Tag: Written

Coming to Miami Beach had been my dream since childhood. I was in my early 20s and had saved enough money to take my vacation there. So in the middle of October 1941, I took a bus from New Jersey. It took three days, and I was dirty and exhausted upon arrival. Even so, going over the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach was thrilling.

The bus turned left at Ocean Drive, and I was let out in front of the Miami Beach Hotel, 505 Ocean Dr. I got a room for $5 a week (summer rates). I went swimming every day, and dancing every night. They had speakers on the beach that played beautiful music. I was so enthralled with my surroundings that I quit my job in Jersey and said, “This is where I want to live.”

At night after a date, I would walk barefoot along the shoreline from Fifth to 14th streets and back. I would smell the sweet scent of jasmine, watch the palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze, listen to soft music drifting from the hotels and some nights the moon would rise out of the sea. These are my most precious memories.

The loud speakers on the beach interrupted the music for President Roosevelt to announce that war was declared. This was Dec. 7, 1941. Shortly after, the beach hotels became filled with Army Air Corp soldiers.

The summer season was over and rates had gone way up. Winter season was Dec. 20 to the middle of April. I found a permanent efficiency with a balcony at the Florence Villas for a yearly lease of $50 a month. It had a lovely yard in front, was only three blocks south of Lincoln Road and four blocks west of the beach. I loved it!

My first jobs were waitressing at the Vanderbilt Cabana Club and Pickin Chicken. Then I sang at the Paddock Club. This was before it became what it is today and it had a great live band.

I met and married John Bonanno, staff sergeant and baker for all the soldiers on the beach. We had our first child at The Biltmore in Coral Gables, which the Army had taken over.

After the war, we returned to John’s hometown in Pennsylvania, bought a small bakery, and had three more children. We both missed Miami Beach so much. So we sold the bakery and returned to Miami on March 15, 1959.

John couldn’t find his kind of work that paid enough on the beach, so we settled in South Miami. He worked for various bakeries. We bought our own bakery with another John on Bird Road in Olympia Heights called, The Two J’s Bakeshop. We both worked hard, John baked, and I did all the cake decorating.

John died in January 1993. Although I still miss him, we had almost 50 years together and some of our best times together were in Miami Beach. I recently turned 92. I live in Homestead now with one of my daughters, and I’m so happy to still be living in South Florida.

Elena York Sanchez was born in Cuba in 1921, the youngest of seven siblings, to Augusto W. York, originally of Marietta, Ga., and Aurora Valmaña of Marianao, Cuba.

Her father met his future spouse, a teacher, after arriving in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt as one of the famous Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. She taught him Spanish, and his Southern charms won her heart. After the war, the Southern gentleman stayed behind, becoming a Cuban citizen and founding the Cuban Signal Corps.

He is noted for introducing volleyball to Cuba and officiating at car and bicycle races and boxing matches. He rose to the rank of Comandante of the Cuban Army. His sister Alice would marry a relatively famous Baptist preacher named William Jesse Barton, who was the sixth pastor of the First Baptist Church of Homestead.

After the Communist Revolution in 1959, most of his progeny, and their children, returned to the States. Some moved back to Georgia, others to Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina and, yes, Miami, where we return to mom, Elena.

Married to my father, Manuel Francisco Sanchez, in Cuba, they became one of the thousands of Cuban refugees fleeing the new Marxist government. I was 2 when I left the island; the family relocated to New York for several years. It was in Harlem that my brother Tony was born.

Eventually, my father’s siblings, spouses and children would all move to Miami.

Mom not only managed the household, but she worked as a teacher and later as a social worker with Florida’s HRS, from where she would retire. After working a full day at her “day” job, she worked at my father’s grocery store in Little Havana (Topeka Supermarket), including weekends. And she still had time to be a Cub Scout den mother and volunteer at our church, St. Kevin’s.

She also remains active, to this day, with La Juventud Católica, a Catholic activist and religious organization to which my father belonged for over 50 years.

My father’s market and family restaurant and cafeteria became the meeting place of some of the most notable of early exile radio personalities and actors, including Leopoldo Fernandez (Tres Patines), El Chino Wong and Rolando Ochoa. The store was only blocks away from the first home of Belen Jesuit Prep. The priests were family friends of my father and family, as he and his siblings had attended Belen in Cuba.

From my parents’ home in West Dade, we watched a man land on the moon, saw FIU being built and walked to attend the outdoor Mass of John Paul II in Tamiami Park – all milepost moments in South Florida.

My parents’ home was not only an amazing place to grow up in, but also an island of hope and love for the whole family. Many a relative, friend and stranger found themselves living there throughout the course of the years. From widowed aunts, separated uncles, an elderly grandmother, newly married and single cousins, and even a homeless stranger that showed up once at our church, Mom made room for all.

After the unexpected death of my father, Mom’s attentions shifted toward a new generation that included her grandchildren and turned her attention to music and poetry.

I still recall my father’s funeral in 1988, when Miami Auxiliary Bishop Agustin Roman showed up unexpectedly. Mom was humbled by his visit and asked Bishop Roman how he had become aware of my father’s passing.

“Elena, come now, you are more famous than Coca-Cola,” he told her.

I could fill pages and pages of family anecdotes, from Mom’s involvement with Miami’s “Centro Mater” near downtown, the building of “La Ermita de la Caridad,” her work during the Mariel Boatlift, food drives, visits to homeless shelters.

She has always been more than a witness to our community’s history – she has been an active protagonist. Not a political figure, nor a captain of industry or finance, yet in the circles she traveled – and in the lives of people she met – lives were changed for the better, kind words were shared, and hope and love imparted. The world is a much better place because she is in it.

Last Thanksgiving, the descendents of Augusto W. York gathered here in Miami, at the home of his last living daughter, Elena. We are grateful to the generations who came before us and helped define the values of who we are today.

My mother, who will turn 90 on Aug. 19, has always been a source of light, of gentle and humble grace, of quiet, enduring strength, and of infectious humor and love. Southern and Cuban generations, both past and present, are ennobled and proud of this amazing South Floridian. Thanks Mom!

My journey to Miami Beach in 1939 actually began two years earlier. I was 10 and living in a New York City apartment house when a Western Union telegram arrived to change our lives. We had won the Irish Sweepstakes.

Disrupted from our neighborhood, friends and schools, my two older brothers and I boarded a train called the Silver Meteor that took us south on a new and somewhat scary adventure. Shortly before arriving in Miami, I was really confused when the conductor announced “Next stop Hollywood!” Where were we, I wondered: In Florida or California?

Seeing Miami Beach for the first time, with its pastel-colored buildings, I marveled at how different it was from the dirty red brick buildings I had known in New York.

Thanks to our sweepstakes winnings, my parents purchased an eight-unit apartment house where we lived on Third Street and Jefferson Avenue. New school, new friends, and a new type of climate – all had to be gotten used to very quickly.

My first job was as a pin boy at an open air duck pin bowling alley on Alton Road and Third Street. There was a corral next to it that kept stabled donkeys used to pull lawn mowers during the day, mowing overgrown empty lots. We loved riding them.

My two older brothers worked as busboys at a fancy restaurant called The Strand, on 12th and Washington, where the waiters paraded through the dining room carrying flaming swords. I had my bar mitzvah in 1940 at Beth Jacob Synagogue, now the home of the Jewish Museum on Third Street and Washington Avenue.

By 1942, the country was at war and things changed. The city was taken over by the Army Air Force. I remember Flamingo Park, the beaches and the local streets, filled with marching and singing soldiers, sweating in the hot sun, with my mother trying to keep up with them while passing out glasses of ice water.

At 16 I did a stint as an usher at the old Wometco’s Plaza Theatre on First Street and Washington Avenue. I became an air raid warden that year and delighted in blowing my whistle and advising people to keep their windows covered. On occasion we could see burning ships on the horizon and the next day would find globs of tar and oil on the beaches from the tankers that were sunk by German U-boats.

At 17, I joined the Civil Air Patrol, a subsidiary of the Army Air Force. I attained the rank of master sergeant and was in command of the cadet program in the Miami area. We spent time marching and taking classes at a big building on 37th Avenue called the Coliseum, and spent weekends at Chapman Air Field performing search and rescue missions for the Air Force, using small Piper Cub airplanes. I also worked at the Air Force motor pool and bused soldiers to the various military hospitals in the area, including what are now Mount Sinai and the Biltmore in the Gables. We also drove German and Italian POWs to work as KP’s at the various Army mess halls on the beach.

I enlisted in the Air Force when I turned 18, took basic training in Biloxi, Miss., then went to photography school in Denver. I was sent overseas for a couple of years, ending up at Yokota Air Base in Japan where I served as an Air Force photographer.

By 20, I was back home in Miami Beach and in short order, married to my high school sweetheart, Erma Lee Edelman. Within five years, we had three kids, (Leon, Jack and Paula), and I joined my father-in-law in his fish business, Collins Fish & Seafood, ultimately growing it into a major wholesale seafood distributorship.

In the early years, I remember delivering fish and live stone crabs (today you can only get the cooked claws), in the alley behind Joe’s Stone Crab. Owner Grace Weiss would personally come outside to check the order out and sign my bill.

A memorable experience occurred during a visit by President Kennedy to Miami. We received an urgent call from the hotel where he was staying and shortly therafter the Secret Service came to watch us with steely eyes as we prepared an order of seafood for the president’s dinner. I think it was pompano and lump crabmeat.

The Beach was a colorful place in the 1950s and ’60s. On occasion, Silver Dollar Jake, a local character who always drove an old convertible with the top down, would stop by and take pictures with his new Polaroid camera and hand out silver dollars to the kids, his colorful parrot perched on his shoulder. I remember taking my kids to a place they loved called Fairyland.

In 1975 I decided to fulfill a long-time ambition and attended the Miami Police Academy, graduating and serving for 10 years as an auxiliary police officer for the city of Miami Beach.

After 40 years in business, at the age of 60, I retired and have since devoted myself to various volunteer pursuits.

I’ve seen Miami Beach reinvent itself a number of times since I stepped off the Silver Meteor approximately 72 years ago.

I’ve gone from a wide-eyed kid to a great-grandfather, and made many wonderful memories during the intervening years. These are just a few of them.

In July of 1921, my father, mother and two older sisters and I moved to Miami from Brunswick, Ga. We lived in a tent in the area of Jackson Memorial Hospital. My first memory is living on Northeast 17th Street near the Old City Cemetery.

Our neighbors were the Albury family, with whom we have remained friends over the years.

When I was about 3, we moved to Lemon City on Northwest 58th Street. Most of the whole block was a family who settled there years earlier. There was Ma and Pa Johnson, their sons Uncle Leroy, Uncle Dick and daughters Aunt Essie and Aunt Emma and Aunt Laura. It was like one big family. On the other corner was the Lyons Family. He had been a major in the Philippines. We lived there during the 1926 hurricane.

I started kindergarten when I was 4. Miss Pearl Desrocher was my teacher. This was in the old Lemon City Elementary School, which no longer exists. I attended Sunday school at the old Lemon City Baptist Church on Northeast Second Avenue and 59th Street, which later moved to Northwest 60th Street and First Place.

In September, 1926, a big hurricane hit Miami. My mother was eight months pregnant with my youngest sister. When the windows started blowing out my daddy tied us all together. We scurried next door to the Baker’s house. Soon their roof started to go. We went over to Pa Johnson’s home. The lull came and we all thought it was over. Then the winds picked up even stronger than before. Soon Pa Johnson’s roof started to go.

Behind our house was a new house that had just been completed. Some people from the North had it built for a winter home. My dad and the other men broke into the house and carried my mother and Aunt Essie, who was pregnant, to the home, where we spent the remainder of the storm.

We returned to our home, which was filled with water. My dad bore holes in the floor to let the water out. Everyone in the neighborhood had outdoor toilets and hand pumps. Most of the pumps were broken. The only car we ever had was a Model T Ford, which was destroyed along with the garage.

The Russell family, who owned the Russell House Movers, lived across the street. After they moved away the Cecil Turner family moved in. He was county commissioner for many years. Our families became very good friends.

We were in the Great Depression then so everyone did what they could to earn a little money. Aunt Laura was a single mother and she baked cupcakes. She packaged them two in a package for 10 cents. I had a little cart on wheels and I would go all over the neighborhood selling them. She paid me 10 cents a week.

On Saturdays at the Biltmore Theater on Northeast 40th Street they had the Mickey Mouse Club, followed by Westerns and cartoons. If you were one of the first to arrive you would get a free candy bar. Needless to say, I was always first in line. It cost 10 cents for admittance.

The theater was located on what is now Decorator Row. The area north of Lemon City was Little River, where the Rosetta Theater was located. If we had a dime, we would walk there on Sunday afternoon.

I started school at Lemon City kindergarten in 1923. I remember when I was in the fourth grade and I watched them build the auditorium and gymnasium for what would become Edison High.

It was a great privilege being able to attend the same school for so many years. I was fortunate to have had teachers like Mrs. Knoll, Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Annin, and Mrs. Majors, who kept us in line. I loved playing basketball, baseball, acrobatics and croquet.

My sister Birdie graduated from Dade County Agricultural High School in 1930 and my sister Stella in 1931. In 1933 the name was changed to Miami Edison High School. I graduated in 1937. My sister Mary in 1940, and my sister Bertha Dean in 1944.

On Saturdays I worked for W.T. Grant Co. on Flagler Street. In my senior year I worked part time at Binswanger Glass Co. on Northwest Fifth Street. After graduation I continued full time. My next job was at Peninsular Life Insurance Company in the Seybold building in downtown Miami. I worked there until I got married in 1940 to Harry Brown of Homestead.

In 1940 I moved to Homestead, where Harry lived and sold insurance. His father was an agent for the Florida East Coast Railroad, when it went to Key West. He had been the agent in Marathon in 1935, when the railroad was destroyed by a hurricane. He had ridden a handrail car from Marathon to Key West and took a boat to Miami. It was a week before his family knew if he had survived the hurricane.

During the war we lived in Charleston, S.C., where Harry worked in the Navy Yard. At the end of the war we moved to Perrine in time for the 1945 hurricane. There was one highway in Perrine – U.S. 1, a two-lane highway. We lived on Franjo Road in an old Dade County Pine house with three of our four boys. In those years there were many old time residences as well as many small businesses along U.S. 1 such as Barfield’s Department Store, Dent’s Drug Store, Golden Rule Grocery, and The Street Car liquor store.

In the early 1950s Harry went to work for Dade County Fire Patrol, which became the Miami-Dade Fire Department. Two of our sons later worked for it as well. Station 4 was in our backyard and for the next eight years, I relayed messages from the Miami Fire Department for calls south of Perrine.

The 1945 hurricane destroyed the old wooden Perrine Baptist Church, so we met in the community house that was built by the Works Progress Administration. The building still sits in its original location on Datur Street and Perrine Avenue.

The northbound highway was built in the 1950s. I would walk my three boys across the highway to visit their grandparents, who lived on Cleveland Avenue facing the railroad. Harry’s father was the station master at the Perrine Railroad Station.

Perrine Elementary School was on southbound U.S. 1. It went to sixth grade. Students often would go to Ponce de Leon Junior High School for seventh and eighth grades. My son and his friends then attended South Dade High School, from which he graduated in 1958.

In 1958 Palmetto High School was built and I had two boys graduate from there in 1963 and 1964. My youngest son chose to go to Southbridge High School, from which he graduated in 1977.

In 1958, we built a house on Southwest 174th Street and 90th Avenue, which was mainly woods. There was a large strawberry field west of 87th Avenue. There was a big potato field off Richmond Road, where Perrine Elementary School was built.

In 1958 I went to work for University of Miami Cancer Research Laboratory located at the old Richmond Blimp Base. The director of research was Dr. Wilhelmina Dunning. She had brought the first research grant to the lab at the University of Miami, which years later was moved to Northwest 23rd Court. It became a part of Papanicolau Cancer Research Institute and today it is the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. I retired from cancer research in 1978.

I am still living on 174th Street and attend Christ Fellowship Church, the old Perrine Baptist Church, where I taught Sunday School for 46 years.

I feel very blessed to have lived in Miamah all these years.

In 1959, I was a freshman at the University of Vermont, and my dad, Arthur, was executive director of the Jewish Federation in Montreal.

My mom wanted to return to the U.S. That same position at the Jewish Federation opened up in Boston, and my dad applied for it. But the federation director in Miami got it instead. So the federation board in Miami talked him into coming here.

In January 1960, never having been south of northern Virginia, I boarded a plane in Montreal, switched to a National-leased Pan Am 707 at what was then Idlewild, and flew America’s first-ever domestic jet route to Miami.

I came down the stairway in a winter coat, much to my parents’ amusement – it was 80 degrees. My first Florida meal was at the Robin Hood Inn at 36th and Biscayne – there’s a gas station there now. We were living at the Seahorse Motel off Biscayne at 31st – it’s now a drug rehab center. During that visit, we went to see Carol Channing at the Grove Playhouse.

I was only here for a week in January and again in April, but spent that entire summer in the house my parents had bought in Bay Heights. To this day, I can count on my fingers the number of Southern accents I’ve ever heard here, yet Miami was just as rigidly segregated as any town in Alabama. I got my driver’s license in the old Florida Highway Patrol station on West Flagler. It had “white” and “colored” water fountains. The papers had separate listings for the three “negro theaters.” Royal Castle burger joints were everywhere, owned by a Cleveland businessman, but blacks could only order from outdoor windows.

The Orange Bowl was segregated, even for college games, and the end zone was a sea of dark faces.

I worked that summer at Mount Sinai Hospital; my job was sending second and third billings to ER and outpatients. Two of them were sexual-assault victims – I threw their billing files in the trash. The ER/outpatient fee was $3 – $1 if you said you were poor.

I would sometimes drive to the world’s first Burger King at 36th Street and 24th Avenue for two 39-cent Whoppers. We ate out at Pumperniks, Juniors and Wolfie’s, where pastrami sandwiches were 95 cents. I went to the Miami Beach Auditorium, as it was called then, to see and hear Eleanor Roosevelt speak. The day after New Year’s, I went to the Orange Bowl game – president-elect Kennedy was also somewhere in the stands.

Bus fares were 15 cents in Miami, but only a dime if you took a Miami Beach bus from downtown. The Julia Tuttle Causeway was new, and gratefully received – no toll and no annoying drawbridges.

The parking meters in the parking islands in downtown Biscayne had a maddening feature: shields that blocked the view of the timer, and notices simply saying, “Pay for full time you intend to park.”

On one corner of Biscayne and Flagler was a Mayflower Donut shop; across the street, a Pan Am ticket office showing, each day, how many times they had flown across each ocean and around the world.

Crime was low, so traffic cops were everywhere, hiding behind bushes on motorcycles waiting to bust you for “failing to come to a full stop” or an “improper lane change.”

Downtown was alive at night, with movie theaters and a funny little shop where they would start an auction if more than one prospective customer was inside. The first Cuban cafeterias, on Flagler Street, charged nine cents for a cafe Cubano. Christian prayers were recited in the public schools, and the downtown courthouse featured a huge lighted cross every winter.

You could take an FEC train up the coast. A prop flight to New York was $60 – $75 if you took a jet. Flying to Havana was as easy as flying to Nassau, and a big sign downtown urged people to go to Cuba, “the friendly island next door.”

South Beach was crowded with retirees, many with cars, and parking was as difficult on Ocean Drive then as it is now. Miami’s 305 area code ran from Key West to Pensacola – only the Tampa Bay area had another one.

My dad held his position through 1972, then retired. I entered UM in January 1961, the same day that its new president, Henry King Stanford, desegregated it. I left in the fall of 1963, one step ahead of a raft of improper-left-turn-type traffic tickets and an order to turn in my license. I married and came back in 1971 with my wife and two baby girls. We had another girl born at Mount Sinai, where each of my parents also passed away. We bought a 1924-built house in Miami in 1972, then went to a 1933-built home in Miami Beach in 1983. Our three kids, and their kids, are in three different states.

What hasn’t changed in those 50 years? Not much. Our house, for one, and many of those around it. The downtown courthouse looks the same; so do some large apartment buildings on Biscayne, across from Edgewater. You can still buy liquor at drugstores, something that surprised me back then.

Every road and bridge that charged a toll then is still charging one now. Lincoln Road Mall is busy again, just as it was then. Passenger trains still run to and from Miami on the old Seaboard rail route. Cafe Cubano is still sold in those little white cups, and is still cheap. Burdines is still where it was in 1914, albeit with a name change. I don’t think the nature of politics here has changed much, either, but I’ll leave that one alone.

All across the United States, the 1920s came roaring in after the first World War and people were anxious to ride the tide of progress that hung over the land. In the southernmost climes, a little city – heretofore not much more than a quiet town nestled between the glistening turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay to the east, and the hot and steamy Everglades to the west – was heralded by newspapers up and down the Eastern Seaboard as an up-and-coming “Magic City.” Henry M. Flagler’s vision to link South Florida to the rest of the country via railroad was one of the sparks that ignited the flame of frenzied growth in Miami.

I was born in Odum, Ga., in 1920 and was 2 months old when my father, Ellison Ogden, a carpenter, was captivated by the stories he heard of the opportunities to the south. An adventurous young man looking to capitalize on the boom in Miami, Ellison packed up his young wife – my mother, Gladys Robinson Ogden- and me and headed for this land of sunshine and infinite possibility, leaving behind a less than promising future in south Georgia at that time. Our little family adapted quickly to the bustling excitement of a new life, settling in to a little flat off of Miami Avenue where I slept in a dresser drawer as my father began to venture out and seek a fortune he’d heard was there for the taking.

A few years and several moves later, I was of school age. My fondest memories of Miami began at Earlington Heights Elementary off of Northwest 22nd Avenue and 54th Street. At 90 years of age, I can still remember representing the color Indigo and dancing in the school’s May Pole Dance there. Before too long, we moved to Allapattah, where housing was affordable and good things were happening in the community. Still, there were many vacant lots for us kids to explore. We helped ourselves to the guavas that grew profusely there, often eating the green ones even though our mothers had warned us of the belly aches that would result. I attended Allapattah Elementary from third through sixth grade, and in seventh grade I went next door to the newly built – and “modern” – Andrew Jackson Jr. High School. Besides the stores like Live and Let Live Drug Store and the Allapattah Five and Dime, bakeries and hardware stores sprang up. My favorite place was the Regent Theater, which faced 17th Avenue. The Regent Theater was where us kids would go on Saturday afternoons, dimes in hand, to see Tom Mix movies and enjoy the newsreels, Western serials, cartoons and popcorn, which all came with your ten-cent ticket. Sometimes I had to look around the neighborhood for empty pop bottles to cash in for my movie money. On certain Saturdays, talent shows were also held at the Regent, and it was great fun to see all the neighborhood kids on stage, carrying on in hopes of winning the prizes given, which were usually a free Coke or a $5 bill.

Long about the junior high days, my brother James Bryan (Jimmy) Ogden was born. When he was 7 years old, he began his working career, hunting bottles and selling mom’s homemade fudge door to door. When he was about 12 years old, he rode his bike across the causeway to Miami Beach and sold Liberty Magazines to the snow birds who would lounge on the porches in front of the newly built luxury hotels. When the Ringling Brothers Circus would come to town, Jimmy would gain free admission to the shows by watering the elephants. In high school, at Miami Edison, Jimmy delivered The Miami Herald on his bike in the early mornings before school.

After I finished junior high, I was bussed to Miami Senior High, and it was during that time that my parents divorced. My father had not achieved the financial success that he’d dreamed of a decade or so earlier. As a single parent now, my mother made ends meet during those difficult post-Depression years by taking in sewing for people and baking cakes.

As a proud Stingaree, I was a sergeant on the drill team and loved taking part in the half-time shows at the old Orange Bowl stadium and marching in the New Year’s Eve Orange Bowl Parade down Biscayne Boulevard. It was at Miami High that I met my husband, a handsome football player, Oscar DuBreuil. While dating, we would frequently borrow Oscar’s father’s car and stop by a barbecue stand to get sandwiches to go. We’d drive over to Coconut Grove, where the Pan American sea planes landed, to watch the “submarine races” in Biscayne Bay.

During the time after high school, when Oscar was away at the University of Florida, I worked briefly at Dade Pharmacy downtown, making milk shakes and ice cream sundaes at the soda fountain. I made extra money at Kress’ on Flagler Street at Christmas, wrapping presents, before landing a job with Western Union Telegraph Company. On weekends, I would sometimes go with my girlfriends to watch my sister-in-law, Sylvia DuBreuil Self, in jitter-bugging contests held in a large dance hall on Biscayne Boulevard, right at the mouth of the Julia Tuttle Causeway. I would sometimes go to DuBreuil’s Restaurant in Hialeah. My husband’s cousin George DuBreuil, who owned the diner, later became a Miami commissioner. Mother and Jimmy and I would always enjoy visiting the marina at Bayfront Park and watching the fishing boats come in with their catch of the day. I remember the chaos that ensued being in Bayfront Park the day someone opened fire on President-elect Roosevelt, who was there giving a speech.

In 1941, Oscar and I were married in a small ceremony at Holy Cross Episcopal church and spent our one-night honeymoon at the President Hotel in South Beach. The war was raging in western Europe at the time and we were grateful to have found jobs, Oscar working in Miami Beach at the Southern Bell Telephone Company repairing phone lines and driving Ma Bell’s little green trucks. Working for Western Union during the war was an extremely busy and interesting time for me. We would receive and deliver so many messages that we wore roller skates in the building to expedite handling the telegrams, and upstairs from my department was an area held under tight security, where military officials worked, censoring incoming and outgoing material. Ma Bell and Western Union were part of our lives for many years.

In 1955 our only child, Dodi DuBreuil (Mace), was born at Doctors Hospital, and we brought her home to our little “Mackle House” that was near Miami International Airport. We paid $6,700 for a two-bedroom, one-bath home, and I was so excited to choose whatever asphalt tile I wanted for the floors. In the mid-’60s, we moved to South Miami. Sunset and Kendall Drives were two-lane, mostly gravel roads, and the Palmetto Bypass was the new link from north Miami to Coral Gables and beyond.

In the mid-’60s, Oscar wrote a novel called The Wrong Way Out that was loosely based on a scandal that had taken place at the telephone company. Larry King had a talk show on WIOD radio, and Oscar was interviewed by Larry when his book first hit the stands. We lived in South Miami for many happy years and enjoyed life when our daughter was a member of South Miami High’s first graduating class in 1973.

Even though I moved to Atlanta with my daughter and her family over 20 years ago after my husband passed away, I still consider myself a Miamian to the core. Mother used to tell a story that when she would take me back to visit family in Georgia as a little girl, I would call it “MY ami” and get annoyed when other people would speak of Miami, reminding them that they don’t live there, so it’s not “THEIR -ami.” Ninety years later, I will always love the unique diversity and charm of the city that I call “MY ami.”

I first met my wife Elena on the beach in Havana in 1947. She was 16 and the most beautiful woman I had ever seen – she was wearing a two-piece bathing suit and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

We were engaged for four years; her father insisted that I finish school and have a good job before we were allowed to marry. We were married on July 14, 1951 in Havana and came to the United States for our honeymoon.

A cousin had told us that The Betsy Hotel on Ocean Drive was a beautiful place, and even more important to us as a young couple – very affordable. I think the deal was, you paid $18 for the week, with breakfast, and you got a free night thrown in as well. We had a room on the second floor facing the ocean and it was fantastic – in fact, we liked it so much we stayed there again the following year.

Back then we would walk to places like the Pick N’Chicken where you’d get a full meal for $2.99 and to Wolfie’s and over to Lincoln Road.

After our romantic sojourn in Miami, we returned to Havana and built our life there. Elena was a school teacher, and then went to work for Chase Manhattan in Havana while I worked as an accountant. We came back to Miami Beach the year after we were married – and stayed at The Betsy Hotel once again.

We came back once more in 1956, this time we spent a month traveling all over the United States – out west, Yosemite, up north. We saw everything. It was our last trip before our children were born. Our first son, Jose Emilio, was born in 1957 and Alex Mario joined the family two years later.

In 1961, our whole world changed and like many other Cubans, we had to leave our country very quickly. We came to Miami to start our new lives. A cousin told me to go to the Everglades Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard, and I got a job there washing dishes. I was an accountant in Cuba but here I needed to find whatever work I could to support my family. Elena looked after the boys; and within six months her mother joined us as well. Our first place was near 28th Street and 29th Avenue.

We lived there with all the doors open and never worried about anything . After a while, we moved to what’s now Carol City, but it was considered Opa Locka back then. We lived in our house for 12 years. We used to go to the Royal Castle for hamburgers, you would get 12 hamburgers for a dollar. We used to pile the kids in the car and go to the drive-in movies on Opa Locka Boulevard.

Miami was very different in those days. Miami Beach had a lot of wide open spaces – up Collins Avenue there were only a few hotels. Before long, I was lucky to get a job in the accounting department at the Doral Resort thanks to my friend, who was a manager at the hotel. When the Doral opened on Miami Beach in 1963 I spent my time going back and forth between the two properties.

I worked my way up and when I retired in 1991 after 30 years, I was the company controller. I worked closely with Herman Kaskel, who took me to the Beach with him when the Doral Beach Resort opened in 1963. It was a very fancy property – in fact we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary at the Starlight Roof – which was considered the place to have your affair back then.

The family that owned the Doral, the Kaskels, were very good to me and my family. In 1965, Elena’s sister was still in Cuba and we needed to get her and her husband to Miami. Mr. Kaskel knew about the situation. He had a 28′ sailboat, which he sold to us for $1. We sent it to Cuba with a captain to help bring them out. The plan was when they arrived, I’d sell the boat back to him for the same price.

Elena’s sister and husband, their mother and two nephews boarded the boat which, unfortunately, was sunk by the Coast Guard. They were all safe and allowed to enter this country but the boat was gone forever. Not only did he not say a word about the boat, he told me to take him to the warehouse – where all the mattresses, furniture, supplies for both hotels were kept – and told us to take whatever we needed to help them get started in Miami.

We moved from Opa Locka to Pembroke Pines once the kids grew up, and now we’re back in the Doral area. I retired with a lifetime country club membership. I’m 82 but I still go to the gym four to five times a week and play golf two to three times a week.

We’ve had the good fortune to travel the world the 60 years that we’ve been blessed to share together – Europe, India, Africa, Japan and Singapore. For our 60th wedding anniversary, though, we wanted to return to the place we first experienced marital bliss – The Betsy Hotel.

The prices have gone up but they were kind enough to charge us $18/night – not quite the $18/week we paid in 1961 but pretty close. It’s still beautiful after all these years. It’s a jewel of Miami Beach – just like my beautiful bride!

In my mother’s house, now in my house, there was a collage of pictures of when we were younger. One was a picture of our entire transplanted family picnicking at Tahiti Beach. After reading someone else’s memories, I started thinking of ours.

In the spring of 1954, I had just turned 10 and had been released from the Hospital for Joint Diseases in NYC. Mom and Dad had gotten summer jobs in the Catskills, and my brother and I needed a place to stay while they went to work. Mom had a sister-in-law living in Miami who offered to take us in for the summer. This was exciting, our first plane ride and summer in Florida!

Our Aunt Gizi and Uncle Sam were elderly, never had any children, and lived a couple of blocks off Eighth Street and 20-something Avenue. I can remember hearing lots of birds and smelling the aromas of different fruit trees. I can still recall the smells and sounds of afternoon thunderstorms. All so clean and fresh -within a couple of weeks, I put my crutches aside.

After Labor Day, our parents bought a large Buick and came down to pick us up for the drive back to New York. They were pleasantly surprised to see me get about without crutches.

But we had to go back to NYC. All of our belongings were in storage, and school was about to start. It was very tough, as Dad could not find work and the money they had earned and saved over the summer was running out.

Dad had a friend from the old country who had settled in Miami, opened a small furniture store on Eighth Street and 16th Avenue, and told him to come down and be partners.

So Mom and Dad packed us in the Buick, and we returned to Miami. The first couple of months, shall we say, were crowded, living in a motel room just off Eighth Street, near what was then Sheehan Buick.

We then moved into a two-bedroom duplex on 27th Terrace (it is still there) off of U.S. 1 (then a two-lane road), across from the roller-rink. My brother’s and my bedroom window faced the roller-rink, and we could hear the loud music every night. I still needed medical oversight, so each year Mom would take me for check-ups at Variety Children’s Hospital.

Across 27th Avenue was a Rexall drugstore with a soda fountain. We would go many a times for ice cream shakes and cherry Cokes to and from our walks to Silver Bluff Elementary. Mom had joined Dad in the furniture store, so we were left on our own in the afternoon. I remember playing soldiers with my brother’s friends.

Within the year, we bought a small house in Westchester, a couple blocks across the bridge on Coral Way in front of West Miami Jr. High. On our way home from school, we’d stop at the drugstore just before the bridge, have sodas, listen to Elvis’ Blue Suede Shoes and Tab Hunter’s Young Love.

I started junior high school in West Miami, and though I could not run or do many physical activities, I did earn my “letter” in shot-put. Right after the bridge, there was a bakery where we would stop every morning for breakfast, a bottled Coke and a doughnut!

In the middle of eighth grade, we bought a new house in an area that would become “Kendall,” 93rd Street and 81st Avenue. Everyone called it “in the country,” as we were surrounded by agricultural fields. Kendall Drive was a two-lane road leading to the fields, and Dadeland was not yet on the drawing boards.

A new high school had opened in the fall, Miami Palmetto Senior High. My Aunt Paula and Uncle Marvin had moved down from Cleveland with their two children and bought our South Waterway Drive home, thus I was able to finish the year at West Miami.

It was the beginning of the Soaring Sixties when I started at Palmetto. Summers were real fun. Before moving to Kendall, Mom and Dad would drop us off at the Shenandoah pool for the day. We learned to swim and rock ‘n’ roll to Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock. When the pool closed, we’d take the bus to Eighth Street and walk down to the “shop” on 16th Avenue. We loved going next door to the Royal Castle for the 15-cent hamburgers.

Sometimes, if Mom and Dade were working late, we’d walk the block to the Tower Theater. On Saturdays, there were the serials. The Tower was also the place where I saw my first tear-jerker, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing, with William Holden, followed by High Society.

As we got older, summers were also spent in each other’s pools, many a time not even locking doors. Just before Labor Day, Mom would take us by bus to downtown to outfit us for the coming school year. Lerner’s was my favorite spot.

Two other uncles and their young families followed their elder brothers; one moved to the Westchester area, the other near Perrine. They opened butcher shops in West Miami and Perrine.

In those early years we all worked very hard. I can remember Mom and Dad sometimes leaving the house before my brother and I left for school. They always came home late at night, leaving dinner for us to prepare and household chores for us to do on Saturdays.

Sunday was family day, and just about every other Sunday in the summer we would all gather at one of the brother’s homes. At first, we went to Crandon Park; later, it was Tahiti Beach for barbecue. We preferred Tahiti. The toll was only $1 per car, and the road was less congested than Matheson Hammock. (Little did we dream that in less than 15 years, Mom and Dad would be living across the street from the Matheson entrance).

It was a different time, a different place, and there were difficulties to overcome. The Cold War was in full swing, as were the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cuban exodus, and the Civil Rights era. Farther away was the Vietnam war.

Within 20 years, South Beach became a slum, then turned around to become the “chic” capital of the world. Our agricultural industry was giving way to developments, with little thought of infrastructure or impact on the environment. No worry, we were young and we had no doubt we would overcome any and all difficulties.

Today’s young people will, too, look back nostalgically and remember the joys of growing up in Miami-Dade as they face their own challenges in what has become a multinational, multicultural city of the 21st century.

Think Miami Beach. Think bronze-sculpted bodies, basking in the sun. Think gyms, personal trainers and plant-based diets.

It was 1935; the year Bernard McFadden signed a 33-year lease on the Oceanfront Deauville Beach Hotel at Collins Avenue and 67th Street. His Physical Culture Hotel in Dansville, N.Y. was so successful that he decided to expand, which is what brought our family to Miami Beach in 1936.

It seemed everyone in our family worked for McFadden at the Physical Culture training school in New York. Our grandfather, John Bruce Esplin, traveled from Scotland, graduated from Kent College of Law in Chicago, then became one of the managers. His wife, our grandmother Mazie McIntyre Esplin, supervised the spa, while great-grandmother Lillian McIntyre worked in the diet kitchen. Uncle Paul and Uncle Junior also worked for McFadden.

Aunt Lainey – Elaine Esplin David – talks of the early days arriving in the capital of sun and fun. She attended Ida M. Fisher Junior High, graduated from Miami Beach High, and attained a business degree at the University of Miami.

Our father, Lainey’s older brother, Bruce M. Esplin, would visit his family at the hotel, whenever possible, while attending medical school at Cornell. He fell in love with the sand, surf and climate. He worked part time for McFadden on his breaks in the health clinic, and enjoyed his days off swimming in the world’s largest saltwater pool.

Bruce served as a major in the Army, returning to New York after the war to specialize in dermatology. He dreamed of returning to set up practice one day in Florida. Miami had won his heart, as had his new bride, Beatrice Lavina Wheat Esplin, a nurse he met during his residency.

Upon moving to Miami, Daddy set up practice in downtown Miami. We had a bird’s eye view from his office windows, watching many an Orange Bowl Parade weave its way through the streets of downtown.

Daddy immersed himself into his new community. He was a founding member of the University Of Miami School of Medicine, where he later became a clinical professor of dermatology, honored for over 30 years of service.

Our first home was on Blue Road in Coral Gables. We lunched in Burdines Hibiscus Tea Room (where a beverage was 10 cents and a clown or snow princess sundae could be had for a quarter!) Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor on Miracle Mile was the place to go for the “Kitchen Sink” and Allen’s drug store for a “Cherry Smash” and a nickel candy bar. The Miracle Theater hosted the Summer Movie Club, where admission was 6 RC bottle Caps. Coral Gables Methodist was our place for worship, choir, Sunday school lessons, and later our weddings!

All four of us daughters were Girl Scouts; our mother Beatrice was the Troop Leader. Our meetings were at the Girl Scout Little House in South Miami; we swatted many a mosquito at Camp Mahatchee.

Birthdays were at Crandon Park Zoo, the Seaquarium, and Popeye Playhouse with Skipper Chuck! We were Coral G Rangers, members of the Museum of Science, took ceramic lessons at the Miami Art Museum, bowling lessons at the Bowl O Mat and riding lessons at the Coral Gable Riding Academy.

Chattering teeth at the Venetian Pool. Sailing lessons at the Coconut Grove Sailing Club. Picnics at Matheson Hammock and Cape Florida.

Shedding my ugly saddle shoes for pumps to attend Madame Butterfly at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. My sister and cousin in dresses and high heels seeing the Beatles in concert at the Jackie Gleason Theater! The Serpentarium. Tropicare and Dixie Drive-Ins.

We moved to Kendall, when Kendall Drive was a dirt road. We watched as Dadeland Mall was built. We played by the Dragon Fountain, ate French fries at Kresge’s 5 & 10, Venetian ices at Ferris Groves and smelled the expensive leather purses at Ronna’s.

I graduated from Jackson Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, became a pediatric nurse at Variety Children’s Hospital (my dream job), and married my boyfriend from Killian High, Ike Wehking.

Much of our family has moved, but we have carried on enjoying everything Miami. Our sons, Jonathan and Jason Wehking , took sailing lessons at the Coconut Grove Sailing Club, went to summer camp at MetroZoo and baseball camp with Fred Burnside. They joined the Boy Scouts as cubs, and later achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, with Boy Scout Troop 457, meeting at Kendall Church in Pinecrest.

Graduating from Palmetto High, then the University of Central Florida, they continue to call Florida their homes, only now they live in Avalon Park near Orlando. Jonathan married Rebekah Cope in March, and we hope will continue our family’s tradition of a life full of family, community and enjoying the beauty that is South Florida.

My father, Dr. William T. Lanier, graduated from Georgia Medical School in 1912, when he was 22, and headed for South Florida to set up his practice.

That same year, my mother, Montine Horne, graduated from Americus High School in Georgia and, along with her mother and three sisters, also came to Miami.

My dad actually started out in Homestead and was one of the first doctors there. He and my mother somehow met as he commuted between the two towns, and he courted her on his motorcycle.

They married in 1915 and lived in Homestead until World War I.

When he went off to France as a young Army medical officer, mother moved up to Miami to be near her mother and sisters.

When he returned after the war they stayed in Miami and lived at 19 SW Seventh Ave., just off Flagler. He organized the Miami City Clinic and served for many years as the U.S. Public Health Officer.

I remember him telling my sister, Alice Gene, and me stories about having to go out and meet incoming foreign ships to check for contagious diseases and decide whether or not to quarantine them.

After the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 in the Keys killed so many civilians and World War I veterans who were living in the Civilian Conservation Corps camps while working on the Overseas Highway, my dad went down to treat the injured, and assist in the disposal of bodies.

More than 400 were killed and about 300 of them had to be cremated. Gruesome!

Another one of his duties was to check on the physical condition of the prisoners being held at the jail on the top floors of the downtown courthouse. Many times, he would take my sister and me with him and leave us in Judge Blanton’s office while he attended to the prisoners. From the judge’s office we could see forever, the courthouse at the time being the tallest building in Miami.

My dad practiced medicine here for almost 60 years, still making house calls at the age of 75. He and my mother, grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins are all buried in the old Miami City Cemetery.

When I was a year old, in 1931, we moved from Seventh Avenue to Southwest 10th Street and 18th Avenue.

Alice Gene and I both lived at that address until we were married, and thought it was probably the best neighborhood in the whole world.

We both attended Shenandoah Presbyterian Church (Rev. Dan Iverson, pastor), Shenandoah Elementary, when it was nothing but portables (Eloise Hatfield, principal), Shenandoah Jr. High School when it was brand new (Alice McVicar, principal), and then Miami High (W.R. Thomas, principal).

My sister graduated in 1946 (voted Sweetheart of Miami High), and I in 1948. I went off to the University of Georgia and she to University of Miami. At that time the U of M was better known as “Cardboard College” or “Suntan U.”

I remember going to the Tower Theater on Saturdays for a dime (and a jaw breaker for a penny), the open-air bowling alley on the Trail at about l8th Avenue, miniature golf on Biscayne Boulevard and First Street, riding our bikes to the Venetian Pool and Matheson Hammock. We went swimming at the Roney Plaza and the Deauville Hotel, and had beach parties at the Firestone Estate where the Fontainebleau Hotel now stands (the security guards finally gave up and just let us enjoy the beach).

My best friend in high school was Pat Moore whose little sister grew up to be Miami historian, Arva Moore Parks.

My sister, Alice Gene, married her high school sweetheart, Dale Anderson, and they had three great kids, Chris, Amy (Williams) and Dale Jr. (now deceased), a fine son-in law, Todd, and two darling grandchildren, George and Lanier. Dale was a very successful builder, having constructed four 12-story dorms at the University of Miami, Aventura Mall and the Turnberry Isle development.

I also married my high school sweetheart, Robert L. Parker. We were both born in Miami on the same day 80 years ago.

He was brought up in Miami Shores and went to Edison (Boooo!), so we had a small logistics problem when it came to dating, since we lived at opposite ends of town (however, gasoline was only 18 cents a gallon then, and a heck of a lot less traffic). But, our big romance survived and we married in 1952.

After graduating from Miami, Bob served as an officer in the U.S. Navy for 3½ years of active duty during the Korean War.

We also have three wonderful children; Bruce, Scott and Laura (Moylan), an outstanding son-in-law, Clint and a fabulous grandson, Carter.

My husband’s businesses have all been in the Bahamas: farming, construction and development, a lovely small beachfront hotel, petroleum distribution. Although we spend a great deal of time in the Bahamas, Miami will always be home.

Bob’s parents, William F. and Regina Parker, came to Miami in the early 1920s from South Carolina and Alabama.

His father was a prominent attorney representing some interesting clients, such as the actress Tallulah Bankhead, Sir Roland Symonette (Prime Minister of the Bahamas), Betty Carstairs (Standard Oil heiress), Neville MacArthur (MacArthur Dairies), John Jacob Astor, and, much to my embarrassment, Al Capone (in a civil matter).

He practiced law in Miami for more than 50 years.

Bob’s memories of growing up in Miami are much like mine, only he went to the Rosetta Theater and spent most of his days at the Miami Shores Community House playing basketball or baseball, or exploring Biscayne Bay in his small boat.

Those halcyon days hold such wonderful memories of much simpler times when Miami was considerably smaller, yet so much greater.

It truly was “The Magic City.”