Tag: Written

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was February 1964 and Chicago was really cold – a blustery, painful type of cold.

I vividly remember standing on the corner of East Superior Street and Lake Shore Drive, waiting for a bus to take me to the warmth of my new apartment located on Surf Street.

It was well after midnight and I’d just gotten off duty at Passavant Memorial Hospital. I’d been a nurse for just a few months and liked my job as charge nurse on the evening shift. Also, living in Chicago was my dream come true; however, it was January and while waiting for my bus it had begun to snow and the frozen particles were sticking to my eyelashes.

Finally, I reached my apartment, took a hot bath, put on the warmest jammies I could find, curled up on the couch and set about reading the mail. Leafing through my new copy of The American Journal of Nursing (AJN), I spotted the ad: “Nurses Needed at St. Francis Hospital. Come to sunny Miami Beach, live and work one block from the ocean…”

That’s all I needed. I fanaticized about the possibilities and vowed to rise early to make the call that would prove to change my life forever.

The next morning I called the contact person mentioned in the ad: Sr. Marie Francine, director of nursing. She explained that the census at St. Francis was seasonal and filled to capacity during the winter months. Evidently, the hospital relied heavily on “snow birds” to accommodate the heavy load. Although our conversation was short (she hired me over the phone and asked if I could come as quickly as possible), I recognized her to be likeable and endearing. In short order this “snow bird” would come to admire and love this woman very much.

Much to my parents’ chagrin, I arrived in Miami the next month with the intention of staying until spring. The following month, I wrote to the kind folks in Chicago and tendered my resignation. I would continue to work at St. Francis for the next 23 years.

Initially, I lived at the hospital nurses’ residence. It was a terrific deal: monthly rent was $25 – with daily room service. As promised in the AJN ad, the nurses’ residence was one block from the ocean. Those of us who worked the evening shift found plenty of time for the beach. It became routine for me to walk that one block to the 65th Street beach and work on getting rid of my unsightly northern pale. Frequently, prior to hitting the beach, I would stop at Pumpernik’s on Collins Avenue and 66th Street and order the coffee and Danish roll basket – all for $1.

Miami Beach in the ‘60s! To be alive and young during those years was simply the best. Despite the despair of war, we were a nation of young dreamers. Perhaps it was because of the war and the loss of our young president that we were determined to carry on and live life to the fullest – an easy task in Miami Beach.

St. Francis Hospital was located on Allison Island on 63rd Street. It was an impressive site, sitting on this wonderful piece of property that jutted out to the middle of Indian Creek. Over the years as it expanded it was a striking presence on Miami Beach.

In 1964, the hospital was only four stories high, yet quite spread out. Despite the age of the place, it was immaculate. One could plainly see that it had been well tended to by generations of people who provided the loving care that it deserved. From the solarium on the fourth floor one could look out and see nearly all of Miami Beach. In those days, when looking south, there were no high-rise condos and views of the ocean were breathtaking.

As remarkable as it was, St. Francis Hospital was far more than bricks and mortar. It was a community of caring and nurturing that truly made it one of a kind. I believe the Franciscan Sisters maintained an environment of family orientation so pervasive and enduring that all who graced its halls recognized it. Their mission must have been to provide the very best care possible to the community it served, to include the residents of Miami Beach and the many celebrities.

Some of our most famous patients included Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Aretha Franklin, Meyer Lansky and Lou Walters (Barbara’s father). Martha Raye, a famous comedienne of the day ended her weekly television show with “Good night, Sisters of St. Francis Hospital.”

As a nurse, I have embraced my profession with great passion. For me, nursing was a vocation that I have always considered a sacred trust. For some inexplicable reason St. Francis Hospital attracted many others who must have held the same beliefs. Indeed, the sisters must have been very proud of the excellent care provided. I know that I, along with countless others, felt pride in our work.

When I left St. Francis to further my career, I vowed to promote this tradition of ultimate caring. Over the next several years, I was blessed with opportunities as chief nursing officer in three hospitals throughout Kansas. To impart my philosophy and expectations to nurses, I always told the story of St. Francis Hospital and presented it as the perfect hospital, the one for all to emulate.

Since St. Francis Hospital closed in 1992, two reunions have been held. Both were well attended by several hundred people, to include employees representing all departments, administrative staff and physicians.

While working in Kansas over the past 23 years, my husband and I never wavered from our plan to return to Miami. Finally, upon my recent retirement, we have come home.

On the plane ride from Panama to the United States, there was a short layover in Nicaragua. However, we were not allowed to deplane. I looked out the window and asked my mother, “Why are there men with guns outside?” That was my first memory of Nicaragua, where I was born.

The day was Feb. 14, 1985, and I was a precocious 5 year old. I had only heard the stories as my parents spoke with their friends about the events that forced them out of their country. I vaguely knew that the reason we were living in Panama was because of the Sandinistas. It was because of them that my parents were forced to start all over in a different country.

My mother never wanted to go to the United States because she wanted to continue her profession as a professor, which she was able to practice in Panama. In addition, although my father knew how to read and write in English, he saw the United States as a place where he would have to clean toilets, and having been the credit manager of a bank in Nicaragua, he shuddered at the thought. My parents had worked very hard and had overcome many obstacles to become professionals in their country. They wanted more for their children, and that was their main motivation for leaving behind all that they knew.

Under the Sandinista regime, boys would be forced to become part of the military service to defend the “Revolution,” headed by Daniel Ortega, against the counterrevolution, known as “La Contra.” My parents had two boys before me and they refused to allow their children to be used as pawns for something they did not support. So we left for another country without family and without relatives, but where my brothers and I had a chance for a future.

Life always throws curve balls, however, and my brother Lodwin fell sick. My parents took him to doctors and they couldn’t diagnose what was wrong. They took him from specialist to specialist and no one was able to give them a clear answer. After several attempts to take care of the symptoms, the doctors finally came to the conclusion that he had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which spread to his central nervous system and attacked his vision. My 12-year-old big brother had almost completely lost his sight in a matter of a year. The cancer was attacking his body and the only solution that my mother saw was to bring him to Florida and find out what the doctors here could do for him.

My mother was completing her doctorate in education at Universidad de Panama, and we were supposed to be in Miami only temporarily. My father and oldest brother, Richard, stayed behind because they had to continue with our lives in Panama. After all, we were going back once my brother was well. When we walked through customs, I had five dolls. My brother was in a wheelchair wearing dark sunglasses and his lips were cracked and dry; he looked like a skeleton. My mother was strong and swift; she knew what her child needed and she was going to find it here.

We went to stay at my uncle’s studio apartment off Biscayne Boulevard and 29th Avenue in Miami. My mother slept in a chair and my brother and I slept on a couch. My two uncles slept on the floor. Thankfully, the doctors and nurses in the cancer unit at University of Miami/Jackson’s Holtz Children’s Hospital brought my brother back to life. He went through chemotherapy, and a series of other procedures. Eventually he was in remission, and although he had lost his sight, he was a top student in high school.

We never went back to Panama. Instead my father and eldest brother came to Florida and we all became Americans. We left behind all that we knew. My parents were able to work and grow in different fields, and were able to provide a better future for all their children.

This country gave my brother eight additional years of life. He filled the house with jokes, art, and never complained. My identity revolves around being an American. This country signifies life to me. It brought my brother back to life and it has given me a life that I would not have had in Nicaragua, or Panama, for that matter. I’ve been submerged into this culture and I feel like a tourist when I go back to my place of birth.

Living here, I have had the opportunity to graduate from Florida International University in business, and later had the opportunity to change careers. Here, my political party affiliation doesn’t determine the jobs or promotions I will get. How I feel about President Obama doesn’t determine my future. My children will never be judged by my choices and they will be able to decide their own futures. I have the liberty to grow and achieve what I am willing to work for.

Today, I hold a master’s degree and I teach young people who are very much like me. This melting pot, Miami, exposes us to a “ colada” and “ empanadas” and different ways of saying things in Creole, Spanish, and Portuguese. I have met people who have come from Haiti, Argentina, and Iowa – in one sitting. My students reflect that diversity and that same hope for the future. They have their own immigrant stories and they are here because their parents want a future for them that they cannot have in their own countries. There is no other place like Miami in the world. The United States is a beacon of light, when we have come from such dark paths. I tell them this every day as we salute the flag and “Pledge Allegiance” to it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My adult daughter, Sage Hoffman, lies in a hospital bed, her body attached to numerous IVs, monitors and a catheter. I am in a little cot only a foot away. Sage has just donated a kidney to a long-time friend. Now she is recovering in the ICU unit where the nurses never seem to rest. Our room seems to be the tiniest in the ward. She’s in pain, and I am stressed to the max.

With nothing much else to do, I start to think about how things have changed in our lives since that day in 1987 when we first moved to an Art Deco apartment on Collins Avenue. After a botched nine-month marriage in Broward County, I decided to strike out on my own in Miami Beach. Sage was a junior in a magnet program in a local high school, and I was working for Miami Today newspaper.

We arrived in Miami Beach during a strange and wonderful time. South Beach was still a haven for elderly retirees from up north. But changes were happening. We lived in a charmingly renovated “Tony Goldman” apartment. Tony, like others from up north, was seduced by the bold geometric shapes of Art Deco architecture and the cheap prices of buildings. In South Beach he began buying up and renovating buildings, which was the beginning of Goldman Properties and its many restaurants, buildings and arts programs in Miami Beach and Wynwood.

Some evenings in the mid-1980s, Sage and I would sit on the front porch of our building and watch the world by – and what a different world it was compared to suburban Denver where we both grew up! Right across the courtyard lived Leonard Horowitz, the man who created the pastel palate that transformed the streets of South Beach. Around the corner from our apartment were the Clevelander Hotel with its open-air bar and the Edison Hotel, where Arthur and Charlotte Barron operated a swinging jazz club.

The TV series “Miami Vice” was everywhere. One day Don Johnson and his crew would be shooting scenes in our alley. Another evening Miami Vice set up shop in the beach-side café of the Edison. That day Sage put on her hippest clothes and snuck onto the set as an extra. Later in the season, we spied Sage in a Miami Vice episode. Granted, it was for three seconds, but there she was, seated at the corner table of the Edison cafe.

The streets were also filled with real Miami vice. While retirees rocked on front porches of old hotels, drug dealers and prostitutes were out on the streets. Drug dealing and cocaine cowboys were a reality. One afternoon I heard screaming out in the street. I had always vowed that I would never hide behind window shades as people had done during the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens. I got to the sidewalk just as a guy ran by, clutching a small item under his arm. I surmised that he had mugged an old lady and took her purse, so I ran to see if I could help her. Yikes — I ran right into four policemen running after the guy with their guns drawn. Whoops. Just another 1980s day in South Beach.

At Miami Today I was assigned Miami Beach as my territory for ad sales. I had the fun task of visiting every restaurant, hotel, shop, and art gallery, from Lincoln Road down to 5th Street. What a way to get to know our adopted town! I met people who still are my friends. What a crazy town it was, but Sage and I decided to stay.

We found a 1940s home in the mid-beach area and bought it for about one fifth of what it would cost today. Sage and I then flew back to Wheat Ridge, Colorado, picked up all our stuff that we had left in storage, and drove for five days in a big yellow rent-a-truck all the way back to Miami Beach.

Five college degrees later (two of Sage’s and three of mine), a new marriage, lots of travel, and too many friends to count, we are still part of the South Florida scene. Sage is a director for Mary Kay Cosmetics, and I am the founding director of the Arts at St. Johns at the St. John’s church over on 47th and Pine Tree Drive.

But wait, what about that donated kidney? This is a story of who Sage and I have become. We are not just living off the bounty of Miami, we are part of those people who also give back to our community. Miami is a colorful, sun-filled town, but it is also a place of great need. I give back through my church and the arts program, which uses the arts as a way to address social issues. For example, in spring 2015 we are presenting “Convivencia Miami,” a project that celebrates a time in Spain when Jews, Christians and Muslims lived, worked and created together in relative harmony. We think this is an excellent model today for our very diverse South Florida.

Sage gives back through Mary Kay, in the way it supports and uplifts women. And she also felt called to give away her very healthy kidney (heck, you only need one!) to a friend who was on dialysis and needed a transplant. Her kidney is now alive and humming in her friend, and both are recovering nicely.

Thanks Miami, for encouraging us to become the people we are today!