Month: February 2017

I was raised in the Christian Science faith and went to church from the time I was 4 years old in 1939, but I always considered myself culturally Jewish. I had to go to school during the Jewish holidays as a kid in Brooklyn, and when classmates and teachers expressed surprise that I was at school, I responded: “I am a Christian Scientist of Jewish extraction.”

My parents, Paula and Louis Gelman, never denied their Jewish heritage to anyone, and many of my Christian Science friends in New York were also Jewish. I loved visiting my grandmother in Palm Beach as a child when my parents took me on vacation. Sadie Louber, my grandmother, owned a kosher hotel called the Louber Villa, at 231 Sunset Ave., a block and a half from the ocean.

Grandma Louber was a strong, loving influence in all our lives. My brother, Larry Gelman, says that Grandma took him to black churches in West Palm Beach because she loved gospel music, and Larry credits Grandma with his love of music to this day.

There were always interesting guests staying at the hotel. Grandma served kosher meals. My mother and her sisters were always very close, and it was fun getting together in Palm Beach with my cousins and their parents. There was never any discussion in my presence as a child or an adult about being Jews in a predominantly Gentile area, nor did I realize that it was highly unlikely that a Jewish hotel could have been owned by Jews in Palm Beach.

I moved to Miami as an adult in 1958. It was my first introduction to Miami Beach and its Jewish population and culture. During the early 1960s, we would visit Grandma at her hotel. We always got a kick out of the fact that the Kennedys had an estate in Palm Beach not far from where our family hotel was. To the best of my knowledge, we were still the only Jewish family owning property at that time in Palm Beach.

I decided to investigate how my family came to own this property. I asked a friend, real-estate attorney Daniel Doscher, to look into it, and he did the legal research on the property. He discovered that my father, who was an attorney in New York City, somehow managed to buy it in the late 1930s. He gave the title ownership to Paula Gelman, my mother, and her sister, Ruth Louber.

In 1945, the Louber Villa was transferred to Sadie Louber, my mother’s mother, and Grandma Louber took over the hotel. My grandparents had owned a hotel in Saratoga called the New Windsor Hotel, which they lost in the Great Depression of the 1930s. (I have no memory of Louis Louber, my grandfather, since he passed away when I was very young.)

A few years ago, I visited the Jewish Museum of Florida in Miami Beach and was shocked to see a sign in the museum collection that read: “Always a view, never a Jew.” I thought that the museum might be very interested in the story of the Louber Villa, a hotel that was Jewish-owned and that welcomed Jews in Palm Beach during those years. Today, the picture of the Louber Villa is now in the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum.

Even after the hotel was sold and torn down some years ago, we visited the empty lot annually and walked around the area for sentimental reasons. Recently, my cousin and her husband were in Palm Beach, and we got together there once again!

There is now a large, modern accounting firm on Grandma’s property. We walked to the corner of Sunset Avenue and County Road on our way to the beach, a block and a half away. Almost as a commentary on the inexorable passage of time, there is a beautiful Orthodox Jewish temple on the corner, barely two doors down from where our hotel had been.

Palm Beach has a special sentimental meaning for me, but my permanent home is now in Miami. The changes in the culture and population in South Florida over the many years I have lived here make me proud to live in Miami. It is an exciting place to call home.

It is unfortunate that nostalgia comes later in life. Having it when memories are fresh might make one more appreciative of what is being lived. I speak of this because of a recent incident that sparked my memories of growing up in the late 1950s through the 1960s in Dade County, on a street just a little north of Perrine and just a little south of South Miami.

My street was an unpaved cul-de-sac that began at U.S. 1 and ran for a couple of blocks. Across the street from my house was a Florida pine forest, though it did not match the forest I would read about in the books I was given in Perrine Elementary school. In those books, leaves fell in the fall and everyone in town would bury potatoes to be roasted with the leaves as they were burned. It sounded like fun to me and it was hard for me to understand why I was not experiencing it in Miami.

The books mentioned snow as well. The good teachers at my school helped give all of us students an idea of what snow was like by having us cut snowflakes out of paper. It was only much later in life that I discovered that our paper models and the real thing in no way matched.

My yard was enormous, or so I remember. It was filled with monarch butterflies, dragon flies, and frogs. Once a year, our yard, the woods, and almost all side streets filled with land crabs. On Old Cutler Road it was not odd to see people collecting them nor was it was unusual see cars with flats caused by them.

The house I lived in was small but made slightly bigger by my father who was very skilled with his hands — something I apparently did not inherit.

A bit north on U.S. 1 there was the Dixie drive-in movie theater, a popular hangout for high school students. Somewhere not far from there was the Miami Serpentarium, a local tourist landmark that was marked by a giant snake statute.

And then there was Harry.

Harry Troeger lived in a small home a few houses down from mine. He designed and built the house. It had no electricity. I suspect he had a well but I do not know for certain. He seemed like a strange man who lived in the small wood and coral house he built. It was almost hidden by trees. For me, my sisters and the other children who lived on the street or the next street over, he was a mystery.

Once a year on Halloween, most of us were brave enough to approach the small house and peek in the windows. We ran like the blazes when we heard a noise. We all assumed the house was haunted.

Harry Troeger, who died in 2008 at the age of 92, was Miami’s Henry Thoreau: a unique man who lived an unusually solitary life in what was, back then, the sticks. Harry was a pioneer.

As a small child I was too timid to say little more than hi when he walked by, heading (I was told) to his job at a movie theater.

Recently, I read in the Miami Herald that his house had been sold to a contractor because of unpaid taxes. The taxes had lapsed in large part because the county was forwarding the bill to an old out-of-date address where Harry lived in the late 1940s.

The article indicated that the house was in danger of being torn down. There was hope, however: it came in the form of a small band of merry Don Quixote types led by Amy Creekmur. The “Friends of Harry” (aka the FOH) were scrambling to make an offer to purchase and save the property.

The lady’s name was familiar. By chance, several weeks earlier, out of curiosity, I checked county records to see who was recorded as the owner of my childhood home. Amy Creekmur had purchased the house I grew up in.

But neither Amy nor the troops that made up FOH were able to move fast enough to save Harry Troeger’s house. His house was brought down. The coral stones he had used for the construction were moved. The wood discarded. A unique part of our local history lost.

It is not reasonable or expected that every old house or historic building be saved. And it is understood that there are many who would save none. To them, the properties are old buildings with no value.

But I believe most of us seek to save some links from our past. Harry Troeger’s house once had historical designation but the agency that granted the status took it away. For me, it is hard to believe that there was a more worthy candidate for continued preservation. Harry Troeger’s house was one of our most vivid links to our past.

I can close my eyes and relive how Dade County was years ago. Sadly losing Harry Troeger’s house takes that ability away from others.

Addendum from the Miami Herald

Troeger built the cabin, which was loosely divided into a wash room, bedroom and reading room, by hand out of coral rock and Dade County pine in 1949. Troeger, who made the cabin his home for nearly 60 years, lived a simple life: no electricity, no car, no running water, only a pump he built himself. The cabin walls were lined with books about Buddhism and works by Emerson.

In 1998, the county deemed the home “unsafe” and threatened to tear it down. When friends and neighbors rallied, the county designated the home as historic and Troeger was allowed to live out his life in his home. In 2008, he died in his bed at age 92.

Little did we know when Ben and I got married in Havana in 1958 and came to Miami for our honeymoon that this city would be our home for the rest of our lives.

We spent two wonderful weeks in Miami Beach in a hotel named “Sands,” and visited all the tourist attractions, such as Vizcaya, the Seaquarium, Coral Castle, the Boom Boom Room at the Fontainebleau Hotel, Eden Roc, Castaways and so on. Miami was a sleepy town where all restaurants closed before 10 o’clock. However, there was night life on Miami Beach.

We came back to our peaceful lives in Cuba, but on December 31, 1958, the communist government took over.

Every day we were waiting for something to happen that would end that horrible nightmare. We could not comprehend how the American government would allow a communist regime with Russian missiles, 90 miles away.

In 1963, the American Red Cross put together a fleet of several cargo ships to transport the Bay of Pigs prisoners and their families to the United States. At this point, we decided to leave our country. We had to abandon all possessions and leave everything behind. It was heartbreaking. We came in the berths of a ship named American Surveyor, and because we both were fluent in English, we were selected to be the ship’s translators.

We were given one cot for every two people, but I was bringing a 9-month-old baby girl to her parents in Miami, so she got our cot. My parents, Mariano Cordova and Dulce Maria Tascon, and my brother-in-law, Daniel, also came with us in this ship. We brought our dog, Canela, as well. We encountered extremely rough weather and as a result, the trip, which normally would have taken 12 hours, lasted 20. Parents with babies were bringing them in shoe boxes (for lack of cribs). It was really horrific.

We finally arrived at Port Everglades on April 29, 1963, all disheveled and dirty from the ship furnaces. We were transported on buses to the old Opa-locka airport where our relatives and friends were waiting for us. I gave the baby to her parents and never heard from them again. She must be 51 years old by now. I have always wondered what became of her — did she marry, and does she have any children? Has she ever been told how she came from Cuba and who brought her?

Because Ben’s relatives were living in Miami Beach, we started our life there and rented a one-bedroom apartment on Ocean Drive in the “Ocean Front Apartments.” It belonged to two older brothers and a sister who were marvelous with us refugees. They learned to speak Spanish and played dominoes with us. It was like a big family.

I remember the two movie theaters, the Cameo and the Cinema, which showed movies for 25 cents before 6 o’clock, and after that it would go up to 50 cents. We ran like crazy to get to the movies before 6 p.m. We were so far behind in the movie business that any film was brand new to us.

I landed a secretarial job at the Mercantile National Bank at 420 Lincoln Road. My husband was offered a position as a teacher’s aide at Southside Elementary in downtown Miami, where all of the newly arrived Cuban children were studying. He served as an interpreter, teacher’s aide, worked at the school office, and did whatever the principal would ask him to do, such as bringing her coffee and doughnuts from the Royal Castle nearby. This school has been designated a historical landmark in downtown Miami.

We were able then to rent a two-bedroom apartment on Euclid Avenue. My brother-in-law slept on the couch and got a job at a Hialeah factory making plastic hangers. He did not own a car and had to take two buses from Miami Beach to Hialeah to get to his job on time. Later on, he bought himself a 1952 Chevrolet for $250. It felt like a Rolls Royce to him.

Our family outings were to Crandon Park for picnics or to Rickenbacker Causeway to fish. They were simple times, but very happy. We remember the small zoo at Crandon Park with lots of parrots and an old lion.

We became proud American citizens on July 4, 1970 in a swearing ceremony held at the Dade County Auditorium.

One Mother’s Day we all went to Shorty’s in Kendall to celebrate, but my mother fell ill and we took her to Mercy Hospital, where she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She passed away two weeks later at the ripe age of 54.

We decided to leave Miami Beach and were able to buy our first home in the Coral Gate neighborhood in 1966, where a two-bedroom, one-bath would go for $15,000, with $450 down and $110 per month.

I remember that Ben only had a $10 bill in his pocket and that was what the realtor, Fred G. Smith, accepted as our initial down payment. That night, he came to our home, we gave him a check for the full down payment, signed the contract and he returned the $10 to us. I understand this area was developed in the 1950s for World War II veterans under the G.I.Bill.

My father was living with us, and he shared a bedroom with our son, George. We lived one block off Miracle Mile and our outings were confined to McCrory’s and F.W. Woolworth, and Sundays to the ponies and Burger King. I remember the park on Northwest 22nd Avenue, which belonged to the Police Benevolent Association, where all the neighborhood children went and had a fantastic time. We used to pick green peppers, tomatoes and strawberries at 117th Avenue, where Kendall is now a bustling neighborhood, and brought home bags full of freshly picked vegetables and fruits.

We decided to move to a younger neighborhood full of children and excellent nearby schools, Coral Park Estates, where we have lived for the last 40 years. George attended Coral Park Elementary, then Rockway Middle School, Miami Coral Senior High, Miami-Dade Community College and finally, FIU.

When he married Janet, they decided to buy a home in the same neighborhood so that their children would attend these schools. My granddaughter, Gia, attends Coral Park Elementary and is now in fifth grade. The cycle repeats itself!

My husband passed away three years ago and I still live in the same neighborhood. I have been in Miami for 50 years already, longer than in my own country, and have always considered this our only homeland. Over the years, we have witnessed the transformation from a sleepy town to a beautiful and vibrant city — an experience that I wouldn’t change for all the money in the world.

Nostalgia. It is what happens to me when I start thinking about where Miami begins and where I end. This remarkable city, a nexus of comings and goings, is my homestead and refuge. Although young, I have enough “I remember when” statements to paint my childhood and youth with as much warmth as the offerings of Miami’s midday sun.

I remember when Sunset Place used to be the Bakery Centre, where inexpensive and fresh baked goods were actually sold, and which had a rare coin shop and an Eckerd’s Pharmacy on the side. Sunset Drive also had a children’s bookshop that had the most remarkable story hours that ignited my passion for reading. Saturday mornings were spent at Velvet Creme, the doughnut parlor that introduced me to crullers and provided my family and me a cozy place to start the weekend.

And how could I ever forget each hurricane? My first was Hurricane Andrew and ever since then, I keep track of Miami’s storms and their lasting effects based on the absence or damage of ficus trees in the neighborhoods. Each memory, even the ones on the surface, brings to life a part of my growing years here. These memories, vignettes really, represent the rich excess that defines my beloved city.

In the summer of 1996, my deliciously beautiful cousin Sohela came from the Netherlands to visit my family and me in Miami. This was a particularly special visit because it was her first time in Miami and my first time meeting her. I had high expectations because I had already bonded fiercely with her older sister, my cousin Sara, who in previous visits had convinced me that Sohela was a witch.

My two cousins, along with my precious mother, became model examples for me because they gave me a context for what it meant to be a modern Iranian woman. Sara and Sohela were beautiful, well-spoken, well-traveled and highly educated. Essentially, my two cousins represented everything my 12-year-old heart wanted to be when I grew up.

Having been born in Miami, and the only Iranian-American girl in my class, I often shied away from my olive skin, thick eyebrows and massive curly hair. I went by my middle name, Leslie, because it was much easier to pronounce than my first name, Saghar. I struggled with where I fit in Miami and more so, how I fit in my own skin. These cross-cultural family visits in Miami let me see the beauty of my heritage and appreciate my place in the broad spectrum of diversity in Miami.

When Sohela arrived, I was on the fence about her and used every outing to judge whether or not I was going to love her as much as I already loved Sara. When we went to swim and suntan at the Venetian Pool, where I first learned to swim, I decided to judge her by whether she could swim from the edge of one side of the pool to the cave on the other side of the pool without getting her sandwich wet. I stared her down in the cave, as we ate our perfectly dry sandwiches.

When we took her for early morning strolls at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, I quizzed her on starfruits, mangos, sabal palms and sausage trees. Would she appreciate the differences in our fruits and the different types of palm trees? At Matheson Hammock Park, I checked to see if she could spot the ridgeback of an alligator that was barely, just barely, skimming the top of the lake. Being the Miami girl that I was, I thought (and often still do) these things were important! One by one, Sohela passed my little Miami tests and with ease started to win me over.

The evening before Sohela left, we took her to South Beach. My parents, brother, Sohela and I all piled into our cream-colored Jeep and drove from our Coral Gables niche to South Beach. I watched her from the back seat taking in the sights from MacArthur Causeway. With the window lowered and her head slightly tilted out, I could see the light in her eyes as she took in the expanse of the port to our right, the beach in front, and the lights from downtown just behind us. More than anything else, I could sense she enjoyed the warm, evening breeze brushing her cheeks. As we inched our way to Ocean Boulevard, I wondered if she could hold her own in South Beach—outlandish, exotic South Beach.

We parked our car and started our stroll on Ocean Boulevard. Across the street, we heard a ruckus coming from the News Café. When we looked, we saw a row of five shirtless guys holding up large, poster score cards. As women would walk or drive by, they would rate them and hoot and holler. My heart was pounding because I wondered if they would rate Sohela and if they did, how she would fare. Holding my dad’s hand, I picked up the pace of our stride hoping that if we shuffled by quickly enough, we would go unnoticed.

What my cousin did next was so classically “Miami” that I fell in love with her forever. Sohela measured her steps and presented herself squarely in front of these men. She stretched her arms out and gave a slight bow. Sohela then slowly pivoted and awaited the reply. We stood beside her, my mom with a sassy smile and I, a bit bewildered. Sohela held court and the score cards revealed:

10! 10! 10! 10! 10!

In that moment, I soaked it all in. I remember the confident “I know!” nod my cousin gave, the rhythm of the beach, and the comforting hue of the evening sky. I started to wonder if, in that moment, there were any other place in the world as perfect as Miami for creating such an experience.

Years later, I still wonder.

Being raised in St. Louis, Miami was always that exotic place I read about. I never really thought I’d be living here.

On a trip back from Central America in 1975, my partner Jim Hewitt and I landed in Miami in February. We didn’t want to face winter up north, so we found a cheap apartment on Miami Avenue and 20th Street. A noisy place that is still there, it is wedged between a busy street, a jet flight-path and a railroad track.

In 1978 Jim and I parted in New Orleans, and by 1980 I met Brenda Williams. We fell in love and were soon living together. In 1982, we moved to Miami Beach, living at the Chesterfield Hotel on South Beach.

At that time the city still required Civilian Registration cards to work on Miami Beach, a leftover from the 1930s for monitoring seasonal workers that the State Legislature overturned in 1986. So, we got ours but never had to use them. Within a month we had moved across the bay to Miami, living in the Edgewater neighborhood off Biscayne Blvd. at 23rd Street. It was an old neighborhood with a few new multi-storied apartment buildings, but mostly old residences subdivided into apartments like the one in which we lived.

Brenda’s 15-year-old daughter Rosalyn moved down here with us and went one year to Robert E. Lee Jr. High School at 3100 NW 5th Avenue. We then enrolled Rosalyn in Miami Beach High. Normally, from where we lived she would have gone to Jackson High School on 36th Street in Allapattah, but we were leery of an inner city school in that neighborhood, so because of desegregation policy and her being black, we were able to enroll her in Beach High.

Beach High is where she met a local boy, Keith Lankford, whom she eventually married and with whom she had our two grandsons, Keith Jr. and Kevin.

Our neighborhood in those days was a pleasant place to live. One of our family traditions was to walk down the Boulevard to the Omni Mall. At the time, it was a thriving mall with Burdines and Penney’s anchors and full of eating and shopping places and even a movie theater. Our Friday destination was for pizza at Cozzoli’s, then just hang out walking the mall or take in a movie.

In 1983, Brenda and I got married at Unity on The Bay in Miami, a couple blocks from our home. Having lived together for three years it was a small wedding celebrating our life together with just the Church Notary officiating, Rosalyn and two friends as witnesses.

Brenda and I were living on Miami Beach in 1996 when we got divorced. It was amicable and we remained friends. Brenda later became ill and was diagnosed with ALS. She stayed with Rosalyn’s family in West Park until she died in August 2000 and where I visited her often. I am still a part of Rosalyn’s family and did extensive travels with my youngest grandson Kevin when he was a teenager.

I am still here, living on Miami Beach and working for the past decade at MACtown a residential facility for developmentally disabled adults in Little Haiti (Little River) Miami.

During the early 1940s, my dad was making uniforms for the Armed Forces, but by 1944 it was time to move on.

Dad had experience working in his father’s hotel in Hartford (The Hotel Bond) and his brother already owned a hotel in South Beach. When they learned The Betsy Hotel was available, Dad (Abe Libman) leased it with his brother (Lou Libman), and that began our life in Miami Beach.

The hotel was a great pride and joy. I handled the beach chairs and towels for our guests and made great tips. I knew Rocky Pomerance then, when he was just a rookie on the police force. He was on a six-month trial period, but Rocky was bright. He wore an arm band that read in Spanish that he could speak Spanish, but he couldn’t speak a word.

We leased the downstairs of the lobby of The Betsy to S & G (a gambling syndicate) and that’s where I would go and have my lunch with my brother. They would be on the phones, and we would have cold cuts – corned beef, salami, and every other kind of cold cuts you could think of, plus cold drinks and coffee, and they would help me with math homework.

When my dad entered into an agreement with the National Baptist Convention, The Betsy became one of the first hotels to allow a black convention to be held in Miami Beach. Our friends at the Henrosa Hotel around the corner promised us that nothing would go wrong, and they sat in the lobby keeping watch. It was a great convention.

When my friend Irwin Meltzer and I were teenagers, we thought a night club for teenagers would be great idea. We made a deal with the owner of the Wofford Hotel, next to the Roney Plaza, and we started the Rhythm Club, with ice cream, soft drinks, and jazz from Liberty City. It was a blast.

South Beach was a kid’s playground, but the graveyard for old people. At The Betsy, we had Mrs. Tisch, Larry and Bobby’s mother. Larry (Laurence Tisch) told me he was going to build a high-rise hotel in Bal Harbour, and call it the Americana. I told him he was nuts, too far from the beach. Was I wrong!

My brother and I went to different schools. I went to the Lear School, on West Avenue, and my brother, Larry (the smart one), went to Beach High. My brother went off to the University of Florida and I went to the Air Force.

I was stationed in San Francisco and took advantage of being in the Air Force by going to the University of California, taking night courses. I also taught judo and life-saving training. I moved up to sergeant very quickly and was discharged 3 1/2 years later.

When I returned, I got a job at the Robert Richter hotel as an assistant manager. Later, I went to the Versailles, and then I became the assistant manager at the Floridian. I ran the card games for Mike Wassell, Meyer Lansky and others, and supplied the food and was allowed to cut the pot. Later, I became the manager of the Floridian, and then the manager of the Fleetwood, next to the Floridian.

I was introduced by mail to Bleema, a very beautiful girl in Montreal, and after three years of writing, but not seeing her or calling her, I went to the Cornell School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca, N.Y. My father said I was so close to Montreal, I had to meet her.

Three dates and now 58 years later, we are still married, with four children and seven grandchildren. What a lucky break. You should always listen to your parents. We came back to Miami Beach, and I took over the Bal Harbour Hotel as manager.

Those years were exciting. When a friend of mine, Irwin Gars, got out of law school, we started to develop commercial real estate in New England, but remained living in Miami Beach.

Much has happened in Miami Beach, and it’s still the greatest place to live. The future of Miami Beach is in the leadership it will have, and I think the new convention center will make a big difference. Miami Beach will be here for the next generation. Enjoy it – it’s one of a kind.

I became enamored with Miami in my early teens. Hearing that it was the “in” place to vacation and, as a 15 year old, wanting desperately to be “in,” I persuaded my parents to take our family on a much-needed vacation, at least according to me.

My mom, dad, two younger sisters and my roly-poly grandma (known as Bubs) all left for our vacation in our ‘50s Chevy sedan, driving from Michigan to Miami Beach for the Christmas holidays. Daddy knew everything, or so he said, and of course we didn’t need any hotel reservations. We’d just “play it by ear.”

After three and a half days of a grueling drive (no freeways then), we arrived in Miami and spent an entire day going from hotel to hotel, stuffed like sardines in a hot car (no air conditioning, either), with my baby sister crying all the way. In spite of a frantic start, our stay was heavenly: the weather, the palm trees and the Miami colors, all eye candy to me, a Midwestern teen-ager.

A few years later, I visited Miami Beach for the second time, this time accompanied by my handsome husband, both of us in our late teens. We honeymooned at the Nautilus Hotel and, upon checking in, were given the Presidential Suite. The hotel was oversold and wanted to make amends because our requested room, the least expensive in the hotel, was not available. Being young, inexperienced “adults,” we demanded our tiny room, frightened that the hotel would make us pay for the upgrade. The management agreed and gave another couple the thrill of a lifetime.

While at the Nautilus (referred to in the Midwest as “Honeymoon Heaven”) we made lifelong friends, saw the stars: Carmen Cavallaro and his orchestra at the Fontainebleau Hotel and also the very funny “Professor” Irwin Corey; ate stuffed cabbage at Wolfie’s and had fun in the sun, me wearing what became known as the “Siren” swimsuit by day and my “merry widow” corset and plastic Spring-o-Lator shoes in the evening.

Some years and four babies later, we visited Miami for our third time with our very young children. The occasion was the American Trial Lawyers convention. We stayed at the Beau Rivage in Bal Harbour, headquarters for lawyers with families.

The convention was nearby at the Americana and featured superstar lawyers . One evening we joined other lawyers and their wives (female attorneys were a scarcity in those days) at our first taste of Little Havana.

Years later, Barbara Capitman invited me to speak to her Art Deco Preservation League, comparing Deco architecture to the fashions of the period, which by this time had become a subject of my expertise. When my husband joined me later that week, Capitman’s son and his business associates talked us into investing in some of the original Deco hotels, such as the Cardozo and the Leslie. We saw my favorite side of Miami, the Deco district, and later partied with Eartha Kitt at the Hotel Victor. I took lots of pictures in the nearby Amsterdam Palace, later to become Casa Casuarina, home of my good friend, the late designer Gianni Versace. We held our “hotel” meetings at “The Pink House,” where the TV show “Miami Vice,” starring Don Johnson, was being filmed.

Yes, Miami Beach was in our blood and, after staying at various places on the beach, we bought our present home near the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc hotels – almost 30 years ago. Getting away from the Midwestern winters with frigid temperatures and snow, spending Sundays on Lincoln Road, early December at Art Basel Miami, and midwinter antique shows have added to my fun times.

The boardwalk and the clay courts have been a big draw to my tennis playing, jogging husband. The wide choice of restaurants with their famous and soon-to-be-famous chefs have also added another element of good times/good eats (and good diets) over the years…but the broadening culture base in the area, with its Design District, Arsht Center, Bass Museum of Art, the stunning and educational Wolfsonian and, of course, the gorgeous New World Center, designed by Frank Gehry, together with the always heavenly Books & Books, have given us more than just “fun in the sun.” Miami has given us a home away from home, and then some.

The U.S. Coast Guard does more than search for rafts, drugs, and errant boaters in this area. “Coasties” saved 70 merchant mariners during a blizzard off Massachusetts in 1952. It was called the “two-tanker disaster,” and this Miamian was aboard one of the Coast Guard vessels involved in the rescue of two storm-savaged ships.

I grew up on Miami Beach, and always admired those sleek Coast Guard cutters that were moored off Biscayne Bay’s islands. Who would have dreamed that some day I would be a seaman aboard a cutter involved in the T2 tanker rescue? It is still listed as one of the Coast Guard’s 10 most significant rescues.

During my summer vacations from the University of Florida, I bell-hopped at the Sands, Royal Palm, and White House hotels. My favorite bartender worked at the White House — my dad, Philip Morris. The oceanfront lounge had the greatest view of any beach hospitality venue.

Who would have known that I would meet my future wife in the nearby Club Deuce? Diane drove down from Detroit to get away from another cold, slushy Michigan spring. Two gal friends introduced her to the Deuce, now the oldest bar in Miami.

A fairly new CG cutter is moored at Port Miami. This 154-foot fast-response cutter is named the Bernard C. Webber, after a true American hero. Bernie rescued 32 stricken mariners from the tanker which had cracked in half from the fury of this unnamed storm a few miles east of Chatham, Massachusetts.

Bernie was the coxswain (skipper) of a motor lifeboat, out of Chatham
Light Station. It was 36 feet long, and had a capacity of 12 people, including a crew of three.

During the blizzard, and despite 50-foot waves, Bernie managed to cram 32 merchant seamen into his windshield-smashed boat. A 350 lb. sailor didn’t make it as he leaped from the S.S. Pendleton stern.

Cutters are named after enlisted heroes. Bernie denied that he was a hero all his life. He refused the CG gold lifesaving medal, unless his crew of three received gold also, instead of silver.

A sister ship, S.S. Fort Mercer also cracked in half, just forty miles away from the S.S. Pendleton. I was a deck-hand aboard the CGC Acushnet, which rescued 17 sailors off the foundering Mercer stern.

After a night of plowing through 60-foot seas, the CGC Acushnet arrived at the S.S. Fort Mercer’s stern section, just south of Nantucket Island. The icebreaker Eastwind was attempting to rescue three panicked sailors by pulling them over to safety in rubber rafts. One survivor had nearly drowned in the process.

Finally, our captain, John M. Joseph, had seen enough. He got permission to drift alongside the stern and convince the survivors to leap to our fantail. Capt. Joseph maneuvered the Acushnet parallel to the stern, and when we were close enough, three feet, seven distressed sailors leaped to our waiting arms. Then, rogue swells suddenly
swept us together and the vessels collided at taffrail height. CLUNK, KNEEL, HUG THE DECK!

We made a full circle and returned to rescue 11 more mariners from the tottering hulk. One hefty mariner slipped on our railing, but was snatched from the freezing water by our two bosun mates. [The word is boatswain, but the common term uses the pronunciation and spelling “bosun,” so I’ll let the Herald folks make that determination.] He explained that he wore his new shoes to make the leap. Another mariner landed on our fantail wearing two suits and two overcoats. In the chaos, he had neglected to grab a shirt.

I was third in the catch-and-hold rescue line, and was escorting a successful jumper to the pharmacist mate’s cubbyhole for his shot of brandy. “Hey, Doc!” I yelled. “How about me? I’m just as wet and cold as he is.” Doc replied, “Get this guy a shirt, and we’ll think about it.” He didn’t and neither did I, with my innards doing flip-flops.

Another merchant seaman told me, “That was the greatest demonstration of seamanship I have ever seen. It was also the worst storm I have been through in 20 years at sea.” Dented, but not beaten, or cracked, the “Mighty A” then headed northwest to drop the survivors at the Boston base.

Tally of the tragedy: 14 lost at sea, 57 rescued from foundering vessels.

To me, it was the most harrowing and exciting three days of my life.

Decades later, the CGC Acushnet was stationed in Miami. She was one of 24 cutters which helped ferry 125,000 downtrodden refugees from Cuba to Florida in the Mariel Boat Lift. In case you forgot, that historical event occurred from April to October of 1980. In three years, I got to see a panorama of America: Portland, Maine; Boston; Baltimore; San Juan; Guantanamo; and finally, the 180-foot buoy-tender CGC Bramble, in Miami Beach. This was before the Coast Guard base was built on Watson Island, so we were moored alongside Alton Road, just south of Fifth Street.

Glad to be back in Miami, but it took me months before I would go fishing with friends in their tiny 24-foot skiff.

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky in January 1944, what you would call a war baby.

My mother and father were both born in Louisville and attended school in Louisville. They met at the old Anchorage High School and were married in 1941.

My father became a pilot in the Army Air Force in late 1942 and was serving in England late 1943 and early 1944. His plane was shot down over Germany on April 1, 1944 and none of the crew made it through the crash and burn.

My mother bought a car and a trailer from my grandfather, a Chevrolet dealer, and then headed south. Mother, my grandmother, and I made it to Tampa, Florida, after driving through Alabama in the dead of winter.

She was told one of the best parks was on the east coast at Briny Breezes, and after checking out the park, she decided to take us and the trailer there. Just outside of the park was the Jungle Inn Bar, a favorite hangout for singles in those days. My stepfather, his brother, and uncle were working on construction of new homes in the Boynton-Delray Beach area. My mother, a lonely war widow, and my stepfather, lonely war vet, met each other at the Jungle Inn and six weeks later wedding bells were ringing at the Lutheran Church in Delray.

They lived in the park for about six months after this and ended up renting a home in downtown Boynton Beach. Within a year, they purchased a home in Delray Beach and moved just before the 1947 hurricane. They constructed a small, two-bedroom cottage on the rear of this property and would rent out the house to winter visitors and live in the cottage.

My stepfather remained in the construction business until 1957 when he suffered several strokes on Easter Sunday, ending his home construction business. At one point, he worked with an investor, constructing several homes in Boynton Beach. My father had to make many trips to Miami to see the investor while the development of this street was taking place.

Over the years, we made many trips to Miami to attend some of the attractions such as the zoo and the Jungle Gardens. After my father’s strokes, he went to work for a company in Boca Raton that did business all over the United States.

They would have an annual picnic at Crandon Park in Miami. Several times when my parents had to fly out of town for a special vacation, they would leave from the old Miami International Airport.

I attended school at Delray Lutheran Elementary School, then, I was part of the first sixth grade class at Plumrose Elementary School in Delray, Boynton Beach Junior High, Seacrest High School, and, I finished high school at Kentucky Military Institute in Lyndon, Kentucky, which had winter headquarters in Venice, Florida. I finished school at Palm Beach Junior College in Lake Worth.

My wife and I met at the First Baptist Church in Delray Beach Florida, and in 1965 were married at First Baptist. We left Boynton in September, 1965, and moved to Louisville unfortunately, our moving van did not make it that far.

Somehow it went off a mountain in Tennessee and that was the last we saw of most of our possessions and wedding gifts. We had moved to Louisville, because I was going to work for my father’s family business. The Eline Realty Company has been in business, either selling homes, building homes, or selling Chevrolets, since 1913.

I will always have a fondness in my heart for South Florida and the twenty years I spent growing up there. My wife and I still enjoy coming to the Panhandle every spring for rest and relaxation. The place we go to has only one fast-food restaurant in the whole county.

The east coast has gotten somewhat overcrowded with people, roads, and buildings the last 30 years, but that is progress.

I was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania and moved to Ft. Pierce, Florida, in June of 1940. Shortly after we moved to Ft. Pierce the Japanese attacked Hawaii and we entered WWII.
Back then the newspapers were not allowed to print everything that was going on. There was a slogan: “a slip of the lip will sink a ship!”
When a boat was blown up off the coast of Fort Pierce, we could feel the vibration in our homes. There was no news on the radio or anything in the paper and for some reason we never talked about it. I think being teenagers, we had no idea how serious it all was.
One late afternoon, two girlfriends and I were sitting on the beach watching a convoy of several big ships go by. They were so close that we could see the sailors wave their shirts at us and we knew they were watching us. That night every one of those ships was sunk. We went to the beach the next day and watched the ships still burning—I don’t know if there were any survivors. This was not on the news or in the paper.

The Ft. Pierce beach was an island by itself and the only way to it was over a drawbridge. There were a few houses on the beach, a Coast Guard station, a Coast Guard tower that was manned 24/7 and a casino with a dressing room, rest room, and a snack bar that was right on the beach.

The Coast Guard fellows had one day off, one day stand by, and one day duty on the tower. It was within walking distance of the casino. They usually spent a lot of their “time-off days” at the casino. As dating teenagers, we too spent our free time at the casinos when we went to the beach. As we had no cars and gas was rationed, we rode our bikes everywhere or we walked.

One night Hazel and I went to a movie and in the middle of it, an usher came in and announced that all Coast Guard men were to report to duty, then all Coast Guard auxiliary were to report, and then any doctors were to report to the hospital, and so on until there were just a few of us left in the theatre.

When I got home, my dad took us over and parked our car by the hospital and we saw ambulances go to the hospital and then to the funeral home. Later we learned a whole American convoy had been bombed, burned, and sunk. We often heard bombing blasts that were so drastic that our windows and walls shook. A couple of places in town could hardly keep glass in their windows because of the vibrations.

We had a United Service Organization (USO) in Fort Pierce which organized programs, services, and entertainment for the troops. Any young, unmarried women who wanted to volunteer had to be approved by a committee of the organization before they could participate in the activities.

All activities were well chaperoned. Camp Murphy, now Jonathon Dickenson State Park, was a radar military base, located south of Stuart. They would bus us girls to Camp Murphy once a week to a dance. The bus was stopped at the base entrance and thoroughly inspected. We were not allowed to leave the bus until we got to the dance hall and then we were escorted by military men on each side of the sidewalk and not allowed to leave the dance hall at any time.

Ft. Pierce was financially in bad shape during the war. There were no tourists and no money was coming in. The politicians were trying to get a military base to come into town to bring in money and finally, a surprise! A train load of sailors came into Ft. Pierce; no one knew they were coming so the city did not know where to put them or how to feed them.

A Red Cross city manager and everyone in town went to work to solve this problem and the result was an amphibious Navy training base in Ft. Pierce. They took over the south beach which included all the mosquitos and sand flies! The beach closed to everyone except military. Again we had a lot of explosions as they built concrete waits and then practiced blowing them up. By then, we were used to the explosions so didn’t think anything about them.

During the time I lived in Ft Pierce I met my husband Les who was in the Navy as Medical officer. After discharged from the Navy, Les took employment in banking and was also in the National Guard. Over time his banking career took him down the east coast of Florida and eventually landed in Miami were we took up permanent residency in Homestead. We’ve been here since 1972 and love it.