

I sat there in stunned silence wondering what I would do but was heartened when Dr. Sweeney said that he would authorize me to stay at Wharton as a Ph.D. candidate with a full scholarship. It was a generous offer that I readily accepted. I spent the rest of the day looking for another apartment because mine had already been rented. At four that afternoon, I received another call from Dr. Sweeney, asking me to again come to his office.

He began by saying, “You are not going to believe this, but Miami City Manager Dutch Willard just called and guess what he wanted.

“I cautiously replied, ‘An intern?'”

Sweeney smiled and said, “Merrett, the Lord works in mysterious ways. I told Willard that I had just the man or him. He is one of our best students, and he wanted to intern in Florida. He’s already packed and will leave at six in the morning. He should be in Miami in two or three days.”

After renting a small duplex in Silver Bluff, I drove back to Long Island and brought my family with me o Miami. My internship was exciting, and Mr. Willard was a delightful southern gentleman. I was paid 150 per month and still have the many position papers I wrote. Two of them stand out and would prove o have heavy consequences in the coming months. The first was a complete reorganization of the city government, and the other outlined how to reform a politically manipulated civil service system.

I wrote those reports as a student, analyzing function, lines of communication, accountability, line/staff relationships, etc., paying little regard to the political implications for politicians, unions or an entrenched bureaucracy. I believed they were only for my city manager’s and my Wharton professor’s eyes. But Willard, or reasons I never really understood, released them publicly under his signature, which caused a furor.

I learned later that Willard was on shaky ground with the Miami City Commission. It also made me a marked man, and shortly thereafter when Willard resigned to take over a Coral Gables bank, I fully expected to be fired.

But that wasn’t to be because the commission appointed Mel Reese, a professional manager, and my future was secure for the next eight years until I became Clearwater city manager in 1967.

I worked on many projects in Miami. The other assistant city manager, my good friend, Paul Andrews, who later became city manager, was responsible for engineering, public works, building. When Kennedy Park was nothing but mangroves, I filed the Open Space grant request. I also applied for the grant that funded the Coconut Grove Library and oversaw construction of Elizabeth Virrick Park in Coconut Grove and the Japanese Tea Garden.

A challenging assignment involved leading an investigation into the City’s Department of Slum Rehabilitation, which was supposed to enforce minimum housing codes in the inner city. After examining city records and doing field investigations, it proved to be a scandalous mess with minimal to nonexistent code enforcement. The director and several inspectors were dismissed.

There were, however, some great elected officials I worked with, including Alice Wainwright, the first woman commissioner, Athalie Range, the first black commissioner, and former Mayor Robert King High.

City Manager Dutch Willard’s call to Dr. Sweeney in 1959 precipitated an amazing chain of events for me. Now, 52 years later, I appreciate how important it proved to be for my working destiny, to say nothing of its impact on my entire life. It was the beginning of what has proven to be a wonderful, exciting and challenging journey in public service. I’ve always felt very fortunate to serve my fellow citizens during good times and challenging times, and I am particularly proud to call Miami my home.

Merrett R. Stierheim served twice as manager of Miami-Dade County. He is also a former superintendent of the Miami-Dade County school system and former city manager of Miami.

Nineteen twenty-six was a notable year in the history of the city by the bay. A sense of giddiness prevailed, with real-estate sales booming and people arriving in record numbers to make their fortunes. The Biltmore Hotel was completed and became the centerpiece of Coral Gables.

Burt Bolton, a World War I veteran who lived in Atlanta after his discharge, decided to try his luck by moving to Miami. (he called it “Miamuh”) He was a born salesman and would drive his Model T down the streets of Miami with an oilcloth cover over the spare tire. On that oilcloth cover was painted, “They all call me Slim.” He would call out to everyone he saw, “How ya doin’?” And after a short while, everyone who saw him in his familiar Model T would shout back, “How ya doin’, Slim.”

Jessie Isabel Unruh, a native of Mobile, Ala., came to Miami in the same year. Her boss was interested in making some real-estate investments in Fulford By-the-Sea, a community that is now known as Ojus in Northeast Dade County. And then it happened. As everyone knows, that year Miami was hit by one of the most devastating hurricanes ever recorded. That all but ended the real-estate boom, and many of the newcomers returned to their places of origin.

Jessie met Slim. She decided not to return to Mobile and married Slim in 1928. This union produced their only child, Burt Bolton Jr. My dad was a big fan of Al Jolson, and gave his son the nickname of Sonny after he heard Jolson’s rendition of the song Sonny Boy. Sonny was born at Victoria Hospital on Northwest Third Street between Ninth and 10th avenues.

My growing up in Miami back in the ’30s was a truly wonderful experience. In 1933, the Disney Studios were trying to promote their popular Mickey Mouse character and sponsored a contest that would involve the election of one child who would be known as the Head Mickey Mouse. We lived near the Tower Theater on Southwest Eighth Street, where the contest was held. According to the rules, everyone got to vote for their favorite child by writing his name on the lid of a Mickey Mouse Ice Cream cup and turning it in at the theater. In addition, the Miami Daily News agreed to co-sponsor the contest, and you could also cast votes by taking a two-week subscription. My dad was a great salesman. As it turned out, I was elected Head Mickey Mouse and was presented with a silver loving cup and the keys to a brand new Austin Roadster Convertible on the stage of the Tower Theater.

I can remember the trips down to Dinner Key with my parents, where we watched the big Pan American clipper planes land in Biscayne Bay and saw the divers go down to attach the wheels on the planes so they could be towed up onto land. I still have fond memories of the events that my parents and I attended at the Harvey Seeds American Legion Post on the Bay at Northeast 66th Street. My dad was a member of the Championship Drum and Bugle Corp., and I was a member of the Sons of the Legion Corp. In later years, my wife and I, along with our married friends, would celebrate New Year’s Eve by attending the dances held at the open-air patio near the Bay at the Legion Home.

My first job after graduating from Gesu High School in downtown Miami was as a runner at Florida National Bank, which was headquartered in the Alfred I. DuPont Building. One of my duties was to raise the flag at the top of the building, and I was always in awe when I stood on the tallest spot in Florida at that time.

Geraldine “Gerry” Cappelleto and her parents used to make trips every few years to Miami, and Gerry would sometimes spend the weekends at her grandfather’s fish camp on Tamiami Trail. In the late 1930s, the Fish Camp was known as the Blue Shanty. Later, the building burned down and was replaced by a tourist attraction that is now known as Everglades Safari.

I met Gerry while she was a senior at Miami High and took her snake hunting in the Everglades on our very first date. In the ’40s most of my guy friends would go out on weekend snake-hunting expeditions, so I was delighted to hear that Gerry was not afraid to handle snakes, a knack she learned at her grandfather’s fish camp when she was only 8. Ya gotta love a girl who can handle snakes. We were married in 1949 and have shared over 60 wonderful years together.

Our Miami Story begins in 1939 when our dad, Jack Graham, came to Miami from Philly on vacation with his friends. They played golf at the Biltmore Hotel, watched the Pan Am Clippers land at Dinner Key and fell in love with Florida.

At age 12, dad had learned to play golf by caddying in the Poconos in the summers, so being able to play golf year-round was a dream come true. Two years later, he transferred with AT&T and moved my sister Claire and me, along with our grandparents, to Miami.

It was so exciting for a 7- and 8-year old to ride on the “Silver Meteor” train. On the way to the dining car, our grandpop would hold our hand as we jumped across the opening between the cars! Dad had a new 1941 Packard convertible and we rode down Biscayne Boulevard, with the top down, waving from the back seat.

We lived on Miami Beach around 12th Street, by the Dorset and Royal Palm, and swam every day. The life guards taught us to swim by having us follow them as they rowed the dinghies. They said, “Relax, learn to tread water and float. If you ever fall out of the boat, or in a pool or canal, just turn over and float till help comes.”

Since many of the hotels on the beach didn’t have restaurants, the sailors that were stationed there would march along Collins Avenue on their way to eat. We had fun trying to sing along with them.

My sister and I would board with a family during the school term, and went to Shenandoah Elementary and Junior High. Dad took us to places like the Biltmore pool, and we saw Esther Williams and then Johnny Weismuller’s shows. In the late ’40s, we climbed up the stairs at the Cape Florida Lighthouse at the end of Key Biscayne.

In 1946, Dad married Betty Zorn, who was a service representative at Southern Bell. They built a house at 28th Street in North Grove, where our sister and brother (Janet and Richard) were born. Our yard was small, but we enjoyed avocado, mango, key lime and other fruit trees.

We played intramural sports at Shenandoah Park and hung out at Fader’s drug store and the Venetian Skating Rink. At Miami High, we were active in sports and the chorus. We even got to participate in the halftime shows at the Orange Bowl games!!

In 1948, our family joined Bryan Memorial Methodist Church on Main Highway in the Grove, and were active members for over 40 years. We made many lifelong friends, including the Perrys, Crums, Readys, Fowlers, Walkers, MacDonells and the Larkins.

Claire and I joined the youth group on Sunday nights and enjoyed many beach parties, hay rides and went to MYF Youth camps in Leesburg in Central Florida. We even got to swim in the huge pool next door to the church at “El Jardín,” before it became Carrolton School.

Dad was the chief tech/electrician at all church functions, and Betty was active in the Florida Conference, Methodist Women, and helped maintain the church library. He enjoyed golf well into his ’80s with the “Prime Timers” (a 75-and-over group of friends at Coral Gables Country Club).

They moved to St. Augustine to be near Janet and Richard, who had moved there. Dad passed away in 2005 at the age of 96. Betty still lives in their home and is well, at the age of 90!

My story begins in the fall of 1925 when both of my grandparents and their families came to Miami. My mother’s parents, Frank and Laura Wingert, came from Springfield, Ohio, and my father’s parents Ellsworth (Buddy) and Emma Worthington, from Villa Park, Ill.

Both families came because of the weather and hoped they could find steady work.

My paternal grandfather was a painter/wallpaper hanger who worked most of his years in the Coral Gables and Coconut Grove area. My maternal grandfather sold cars on Northwest Seventh Avenue and Seventh Street.

When my mother’s parents and family arrived, they temporarily lived in what was known as “Tent City,” due to the housing shortage. My grandmother opened a small bakery in the neighborhood known as “Lemon City,” which is now known as the Edison area.

My maternal grandparents were able to rent a house. When my mom’s family moved from Tent City six months later they settled in Allapattah. Allapattah Baptist Church was the hubbub of youth activity, as there weren’t many venues for young people. The Sunday evening youth program was where my parents met.

My mother graduated from Edison Senior High, and my father from Miami Jackson. I attended Jackson 28 years later and we had the same math teacher, Mr. Worley. My father was a student in Mr. Worley’s early days; I, in the last year before he retired.

My parents began a courtship, Miami was booming and work was plentiful. My maternal grandmother, however, was terrified when the 1926 hurricane devastated the city.

The family was frightened, as they did not know what a hurricane could really do. They did not board up their house and when a window blew in, my grandfather nailed the ironing board over it. My grandmother and the children would not come out from their hiding place for some time.

They never found their chickens or their pet rabbit. From then on, my grandmother was extremely nervous when any storm approached up until her death in 1962.

My parents tell of going to the beach every weekend and there was nothing there. They have fond memories of the Venetian Pool, church-sponsored events and the wonderful Olympia Theater with live stage shows and the latest movies. There were parties at the homes of friends and their first cars – all of this on very little money.

Eventually my parents drove up to Fort Lauderdale and were married at the courthouse with a few friends and family members present. My father and his two brothers worked at The Miami Herald, my father stayed in the newspaper business until he retired from the Sun Sentinel.

World War II changed everyone’s lives. My father began to build patrol torpedo boats at Paul Prigg Boat Works on the Miami River.

My father went back to The Miami Herald after the war and built three small frame homes for his sister and her family, his sister-in-law with her four small children and himself.

That is where my memories begin – the house on Northwest Seventh Street and 44th Avenue, and my cousins just a block or two west on 46th Avenue and Seventh Street. The pavement ended at about 42nd Avenue (LeJeune Road) and Seventh Street. The city bus ended the route at LeJeune and Seventh.

It was a long hot walk home, but what a treat it was to go downtown. If we were lucky, we would have lunch upstairs at Kress’s Cafeteria. Like most families we were a one-car family. Living out in the country we had chickens, turkeys, a pony and our pet cat and dog.

I began school at Kinloch Park Elementary. We were, and are, very family-oriented and have wonderful memories of the holidays, especially of Matheson Hammock on the Fourth of July. We were the family who always had one of the two pavilions because someone went there at 6 a.m. to secure them!

My grandfather, father and now my boys were, and are, all fishermen. We spent hours in the Keys, bass fishing at Fish Eating Creek and Lake Okeechobee, picnicking at Haulover, Matheson and most every park. We have made an effort to visit almost every state park in Florida, either camping or renting cabins.

I married my high school sweetheart, Morgan Pearcy in 1958; he graduated from Lindsey Hopkins Technical High School, where he excelled in the electrical program. He completed his dream to start his own business, which we owned for over 20 years. Morgan is still working full time in the electrical field at Fisk Electric.

We began a family of four boys: Mark, Phillip, Danny and Paul. They all graduated from South Miami Senior High, and played Pop Warner football, little league baseball.

As a family we were active in the First United Methodist Church of South Miami.

They all graduated from college and still reside in the South Miami area. We have been, and continue to be, active in the community. We very much enjoy South Florida and all it has to offer.

My father, Hiram L. Hernandez, had an older brother and cousins in Miami so in 1948 he left Havana and emigrated to the United States in search of work and a new life.

He began working at the Ambassador Cafeteria in Miami Beach and later worked at the Governor Cafeteria, now the sight of one of South Beach’s well-known clubs. He told of having met people like Jimmy Durante, famous prize fighters and other entertainers who frequented Miami Beach during the post World War II years. The owners of the Governor Cafeteria had been in Nazi concentration camps, and years later I remember my father explaining the significance of the numbers on their forearms.

My mother, Nora Cuervo, soon left Cuba to join my father, and they were married at the Dade County Courthouse in downtown Miami. My father often joked that the president of the United States had come to town for their wedding, since President Truman’s motorcade was indeed passing the courthouse at the precise moment that my newly married parents were descending the courthouse steps. What a thrill for a couple of young immigrants!

My brother, Hiram and I were born at Jackson Memorial Hospital and the family lived in an apartment building owned by my father’s cousins, the Monte Carlo Apartments on Pennsylvania Avenue in Miami Beach. The Miami Beach City Hall is now located there.

In those early days of no air conditioning we would sleep with the front and back doors open to catch the ocean breezes as they drifted through the efficiency apartment that was home. Every day we walked to the beach at 12th Street and Ocean Drive. We attended Central Beach Elementary School (now Feinberg/Fisher). More than 35 years later my daughter would begin her teaching career at this same school.

For one year we moved to a federal government housing project located on the very southern-most point of Miami Beach. Few people are aware that so close to the opulence of the big Miami Beach hotels, and right across the street from the big-time entertainers who were dining at Joe’s Stone Crab restaurant, there was a federal housing project.

We would spend Sunday afternoons in Hialeah with my father’s brother and his family. Hialeah was pretty “country” in the 1950s and 1960s; horses, small farms and both horse and race car tracks were common. Other times we would travel to downtown Miami to buy fresh fish and hot peanuts at Pier 5 and go to Burdines, especially at Christmas. This was before our yearly visits to Cuba to visit the rest of the extended family. Occasionally we would fish off the rocks along the side of the MacArthur Causeway (which was only two lanes at the time). My father and brother had fishing rods and reels; mom and I did the best we could with a spool of fishing line and a hook.

My parents became United States citizens as soon as they were eligible, and instilled in us a civic pride and love and loyalty to this country that has characterized us throughout our lives. Daddy campaigned to help elect the late Sen. Jack Gordon when he first ran for the Dade County School Board. Later, I too, would become engaged in the political process.

A huge milestone was when my parents were able to purchase a small house in Carol City in 1959 – mostly cow pastures back then, and for the first time we had a yard and a dog. Tired of the long drive to Miami Beach for work, and wanting a better life for his family, Daddy studied hard to earn his real estate salesman’s license and became one of the first Spanish-speaking real estate agents in Miami.

Our house became a temporary refuge for family members, who in the early 1960s fled Cuba’s communism. For quite some time I slept on an old army cot in my parents’ bedroom so that my bedroom could be used by recently arrived relatives. In sixth grade my elementary school teachers assigned me to serve as English tutor and translator for many newly arrived Cuban refugee children. Little did I realize at the time what a huge and important responsibility I was given at such a young age.

I remember during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the military built a base with missiles not far from our home. The school system distributed military-style “dog tags” that would identify children and provide our blood type and religious affiliation in the event of being bombed, and we held periodic air raid drills during school.

These rather somber memories are balanced by other more light-hearted moments of childhood, including long bike rides; visits to Monkey Jungle, Parrot Jungle, Miami Seaquarium, Crandon Park Zoo and the Miami Serpentarium; Skipper Chuck, Ralph Renick, Weaver the Weatherman and Rick Shaw; bus rides from Modernage Furniture in North Dade to the Orange Bowl to watch the Miami Dolphins; movies at the drive-in; parties at Haulover Beach; marching in the Carol City High School band at the Orange Bowl parade; hanging out at Lum’s and dancing at The Place.

My brother and I finished elementary school, junior high and senior high in Carol City and attended the University of Florida – he in 1968 and I in 1969. My parents couldn’t have been prouder. After a stint in the Army my brother returned to Miami and has spent his career working at the place we were born, Jackson Memorial Hospital.

I returned to Miami in 1976, raised my three children here, and have enjoyed a fulfilling career in higher education. The sky is bluer and the emotions more intense in Miami. I have never wanted to live anywhere else.