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Named Best Museum 2022 by Miami New Times

I started my life insurance career in Norfolk, Va., then transferred to South Florida in early January 1964 to manage my company’s Miami district office.

I had previously rented a small, new house in Coral Gables for my wife Barbara and two young daughters, Jane, 7, and Margaret, 5. What we didn’t know was that there was a minimum size requirement for houses, and to qualify, the builder put a bomb shelter underground, in the garage, covered over by a steel plate so a car could still park. It was an airless hole in the ground, and fortunately we never had to use it.

At the end of the first year we all posed for a picture against a palm tree at Tahiti Beach, now a private enclave, and placed our photo on our New Year’s card, which we sent to our Virginia friends to wish them a warm new year.

After a few years, Barbara started what became a successful interior design practice while continuing her studies of languages, and was among the first to enroll in the new Alliance Française in downtown Miami.

Early on we joined the original Coral Oaks Tennis Club, then owned by the tennis pro Leo Fullwood. I still play in the mornings with “the Dumbheads,” a name conferred upon them by Leo, a group of men who show up for round-robin tennis each morning.

I was given the opportunity to invest with a man in Key West who was diving for sunken Spanish gold. My money is still at the bottom of the ocean, but a year later, Mel Fisher discovered a vast quantity of Spanish bullion and jewels.

Some friends and I went scuba diving in the Keys, only to find upon surfacing a waiting police officer who suspected us of robbing the crab pots. After we were searched and found empty handed, we were released.

Several years after our arrival, the insurance company I worked for moved their offices into a new high-rise office building built in downtown Miami after World War II, the Ferre Building at 100 Biscayne Blvd. From my office, I had a beautiful view of the seaplane as it arrived each day from Bimini. In those days, you could literally shoot off a cannon on Biscayne Boulevard in the summer and hit no one. Parking was no problem. All that was soon to change.

I still miss the fine dining at the Pub on Coral Way, and my favorite wedge of lettuce and the three choices of dressing. Fortunately, we can still go to Whip ‘n Dip on Sunset Drive for our favorite ice-cream desserts.

Eventually, we bought a home in the Gables, conveniently located near Sunset Elementary, Ponce Junior High, Coral Gables High and the now-defunct Deerborne School.

To this day, I’m like a walking Chamber of Commerce, but from the beginning, my wife Barbara would complain about the heat and humidity. I would reply, “Off to Fargo, North Dakota!” reminiscent of Jackie Gleason’s “To the Moon!” remark to Alice in the then-popular “Honeymooners” TV show. I finally mailed my comments to the Fargo newspaper asking for their sympathy, and they not only printed my letter but also put it on the radio, prompting a flood of letters to my wife, inviting her to come to beautiful Fargo and stay with them.

The years were passing too quickly. We moved to our second home on Hammock Lake and resided there almost 30 years, where my mother-in-law swore she saw an alligator in the lake and we were hesitant to let the children go swimming. I remember going for the newspaper one morning and seeing snow that melted as it hit the ground. It was the only time in my 50 years that that had occurred. Many trees and plants were damaged, but the following spring was the most beautiful I can remember.

I loved to garden in our lakeside yard. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 did minimal damage to our house but destroyed all my plants. We started all over and it was so beautiful the next year that it made The Villager’s Garden Tour.

Eventually, I became the South Florida agency manager for my company and retired Jan. 1, 1990. Then I volunteered for 10 years as a docent at Zoo Miami, taking people on private tours and carrying animals to schools and nursing homes. In 2014, Barbara and I will celebrate our 60th year of marriage, which we can partially attribute to limiting our games of mixed doubles in tennis, as the photo attests. I fell in love with South Florida from day one and look forward to that love affair continuing into the rest of my life.

I’ve been trying to leave Miami for a long time now.

Miami was my home after I left Haiti. Creole was in every corner, familiar faces spilled out of supermarkets and Quick Marts, and botanicas haunted every jitney bus and crowded every small church between businesses. I felt at home, lakay as we say in Haiti.

I loved the symbiosis of Haitian and Latin culture, be it Cuban or Dominican, because our food and our body language, our passion and our mannerisms, in many ways mirror each other. Miami was a pilon, a mortar and pestle, and the people under the pestle were the ingredients that brought out flavor.

Miami started to lose that flavor when I lost my job during the recession and my mortgage went under. Thirty percent of residences foreclosed in my building. My morale took a big blow and suddenly, I’d had enough. Enough of the neighbor’s 7 a.m. music displacing the art on my walls, enough of the mother and son-in-law caught in a daily soap opera of Te voy a matar next door, and enough of the sour faces that old lady made every morning down in the lobby, waiting for me to ask her how she was feeling just so she could tell me her ailments.

I was tired of the angry letters that came in the mail from our disgruntled new resident who was angry at the association for “lying about the pet policy.” The elevator hadn’t been inspected since 2007, and I was tired of having to climb seven flights of stairs. I dreaded board meetings, where one of our residents, a mustached veteran, consistently interrupted with objections and motions that always led to physical fights and, most recently, required the presence of the condo-board attorney as well as the local police.

I dreaded the woman who thought she was doing us a favor by chain-smoking in the stairwell where we carried our groceries up and down up the steps, leaving cigarette butts in her wake. When I came home, or left for work, I tried to avoid the neighbor who never spoke a word to me but sat there at the entrance, smoking by the carton and staring straight ahead even when I greeted him. He, too, was angry with the condo board, and was plotting ways to sue them by forming a coalition of residents calling themselves “the justice seekers.”

I didn’t even want to take my dogs out, for fear of having my neighbor call me from his second-floor apartment. “Hey! Pssssssst! HEY!” Every time I looked up, I saw his silhouette behind the screened patio gesturing for me to join him for a drink, and throwing his hands up in the air, exasperated, when I refused.

Drunkards were in every corner outside, downing six packs of Keystone and smashing bottles of Corona against the ground in a kind of blind rage aimed at their own condition, leaving the shards on the asphalt for dogs to cut their paws. They urinated behind trees and squatted on the embankment of the canal to relieve themselves, with no regard for mangrove crabs and iguanas, or humans for that matter.

I avoided the man who pushed his obnoxious shi-tzu around in a shopping cart because he threw eggs at other people’s cars. When my neighbor two doors down insisted on bringing my dogs chicken bones from his dinner plate, his mouth and fingers sticky with sauce, I dreaded taking them but accepted the offering with a feeble “thank you.”

When I became pregnant and gave birth to my son, I sunk even deeper into a new darkness of post-partum depression. My neighbors saw me pregnant, and when my baby spent a month in intensive care, they all wanted to know what had happened. I avoided them even more. I wouldn’t open the door for anyone.

It was when my husband and I came back home with the baby that I finally noticed a change in our neighbors. Suddenly, we were Joseph and Mary harboring baby Jesus. My neighbors were the Wise Men, come to see him bearing gifts and cards, and smiles. There were baby tubs and mobiles, even strollers and bouncy chairs at our door. Suddenly, the neighbors I felt uneasy with were friends.

No. Suddenly, my neighbors became family.

The “justice seeker” greets me happily and now opens the door for me when he sees me coming crushed under the weight of grocery bags. The mustached meeting interrupter who gave us the silent treatment now addresses my husband with a “hello.” The letter-writer hasn’t mailed us manifestos threatening to call “Help Me Howard” in a while. Now, at the end of a long day when I rush home to see my baby’s face and kiss him, part of that longing includes a yearning for a waft of that Cuban coffee from my neighbor’s kitchen right before he stops by to offer me bones.

Yes, my building is the manger, and it feels like everyone has morphed overnight into benevolent creatures full of good will.

Or is it me who changed?

Perhaps it is this new love that opened me up to them. To letting them tickle my son’s toes, to lending them aluminum foil, to handing them holiday cards and dialing their family overseas when their eyesight fails them. They are family.

I’m working now, and my baby is healthy, and I spend less time thinking of moving away. Now, at least for a while, Miami is lakay. Miami is home.

Miami became my home in February 1960 when I was based here as a Delta stewardess.

I lived in Miami Springs, on a lake, with three other stewardesses – one from Eastern, one from National, and one from Delta. Other airlines were flourishing at that time, too; there was a large contingent of personnel from Pan American and TWA, as well as a number of South American airlines and Flying Tiger cargo airline.

During that era, we got new expressways that connected the mainland to Miami Beach. And culturally, we had opera. During the ensuing 54 years, I have seen our incredible city grow into a most amazing and iconic location between North and South America.

Back then, we thought we were big city dwellers, but the limits of the “city” at the time only went as far west as eastern Hialeah and the Opa-locka airport. To the south was the University of Miami and U.S. 1 to the Keys. The Palmetto Expressway was originally constructed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but by the 1970s, various sections of the 16-mile corridor were expanded to six lanes. That connected motorists to the west to places such as the Doral Hotel and Country Club.

As the 1980s began, our community exploded. The Dolphin Expressway connected to the Palmetto, and I-95 and I-75 expanded the breadth of our amazing South Florida locale.

Among the highlights for me were the creation of the Miami City Ballet with the help of Toby Lerner Ansin. The inaugural performance was on Oct. 17, 1986, under the artistic direction of Edward Villella. The New World Symphony was established in 1987, co-founded by Lin and Ted Arison with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. Bringing the genius of conductor Thomas to our growing Miami venue and securing the Lincoln Theatre on Miami Beach for concerts also elevated the cultural magnificence of our city.

In the late 1980s, the Miami Heat basketball team was founded, and later came the Florida Panthers hockey team. The first Miami Arena was built downtown, and sometimes there were games as many as five nights a week. So many Miami sports fans nearly lived in that arena.

At the same time, the University of Miami was expanding and became an internationally recognized and respected university.

Additionally, we had the Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove. It housed the internationally known “Regine’s” nightclub. Michael Jackson and his entourage occupied the top floors during their stay in 1984 before the late singer’s Orange Bowl Victory Tour concert.

As the city grew, so did the need for broader cultural experience. That paved the way for the construction of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. A new sports arena also rose downtown, now known as the AmericanAirlines Arena.

Major shopping facilities were opening everywhere, although the Bal Harbour Shops, which officially opened in 1965, continued to grow throughout the next three decades and it is still known as a high-end spot to shop.

Miami Beach and South Beach began to blossom in the late 1980s. Before that, many hotel pools were green with algae and doors leading out to the beach were boarded up.

South Beach had many unique stages of growth and attracted flocks of Europeans, South Americans and celebrities. New nightclubs were springing up weekly. During that time, there was also the Miami-Dade Cultural Center with the Historical Museum of Southern Florida and the Miami Art Museum, which was relocated downtown from its original Bayfront Park site.

In more recent years, Miami and Miami Beach also became home to Art Basel, the internationally acclaimed art fair. With the Art Basel venue here, art sophistication exploded and very positively impacted our South Florida environment.

We now have the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), which opened in December on the same weekend as Art Basel. Coming soon to the Museum Park is the anticipated opening in 2015 of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science and planetarium.

When I look out my windows at our incredible city, I marvel at what Miami has become. It is now a destination for people from all over the globe. Still underway is the continuing expansion of the Miami Design District as well as significant additions at Mary Brickell Village.

I have been living and working as an interior designer in our great city for these past decades, creating residences of some of Miami’s most interesting, accomplished and extraordinary families. The progress makes me so appreciative of all who have dreamed, struggled and created what this amazing Florida community is today. I feel so privileged to have passed this way during these times.

My father came to the Magic City in 1916 at the tender age of 3. His mother had taken a new job and moved from Chicago. She wanted to start a new life in what was truly a “frontier” on Biscayne Bay.

With perhaps only 10,000 people calling Miami home, it was a tropical paradise with inexpensive land and crystal blue waters teeming with marine life.

My grandmother, Althea Altemus, brought my father Robert to Miami after accepting the job of James Deering’s private secretary at the new “Gilded Age” mansion, Vizcaya. She spent seven years attending to the wealthy industrialist’s business needs while he was in South Florida.

I vaguely recall stories of my grandmother “rubbing elbows” with the Deering brothers (James and Charles), Phineas Paist (associate architect of Vizcaya, who would later design many landmark Coral Gables buildings) and the politician, William Jennings Bryan, who was once Deering’s neighbor and a major contributor to Miami’s real estate boom of the 1920s.

Dad would graduate in 1931 from the then high school, Ponce De Leon. He would go on to become a prominent CPA and banker. My brother Robert, who passed away earlier this year, and I started our own journey in South Miami, living east of U.S. 1 on Kendall Drive, across the street from where Gulliver Academy stands today. I rode my bicycle to Pinecrest Elementary at Southwest 104th Street and Red Road.

There was no development for miles, which left peaceful woods and fields to explore and fuel a child’s imagination. No one bothered to lock homes or car doors when going into South Miami to shop or eat. I drive by my first school, Pinecrest Elementary, every workday morning on my commute to my Coral Gables office. Seeing the children in the playground reminds me of a “simpler Miami.”

My father’s generation, often called the “greatest generation,” was tough-minded and persevered through one of the most difficult periods in U.S. history. As I enter the fourth quarter of my business career, I now realize what my father passed on to me. I am a banker who has survived over 40 years in the financial service industry. After navigating six bank mergers since 1980, I am still employed. Thank you Dad, for your silent and enduring strength and what it stands for.

My father was not a “communicator.” What little I learned about him and his mother strangely came from my mother Rosemarie.

In 1985, when I got married at Vizcaya, the destination was solely based on its beauty. At that time, I had little knowledge of my father’s and his mother’s intimate experiences at Miami’s landmark residence. My father would ride his bicycle after school to Vizcaya to wait for his mother to get off work. Fishing off of Vizcaya’s famous barge would quickly yield a boat full of fish and lobster. Miami then was the Bahamas of today.

Last year, my limited knowledge of my father and grandmother’s role in early Miami history quickly changed with a discovery of a long-forgotten manuscript, written by Althea Altemus, following a chance encounter with Joel Hoffman, the current executive director of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.

The encounter has contributed to a wealth of knowledge about Deering and his famous actor guests and other industrialists who would come to inspect the newest home of the “Gilded Age.”

Althea Altemus was employed at Vizcaya for seven years, leaving in 1923 to return to Chicago before returning to Miami a second time to retire.

The discovery of my grandmother’s ties to Vizcaya and its famous people in early 1900s Miami has driven a renewed interest in our family tree. Think of the excitement of the moment, if I had known more about my father’s relationship to this grand estate! I can only hope that he felt some nostalgia for his youth and early Miami experiences.

Miami is a very young city, unlike Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., with their excess of written history. Now that Miami is an important international city, it is important that families contribute to “her story” by sharing their experiences. Without the knowledge of how our city came to be, Miami cannot be truly appreciated.

As our city continues along its evolutionary timeline, don’t forget to speak to your sons and daughters.

Raleigh Atrus and Maitre Bird Bailey left Dacula, Ga., in 1938 in a one-seated car with a boot in the tire and $150. Twelve-year-old Jack sat in the front with Dad and Mom. Three-year-old Jim and I, then 5 years old, were curled up behind them in the crawl space.

It took a day and a night driving down U.S. 1 to get to Cousin Dorothy’s small frame house near where the old Sears store stands (now part of the Arsht Center). What brought us to Miami was my dad visited his best friend Mark Stanley and he came home and said, “I got sand in my shoes.”

My dad opened Gene’s Grocery on Northwest Fifth Avenue and 22nd Street. He only had enough money to stock his shelves with two cans of each item. Our living quarters consisted of a small room in the back of the grocery. There was no bath tub nor shower so every night we washed our face, hands and feet, and on Saturday we took turns in the old tin washtub full of cold water.

It never dawned on me that we were poor. I played and had fun every day. One of my playmates is still one of my favorite friends, Herb Davis, whom I met 71 years ago.

I went to Buena Vista Elementary School, Robert E. Lee Junior High School and attended both Jackson and Edison high schools. I met my best friend in junior high, the greatest coach and builder of men, Joe Brodsky.

Times were hard, but we all made out OK. Dad died without a job for the last 10 years of his life and my mom worked as a cashier at a grocery store. My brother Jack became a sign painter and started his own outdoor advertising sign business in the Keys.

I became known as the Naked Carpet man due to my billboard. My younger brother Jim was a fireman who saved and spent every penny on real estate and has become a multimillionaire.

I now own the flooring business and the building at 8300 Biscayne Boulevard where I started as a truck driver’s helper and janitor over 56 years ago.

When my father worked, he worked 6 ½ days a week. This made Sunday afternoons a treat. He would take us to all the famous spots in Miami. Favorite memories include the docks at Fifth Street to watch the fresh fish come in, the beach, the famous sausage tree.

It never occurred to me that these outings were free since there was little money to spare. I looked forward to the family get-togethers and relish the memories probably more than kids remember the expensive entertainment parents provide today.

Miami has made me successful financially and romantically. I met all three wives here — Gloria, Johannah, and I saved the best for last, Donna. I have four children: Don Bailey, Jr. a WQAM broadcaster and who runs the flooring business); Robert, who handles the real estate; Jeannie, wonderful mother to Adrian and who handles collections; and Brett, law student and music producer. They bring me unending joy and pride.

I love Miami and cannot imagine what my life would have been like if I was raised in the sleepy town of Dacula, Ga., or nearby Hog Mountain.

Every mother who wanted to buy her daughter a stunning dress will remember the name “Dorissa of Miami.”

This is the story of our mother, Doree Fromberg, a girl who won a scholarship to attend the New York Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) after graduating high school, began designing and sewing dresses in her home in Miami and developed the business into an international company.

Starting with $5 and a talent, Doree became an icon in the girls dress manufacturing business. Her dresses were eventually sold all over the world including top retailers such as Bloomingdales, Macy’s, Lord and Taylor and Saks Fifth Ave.

After Doree graduated from “FIT” she did an internship at a manufacturer of childrensware. She then got married and moved from NY to Miami, and had two sons. Her mother, an energetic and affable woman, recognized Doree’s talents and took her samples on the road around the state of Florida to try and sell the dresses to specialty children’s shops.

Orders started to pour in, requiring more home sewers. She was very fortunate to find Cuban women — who had fled the island and resettled in Miami in the 1960s — and who were outstanding seamstresses. They were able to sew the dresses in their homes.

Within a short time, it became necessary to buy a small factory to handle the increased business. Without any formal business training, and no capital or financial backing, she somehow was able to build the business. She modernized the equipment, hired and trained the staff and managed the business. She also designed the dresses for all five seasons; buying the fabric and accessories and creating a sales team.

At the time, the official name of the business was “Dorissa Of Miami.” Her girl’s dresses became recognized all over the United States. The lines catered to girls party wear, communion and baptism dresses produced in sizes from infants to preteens. An additional label of “Nicole” was introduced and took off immediately.

The business kept expanding and the increased demand required a larger building. A large auto showroom building was purchased in 1972 and converted into a factory. The address was 2751 North Miami Ave. in Wynwood It was a two-story building.

On the first floor were offices, a reception area and spaces for sewing machine operators. There they pressed, ticketed and prepared garments for shipping. On the second floor was the cutting department and areas designated for stocking fabric and trim. There were also additional sewing machines, the purchasing department, designing rooms, pattern making areas and Doree’s office.

The company opened a showroom in the manufacturing center of New York City where a major part of sales volume was generated. In addition, sales were generated for the “Dorissa Collection” by a staff of independent sales people with their own showrooms in all major United States cities.

The company produced a Back-to-school, Fall, Holiday, Spring and Summer collection.

As the business continued to thrive, Doree needed to find other sources of production. This was available in factories in Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala. The cut goods were air-shipped to those factories, which had qualified seamstresses and were able to finish the goods quickly.

A girls’ sportswear line was added and received immediate national acclaim. After just one year of production, “Dorissa Sportswear” won the national award in 1989 as “the best sportswear line in the USA.”

A retail outlet store was opened to the public 1987 at NW Fifth Avenue and 29th Street. It was called “Dorissa Children’s World, The Place to Shop for Children.” In addition to the Dorissa, Nicole and Dorissa Sport lines; the business carried out other well-known children’s lines, including boys wear. It became a very popular outlet-shopping place for local families. On “Sale Day,” a twice a year event, lines of customers would form around the corner waiting for the store to open.

The Dorissa company experienced a number of very outstanding events. Doree appeared on The Merv Griffin Show representing the girls dress-manufacturing companies of America. Other well-known designers appeared with her on the same show, i.e. Aldolfo and Oscar De La Renta. One of the covers of the New York Times Magazine section featured two girls together wearing Dorissa dresses.

There was a strong camaraderie that prevailed in the Dorissa factory. The employees became family and many continued to work at Dorissa for years. They were treated well and responded with loyalty. There was a lovely outside lunchroom where many a birthday occasion was celebrated with loud cheering and singing.

Between 2004-2006, Doree Fromberg decided it was time for her to “stop and smell the roses.” Her sons were successful in the medical field. Her husband of seven years — a prominent attorney and former Mayor of Miami Beach — wanted to travel and both of them desired to have more time to pursue some other interests.

Doree decided to sell the Dorissa label to another girls dress company. In that way the company name and label was preserved and Doree was fully relieved of all responsibilities. She did, though, consult on occasion.

The people who purchased the factory building requested that the name “Dorissa” appearing in large letters across the front of the building be left on the building. They felt it had become a landmark.

Their request was granted. It now remains the nostalgic landmark of a remarkable children’s dress manufacturing company that started out many years ago in Miami with $5 and became an internationally recognized company. This all due to the help of the influx of talented Cuban seamstresses and garment manufacturing workers.

Doree is now retired from manufacturing and has her own art studio. She’s still is able to use her creative ability in painting and making decorative collages on many themes and for special occasions. She and her husband Malcolm travel the world. They also derive pleasure from supporting many local charities.

My parents, John and Muriel Greist, my sister, Judith, and I were all born in New Haven, Connecticut. The Greist name was pretty well-known in the area because the Greist Manufacturing Company was a major producer of sewing-machine attachments.

I don’t remember much about New Haven because I was only 3 when our family moved to Miami in 1948, coming via train, except for my father, who drove from Connecticut.

My dad had a chance to pursue some new banking ventures in South Florida that were very promising. He eventually ended up at the Pan American Bank of Miami on Southeast First Street in downtown Miami. The bank was founded in the mid-1940s by P.J. Serralles, a Puerto Rican sugar planter. The story is that he decided to open a bank due to his difficulty cashing a check in Miami because almost no one spoke Spanish.

One of my earliest memories of Miami was Hurricane King in October 1950. We were living in our new house on Irvington Avenue in Coconut Grove, and my dad was in the hospital when the hurricane hit. I remember kerosene lanterns guiding us through the power outage during the storm, which was one of the strongest to strike the Miami area since the 1926 killer hurricane.

Other early memories of Miami included Christmas holiday fun at the Burdines in downtown Miami, with a merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel on the fifth-floor level bridge connecting the two sections of Burdines over South Miami Avenue; the annual New Year’s Eve Orange Bowl Parade, including some great views from the Walgreens’ second-floor cafeteria on Flagler Street; and the old Miami Baseball Stadium, where I got to sit in the Brooklyn Dodgers dugout in March 1956, the year after they won their first World Series.

In the summer of 1955, I had attended a Dodgertown camp in Vero Beach, where my counselor was Peter O’Malley, son of Dodger President Walter O’Malley. The following year, I was invited to attend a Dodger spring-training game at Miami Stadium. The Dodgers trained there before the Baltimore Orioles moved in a few years later. I got to meet many of the Dodger greats: Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges and Duke Snider, my favorite player. What a thrill for a young kid 10 years old.

In addition to the summer I spent at Dodgertown, my sister and I attended summer camp a few times in North Carolina. One of our trips was “immortalized” on the cover of The Miami Herald’s old “Fun in Florida” Sunday magazine on May 30, 1954, as we prepared to board the train for our journey to Eagle’s Nest Camp in Piscah Forest, N.C. The cover photo was taken by Herald photographer John Walther, and the inside cover story was written by “Fun in Florida” magazine editor Betty Garnet. (Full disclosure here: I think the photo was “posed” because we didn’t actually go to summer camp until sometime in June.”

I attended first through sixth grade at Coconut Grove Elementary School. Our principal was Oliver Hoover, a native-born Miamian and longtime educator. An elementary school in The Hammocks is named after him.

During elementary school, some of the “Old Grove” memories included after-school trips for sodas at the Liles Pharmacy and the Florida Pharmacy in the Engle Building and Saturday matinees at the Coconut Grove Theatre (yes, it was a movie theater before it became the Coconut Grove Playhouse).

Another favorite spot in the Grove was the Krest 5&10 next to the school. That 5&10 store sold almost everything one could imagine, and it stayed in business for over 60 years. I also spent a lot of time at Bryan Memorial Methodist Church on Main Highway, from my younger years all the way through college. A minister from that church performed my wedding ceremony.

After spending seventh grade at South Miami Junior High, I attended the newly constructed Palmetto Junior-Senior High School in Pinecrest beginning in eighth grade. My sister was in the first graduating class in 1961, and I graduated two years later in 1963. The school celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008, and the class of 2011 will be the 50th graduating class from the school. My senior year in 1963, I was newspaper editor, president of the Key Club, chairman of the Dade County Student Traffic Safety Council, and was the school’s Silver Knight nominee in journalism.

Favorite hangouts in high school included the Hot Shoppes at U.S. 1 and Bird Road; Jimmy’s Hurricane at Bird and Douglas Road; the Burger King on U.S. 1 just south of Dadeland; the original Shorty’s; Royal Castle, where we could easily consume a six-pack of Castleburgers along with their birch beer; the Krispy Kreme on SW 8th Street; Suniland Shopping Center; A&W; drive-ins; and Central Stadium on Coral Way, where Palmetto’s home football games were played.

Local area attractions included Bill Haast’s Miami Serpentarium; South Dixie Bowl-O-Mat; Dixie and Tropicaire Drive-Ins; Colonial Palms Golf Course; and, of course, the Parrot Jungle. Before multiplexes, there was the Coral, the Gables, the Miracle and the Riviera theatres. We loved the aromas from the Holsum Bakery in South Miami. Restaurants included The Flame, Grentner’s, Flynn’s Dixie Ribs and the Dixie Belle Inn.

My best friends in high school are my best friends 50 years later, even though they were in the class of ’64. Those friends include Ron Lieberman and Dexter Lehtinen – both still practicing attorneys in Miami – and Fred Luss, a retired Chrysler financial executive. Another member of the class of ’64 was Vicki Campfield. I didn’t know her in high school, but she would eventually become my wife.

The first paycheck I ever received was for a one-day job as a press-box assistant for the 1963 Orange Bowl game won by Alabama over Oklahoma 17-0. The game was attended by President John Kennedy. I was near the locker room under the stadium when the game ended and JFK was leaving. I reached out to shake his hand but was rebuffed by the Secret Service. The president smiled and waved at me. Sadly, just eleven months later, he was gone.

I met my wife, Vicki, in 1967 and married her a year later. Vicki had a wonderful career in pediatric nursing at Miami Children’s Hospital and the state of Florida Children’s Medical Services. After almost a decade with Burger King Corporation and Florida Power & Light, combined with some part-time sports broadcasting on local radio, I spent the remainder of my career with Miami-Dade County. Vicki and I raised two sons, John and Patrick. Both attended Sunset High, Miami-Dade Junior College and Florida International University.

My overall favorite Miami memory was the many years of watching University of Miami football at the Orange Bowl, from the 1950s with my parents to the years with Vicki and my sons in the West End Zone family section, to the last event ever held there. That was a flag-football game in January 2008 between former Miami Dolphins and University of Miami players. The event was extra special because my two grandchildren, Zachary and Taylor, were with me. It was their only time at the Orange Bowl, and it represented the fourth generation of the Greist family to attend an event at the Orange Bowl.

Vicki passed away too prematurely in 1997, but we were blessed to share 30 special years together and many happy experiences in Miami raising our two sons.

My 60-plus years in Miami have been filled with a lot of wonderful memories. In a strange way, I guess you could say I owe all my Miami memories to a Puerto Rican sugar planter who opened a bank in Miami in the 1940s due to his difficulties cashing a check because almost no one spoke Spanish.

I was born in New York City to Hispanic-American parents. Osvaldo Hernandez, my father, arrived in the United States in the 1940s, served in the U.S. Army and met Maria, my mother, in 1950.

They married and two years after my birth we traveled to Havana, Cuba, where I stayed and was raised by my grandmother, a Canary Islands native. I lived in a middle-class Havana suburb and attended Cambridge School, where I received English and Spanish instruction.

Unexpected changes in Cuba occurred, however, when Fidel Castro took over in January 1959. In 1962, seeing that the situation on the island had worsened, my father requested my departure, through the Canadian embassy.

On Jan. 25, 1963, at age 11, I returned to the United States on the last American Red Cross flight for U.S. citizens. I have never forgotten my unpleasant exit from the Havana airport, where militia men searched me, kept my valuables and called me gusana (a disrespectful term for Americans that means “earthworm”) and gringa before I prepared to board the plane.

I traveled alone, but was warmly received at Miami International Airport by my father, aunt, uncle and cousin, who were residing on Alton Road in Miami Beach.

The city of Miami Beach became my new home. My father and I were the only American citizens who spoke English in my immediate family. My school days happily unfolded at Central Beach Elementary. At Ida Fisher Junior High School, I learned how to swim at Flamingo Park’s pool and practiced tumbling at the school’s gym.

My saddest experience at that time was hearing the announcement, over the loud speaker, that “President Kennedy has been shot!” It was Nov. 22, 1963.

During the 1960s, South Beach consisted mainly of small stores that sold beach wear, surf equipment and souvenirs. When I was 12, I would assist a souvenir store owner by arranging the merchandise and assisting tourists with their purchases – for 25 cents an hour.

After my part-time job, I would join my friends at the Cameo Theater on Washington Avenue and 14th Street for an ice cream and a movie. The 25-cent ticket admitted me to popular films of the time, such as Psycho and The Great Escape.

A half-dollar Kennedy coin was my weekly allowance. When I had saved a dollar, I would embark on a visit to downtown Miami on Saturdays, via public bus. I loved viewing the store window displays of Kress, McCrory’s, Woolworth’s, Sears, Burdines, Baker’s, Lerner’s and Jackson Byron’s. Shopping trips with my father to Baker’s always led to a new pair of shoes with a matching handbag.

We also munched on sauerkraut hot dogs at the Sloppy Joe’s shop, next to the Tower Theater. At Jackson Byron’s, I bought my first 45 rpm record for 49 cents and began to collect music memorabilia. An ultimate treat was to watch a movie at any of the downtown theaters: the Olympia Theater, the Tower Theater and the Paramount Theater.

My most cherished Beatles experience occurred at the Paramount Theater where, with more than 100 other teenage girls, I eagerly watched the Beatles’ first feature-length motion picture, A Hard Day’s Night. I still have the admission ticket from this event.

The Beatles’ revolution in the United States had a profound influence on my musical preferences. On Feb. 13, 1964, I remember hearing on my pink transistor radio that the Beatles had landed at Miami International Airport to tape their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

A local Miami radio station, 560 WQAM, and its announcer, Rick Shaw, heavily promoted the Beatles’ arrival. I purchased a promotional pamphlet of The Beatles from WQAM for one dollar. Many students did not attend school on that day, hoping to catch a glimpse of them.
I fondly remember twisting with other teenagers to the sounds of Chubby Checker, The Beach Boys and The Beatles at the Miami Beach Recreational Center on Tuesday nights.

The Miami Beach High School Ensemble and the Acapella Choir fulfilled my interest in music. Rehearsing for school performances and singing at the Fontainebleau Hotel were standard practice for all chorus members. My overnight stays at the San Souci Hotel – to prepare for district music competitions – were exhilarating.

In June 1969, the Jackie Gleason Theater was the host of my graduation ceremony. Throughout my teens, I had visited the theater, attending rock music concerts by Three Dog Night, The Who, Chicago and Rare Earth.

I used to ride a tram from Alton Road to Washington Avenue, through the Lincoln Road Mall. As we traveled aboard the tram, we eyed the variety of luxury stores such as Lillie Rubin, where TV personalities purchased exclusive evening wear.

Finally, my recollection of the Miami Beach Lions Club is of utmost importance. The Lions Club funded a college tuition grant that enabled me to further my education at Miami Dade Community College and Florida Atlantic University.

I majored in education, began as a teacher, and now serve as a director for the public schools. I will always appreciate how the Miami Beach Lions Club helped shape my future.

The city of Miami has been my home for the past 36 years. I still hold a deep affection, however, for the Beach.

I now work in downtown Miami and own a condominium in South Beach. I cherish my precious preteen and teenage years’ memories of South Beach during the groovy and colorful ’60s.

My father, Osvaldo, passed away in 2005 at 84. He last lived on Meridian Avenue. He truly loved the Beach as much as I did.

I grew up a somewhat typical teenager in suburban New Jersey in the late 1950s. I was halfway through high school with a lot of friends and an active social life. My world was perfect. What did I know?

The winter of 1960-61 was particularly harsh, with several severe snowstorms. A few times we were snowed in. As the most agile family member, it was my job to climb through a window, trudge to the garage, retrieve the shovel and then dig us out. For me, it was an adventure. My parents had other thoughts.

Over the Memorial Day weekend of 1961, my parents flew to Miami and rented a three-bedroom house in North Miami Beach. After they returned to New Jersey, they rented out our house. I packed what I could, but much of my childhood was left behind. The day school was over, we got in our car — a red-and-white Ford Fairlane station wagon (remember those?) — and drove to Miami. The plan was to try it for a year, but I knew we would never move back north.

I was 16 years old, and the world as I knew it was over. After what seemed like three endless day of driving, I became a new kid in a new neighborhood, with all of my lifelong friends and most of my “stuff” a thousand miles away. No cellphones, no e-mail, no Facebook, no Twitter, and no long-distance phone calls in our family budget.

I made a few friends, but mostly I explored the neighborhood. In those days, the “heat” was not a basketball team, it was what you confronted every time you went outside. I was taking three to four showers a day. Even back then, teenagers did not do that sort of thing. But I soon learned that it was a great way to cool off.

Aventura was still a swamp in the early 1960s. Who even knew about mangroves? The 163rd Street Shopping Center was the big deal in town: an open-air mall with covered walkways to provide shade and to help you stay dry during Florida rainstorms. The Guns of Navarone was playing at the Wometco 163rd. It was the first movie I saw in Florida. I do not remember much about the movie, but I do remember that the air-conditioning was excellent.

I also found a stock brokerage office at the mall next to the theater. It, too, had great air-conditioning, and you could go inside for free. There were also a few theater-style seats to sit on and watch the stock-market ticker. That became one of my favorite activities that summer. I learned some stock symbols, listened to the old geezers trade stock tips and stayed cool, at least for a while. Who knew that less than a decade later I would open my first dental practice a block away from the mall?

Without my bicycle, I would have been an absolute prisoner on Northeast 171st Terrace — just another treeless block in a one-story subdivision, without a candy store in sight. Victory Park and Greynolds Park were within bike-riding distance. Victory Park, which has since been consumed by the North Miami Beach municipal complex, had a real fighter plane, and I was able to climb into the cockpit. I lived a thousand dreams in that relic, knowing deep down that myopia would prevent me from ever being a real fighter pilot.

But the best adventure for me was Greynolds Park. It was an unspoiled natural space, and the boathouse had a snack bar and tables in the shade. I hiked the trails, found the crab holes, pondered the coral rock formations, picked up pine cones and climbed the mountainous ziggurat up to the very top.

After a few weeks, I convinced my uncle to hire me as a shipping clerk in his dress factory in Miami’s Garment District. It was not air-conditioned, but a large stationary fan kept the air moving enough for a transplanted Northerner to survive. The job was boring, but the trip to and fro was an odyssey. Getting from North Miami Beach to 29th Street was a grand adventure: Walk to 163rd Street to catch the once-an-hour Haulover Beach Bus on its counter-clockwise route to 125th Street and Northeast Sixth Avenue, then catch a City of Miami bus to 79th Street and Northwest Seventh Avenue, then transfer to another Miami bus for the ride down Northwest Seventh Avenue to 29th Street, then walk to the factory at Northwest Fifth Avenue. By the time I got to work, it was time to go home. But it was a job, it paid a few dollars more than the bus fare, and it took up most of the day. That was my agonizingly lonely and seemingly endless first summer in Miami.

Fast forward through the final two years of high school, three years at the University of Miami, four years in dental school at the University of Pennsylvania, 27 years practicing dentistry in North Miami Beach and Aventura, and 14 years of blissful retirement. These days, I take my grandchildren to Greynolds Park so they can experience those same joys of nature that I enjoyed as a teenager. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Today, I know a little more than I did in 1961. I have made my peace with the heat, and besides, today everything is air-conditioned. Almost 50 years later, I have found my place in the sun. North Dade is the center of my universe. My family and friends are all in South Florida, and there is no place else I would rather live.

My world is perfect again.

The question, “Who will remember?,” comes to mind when I think of the fragments of Miami history that never made it to the popular prose about my hometown, our “city of dreams.” Who will remember these times, these people, from decades before digital news and social media? Here is my short epitaph to some of those long gone.

The city of Miami Police Department in the 1940s and ’50s was the focus of stories my father told me of his many exciting cases as a uniformed officer and later, detective. The Miami Herald and Daily News followed some officers’ careers surprisingly closely in those days, when the police force was still relatively small. All the stories I heard growing up were verified when I received hard copies of news stories many years ago, thanks to a Herald archivist. Stories my young mind had made mythical turned out all to be true.

Those fascinating times my father spoke of included recovering stolen cars, and investigating Voodoo cult activity and the Ku Klux Klan. Most of his career was in the auto-theft bureau, but this focus led him and his various partners to bank robbers, murderers, and domestic abuse on the dark side, and to lighter duties like finding lost children and catching escaped monkeys!

My father was Charles M. Johnston, Charlie. His career as a Miami policeman began in 1944 and was summed up in 1963 by Chief of Police Walter Headley, who wrote, “He compiled an outstanding record which will probably never be equaled in the recovery of stolen automobiles and the apprehension of felons… His service record is filled with commendations from Federal Bureau of Investigation, State Attorney, and grateful citizens.” By then my father had well earned his sobriquet — Eagle Eye.

One of the most celebrated cases that my father “solved” was that of Cleveland bank robber John Wesley Hux, who on Jan. 11, 1950, robbed $35,000 (over $348,000 in 2016 money) from Cleveland Superior Savings. The FBI traced his movements south for 50 days, ending in Miami where agents asked assistance from Miami Police. Within five hours of that request, my father saw a car with license plates matching Hux’s parked at The Turf Club on Northwest Seventh Avenue and 79th Street. He and his partner, John Resick, blocked the car in, drew their guns, and arrested Hux as he exited the club. Hux had a loaded .38. Remarkably, Detective Resick recognized Hux as a classmate from a Cleveland High School they had both attended. Much of the bank money had already been lost, as Hux had bet heavily and lost at the Hialeah race track and The Bahamas, a gambling club at 3890 Northwest 36th St.

The Ku Klux Klan was active in Miami in the late 1940s when they “invited” Herald reporters to a meeting and promptly assaulted them and stole a camera, all in retaliation for honest reporting that the KKK felt was damaging to its public image. The ruckus, as reported in an article by Jack Anderson (not the syndicated Jack) in The Miami Herald, happened at the John B. Gordon Klan No. 5 Woodman of the World Hall at 2800 Bird Ave. My father was first to arrive as part of a police riot squad. He and his partner, Patrolman P. Lipscomb, confronted the Klansman, rescued the reporters, and recovered the camera. Anderson wrote eloquently in the Herald story, ironically comparing the Klan’s “hooded bigotry” and burning cross invitation card to the contrasting Red Cross, “a service which renders help and first aid to humanity without regard to race, creed, or color.”

There is also the story of an 11-year-old boy my father found huddled in a pasteboard box at West Flagler and 23rd Street. He’d gotten lost during a house-hunting trip with his parents. My father tracked the parents down before they even noticed that their son wasn’t in the car with them.

My parents had a social life focused on police friendships, and my Mom had worked the police microphone at the Division of Communications for the city of Miami, so it was not uncommon to have families of other officers at our house on Southwest 118th Street. This was a great source for hearing stories I still recall, like a Twitter feed of Miami crime stories and city politics. All those memories and more came alive when I was given a photocopy archive of news stories from the Herald’s basement many years ago. Who had saved just these stories in a manila file, all about just one officer? Who had diligently gone through and circled just my father’s name in each story? It’s doubtful we’ll ever know, but this was the template that preserves this small history, with my gratitude to the Knights of the Fourth Estate. There are so many stories it is hard to count– long and short, all about these early days of police work in a Miami that no longer exists. I hope this short essay will allow others to remember.

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