Month: February 2017

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.

Robert Conner died on March 3, 2012 before he was able to finish compiling his Miami Story. His wife Linda Conner submitted the article for publication on the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death:

I was born at Jackson Memorial Hospital, but my life really began when I was fortunate enough to be adopted by Wilton and Enid Conner.

Dad, “WW” as he was known, grew up in Washington, D.C. Mom is from Marietta, Ohio, and grew up on a farm. Dad was transferred to Miami by the U.S. Quarantine Service in 1943.

They first lived on Biscayne Boulevard, and then, in 1946, bought a home in Hialeah. The house was quite small, especially by today’s standards, at about 700 square feet and it cost less than $6,000. In those days, there was a cow pasture across the street and Hialeah was a very small town. Henry Milander was the mayor – often referred to as “King Henry” – and he got me my first job, with the trash department.

Most of my friends went to Hialeah High School, but I ended up at Miami Springs High the first year it opened. During high school, I joined the civil air patrol just so I could go flying in airplanes. We spent the most time in C119 Boxcars, flying out of Opa-Locka airport, and had bivouacs in various places, including Greynolds Park.

I looked forward to the special occasions when we ate out at Pickle Herring Charlie’s or went for ice cream at Jahn’s on Miracle Mile. We went to the Essex theater on Hialeah Drive, the Olympia Theater downtown and the Drive-in on LeJeune. On the way to the drive-in or to Jahn’s, you might get stopped by an airplane on LeJeune Road, because the hangars were on the east side of the street and they would taxi across to the runways on the west side.

The family attended the Presbyterian church and mom sang in the choir. After high school, I was going to go to Central America to work with a missionary group from the church, but plans changed and my girlfriend, Pat Walters, and I got married. We found a garage apartment in Biscayne Park and I went to work for Winn-Dixie, and a little while later we welcomed our daughter, Tamara. As too often happens when couples marry young, Pat and I parted ways and Tami now lives in Alabama with her husband, Charles Anderson, an Iraq war veteran.

I stayed on in South Florida and went to work for flood control, part of the water management agency. My route took me all over the county and out into the Everglades. Later, I became a manager at Arby’s on Coral Way, and started the most interesting part of my life.

It was the early 1970s when I became a volunteer at Switchboard of Miami, often referred to as the “hippie hotline.” The cast of characters volunteering at Switchboard was an interesting one – Vietnam vets, commune members, bored-but-committed rich kids, high school and college students looking to find their way.

Volunteers were given basic first-aid training and on-the-job training for answering the phones. Phone calls also ran the gamut from callers just looking for someone to talk with and listen to their problems, to partiers looking to identify the drug they were about to ingest, to the more serious calls from people contemplating suicide and those who had taken too much of a drug and were afraid to go the hospital.

We also directed people to various agencies for everything from food stamps, to housing, to spousal or child abuse. We ran first-aid rooms or tents at all the concerts, which was a particularly popular job with volunteers as it got us into all the concerts free.

In the summer of ’72 we had a call that there was a riot on Miami Beach and all hands were needed to go to Flamingo Park to render first aid and help with the situation. It was the Republican National Convention and many were braced for trouble.

Miami Beach was blessed to have at that time an amazing police chief in Rocky Pomerance. Chief Pomerance was smart and calm, and he created a “no bust zone” in Flamingo Park . So rather than a riot, we arrived to find “Beat Poet” Alan Ginsburg sitting in a large circle reading his poetry and smoking – and he was completely nude. It was quite a sight.

I would say that it was a wasted trip but something happened that would change my life forever. I grabbed a ride home from someone with a car and, when I got in, I met Linda Schimmel, my future wife. We got married in 1975 at the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. Linda always says it was a much larger wedding than originally planned, as every time I ran into old friends I would invite them. It was an interesting guest list and the best party I ever went to!

At the time, I was working as a bridge tender running the Brickell Avenue Bridge, and then I transferred into bridge maintenance. Eventually, I left work with the state to pursue my talent, which was working with plants. I went to work as grounds foreman at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, and then in plant cultivation and production, and finally to work for myself doing landscaping and lawn maintenance.

Linda and I loved to eat out, but many of our favorite places no longer exist. Later in life, we were not much into concerts anymore, but were big Marlins fans and really looked forward to the new ballpark.

From Linda Conner:
Bob was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and suffered many challenges. Back when “Miami Stories” started appearing, we began working on our own stories and, as Bob’s health declined, it fell by the wayside. He passed away March 3, 2012, never having quite finished, and never getting to sit in Marlins Park. As his wife, I have gone back and done a little “polishing” of Bob’s Miami Story, but it is a fond remembrance of his life in South Florida.

My memories of Miami begin 34 years ago in 1980 when I came here for the first time for a nursing internship at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. I had completed three years of nursing school at the University of Pittsburgh and came to Miami with a classmate for the summer. We lived in what was called the Cedar’s North Tower in the Civic Center. There were other nursing students from all over the country and we bonded very well. Of course, Cedars hoped to recruit us after graduation as there was a nursing shortage at that time. Our first weekend in Miami unfortunately was interrupted by the McDuffie riots. We all called our parents to reassure them that we were safe in spite of having swat team officers on the roof of our building as we watched parts of the city on fire.

I met my future mother-in-law during my first week on the job. She was a nurse at Cedars and upon meeting me she replied, “Have I got a son for you!” Our first date was to see the movie “Dressed to Kill” with Angie Dickenson and Michael Caine at the Omni theatre. By the second date, it was true love.

At the end of the summer, I returned to Pitt to complete my final two semesters of my nursing degree before moving permanently to Miami after graduation. I took my nursing boards at the Miami Expo on Milam Dairy Road and began working at Cedars. I lived again temporarily in the Cedars North Tower where my husband proposed to me on the rooftop overlooking my new city. We were married in November of 1981 and we bought our first townhouse in West Kendall when the home loan interest rates were greater than 15%.

My husband grew up near 8th Street and 71st Avenue and so he introduced me to Gold Star Deli, Sarrusi’s, Pumpernik’s, Arbetter’s and the Blue Grotto. We explored the Keys, Marco Island, and his family’s favorite destination: Sanibel Island. We bowled at Bird Bowl on a league, and shrimped off the bridges of the Rickenbacker Causeway.

We had two daughters who spent lots of time at the new Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center in after-school care and summer camp. My husband and I took ballroom dancing and salsa classes at Miami-Dade College in Kendall. We picked strawberries and tomatoes in a field where Town and Country is now. Some of our favorite family activities included strawberry milkshakes at Burr’s when visiting Monkey Jungle, nighttime bike trips at Shark Valley when there was a full moon, kayaking at nine-mile pond in Everglades National Park, snorkeling at Pennekamp Park, and swimming at Venetian Pool.

In August of 1992, we were on vacation with our children in West Virginia when Hurricane Andrew struck. We had people check on our home and found out it was uninhabitable. My daughters and I stayed up north for another week and when the airport opened my husband flew back to Miami with a brand-new chain saw as his carry on. How times have changed. He knew what a useful commodity it would be with all the downed trees reported to us by the neighbors. As he drove from the airport to survey the damage, he found it difficult to find the house without the usual landmarks. Luckily our neighbors were willing to take us all in until our house was ready to move back into in mid December.

During the next several years we got the house and yard back into shape. My husband, who has a degree in horticulture, restored our yard with lots of fruit trees including grapefruit, orange, lemon, lime, and tangelo trees and other native plants. However, in 1999, a citrus canker outbreak occurred putting all of the state’s citrus trees at risk and so an eradication program was enacted. One day after work we came home to find all of our beloved citrus trees cut down and in the swale of our house. After a few days of moping, we decided to make the most of our now barren yard by putting in a swimming pool. This was the best investment for our family because we have spent many hours of quality time together trying to stay cool during the hot summer months.

I feel so fortunate to have had the experience of living in this multi-cultural city where I learned to love churros and hot chocolate, pan con lechón, chicharrones, and becoming bilingual while working in an ambulatory center on Calle Ocho. My husband and I have a pool surrounded by mamey, lychee, dragon fruit, mangoes, atemoya and papaya. We continue to find new activities in Miami to enjoy, for example the South Dade Cultural Center, Cosford Cinema, the Tower Theater with Azucar ice cream across the street, O Cinema, and Schnebly winery where our daughter was married. I love living here in Miami and am so grateful to my mother-in-law for giving me a reason to come back permanently.

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.

On Sundays when I was little, my dad and I would take the tandem bike and ride from our home in North Miami to the beach. Most of the time, my legs were just along for the ride and rested lightly on the rotating pedals, allowing my dad to do the hardest pedaling. With the 19-mile round trip, I preferred to save my energy for galloping through the waves. I started tap dancing when I was four, and it was always more fun to shuffle and lindy through the waves. The flapping of my feet struck the water, and resonated with even more satisfying sound than the beat of metal taps on a wooden dance floor. It was always a celebration, dancing.

While my dad and his dad were football players at my age, I was never interested in sports. There was, and still is, something magical that happens when I step out onto a stage. The feeling is a strange cross between everlastingness and fleetingness. And somewhere in between the -ness, I have always remained caught. For me – much more than the acknowledgement that dance is a language and that dance is a representation of everyday experiences – dance is much like life: some days it feels like forever, and then there comes a day when there are no more days. In this way, dance is also a measure of time. And this love for dance has helped me through many difficult times, including the loss of my mom when I was 9.

One of the best memories I have of my mom is standing on the tops of her feet as she danced around the living room. I remember the feeling of shifting from one foot to the other, the continuity of her movements and my role as her abiding partner, neither controlling nor directing the dance but a part of it nonetheless. After she passed away, I would stand in the middle of the living room, close my eyes and try to recreate our waltz. It was never the same.

My mom started me in dancing. Once a week, we’d all get in the car together and drop her off at an adult tap class in North Miami. My dad and I would then continue on to Donavan’s Bar & Grill on Northwest 7th Avenue. Donavan’s had billiards and French fries, and we’d hang out there for the hour or so of her class. Eventually, I grew curious about my mom’s tap class and began to stay and watch. This led to being enrolled in dance class myself and it was strange at first – not the same as leaping through ocean waves or whirling into dizziness at home, but I soon caught on.

I am very close with my dad, and for a few years after my mom died, he too became closer with his. Around this time, my dad signed me up for a football summer camp. I tried football, but I prayed for rain every day we had practice. Most of the other boys at Bunche Park already understood football and played it in their own backyards, much how I practiced dance in mine. I remember doing sprints – that was the one thing for which I was passable. I could run without tripping on my own two feet. Aside from one kid I befriended with a perpetually runny nose, who could also burp on command, the entire experience was pointless. I have a faint memory of my dad bringing Grandpa Lou to one of the practices (when I had been unsuccessful with my rain invocation), and as terrible as I was, my grandpa seemed far more pleased with my mediocre football than my love for dance.

A few years later, my grandpa passed away. And for another year or so after that, his ashes and wristwatch waited on the mantle. After watching the movie Around the Bend with Christopher Walken and Michael Caine, my dad and I awoke from our moratorium. We walked outside and stood on the dock behind our house to cast his ashes into the dark lake, leading into a canal of brackish water that weaves through many of the neighborhoods in Biscayne Gardens. After minutes of silence, my dad turned to me and said, “Give us a little soft shoe, son.” So there I stood holding my grandfather’s ashes in a cardboard box and tapping out “Tea for Two.” I felt highly inappropriate doing this, believing this ceremony required a more solemn reflection.

After making sure all of Grandpa Lou was out of the box and into the lake, I noticed for the first time just how cathartic dancing is for me. The tapping out of the rhythms brought me back to my best memories of my mom, and suddenly this was not so much about solemnity as it was of celebration. Celebrating life that can be over as quickly as a dance. And it is in this precious fragility I now find my place as a dance artist and choreographer.

Much like my earliest experiences with dance, I am very interested in creating dance for non-traditional and unexpected locations. We have plenty throughout Miami – secret places we drive past everyday without ever knowing of them. I was recently awarded a Knight Arts Challenge grant for a project called Grass Stains that will help commission and mentor other artists interested in creating work that highlights Miami’s hidden spaces. As I continue to change as an artist, my early memories of growing up in North Miami inform my art making and remind me of those in-between moments, of everlastingness and fleetingness, the dances that have ended and those whose music hasn’t yet begun.

My father met and married my mother in 1929 and I arrived in 1930. Her mother came to Miami from Cleveland, OH, in 1923 to begin a new life. She opened a tropical fruit stand on the front porch of her coral rock house at Northeast 26th Street and Second Avenue.

The fruit was purchased early in the morning at the farmer’s market on Northwest 12th Avenue and 20th Street, and the market is still there. She then became a real estate broker and, after many years of buying and selling real estate, she purchased a small hotel on Miami Beach. She became a civic leader and was presented with a gold key to the city by the mayor.

When I was seven years old, I watched the store as I ate my nickel ice cream cone and observed the trolley cars go by on Second Avenue. On the weekends, my family and I took the trolley car that ran down the middle of the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach. We went swimming in the ocean and built sand castles. Though the trolley is long gone, now there is talk of bringing it back to run once again. As the saying goes, “Everything old is new again.”

I attended Beach High, where many of the students were from families that were either very rich or very poor. However, at school, everyone played and worked together and we had a great time. Latin music was the rage and many of the boys had Cubavera jackets and suede shoes.

The Lindy Hop was a popular dance, and Beach High’s big patio was the place where we had wonderful dance parties. Sports were a big part of high school life. I played tennis and won the Beach High tennis trophy. I was initiated into the B club and joined a fraternity with Irwin Saywitz, who became an owner of Joe’s Stone Crab restaurant.

After graduating, I attended the University of Florida, studying architecture with Kenny Treister, who later built the Mayfair Center in Coconut Grove. We were members of the ZBT fraternity and one day made a bold decision to write to Frank Lloyd Wright and ask him to design a fraternity house for us. He did — it was brilliant.

Unfortunately, the fraternity could not afford to build it. Wright came to Gainesville for two exciting days to present the plans and to meet and lecture with all the young aspiring architects and the faculty. That was the highlight event of the school year.

After graduating, I entered the Navy Officer’s Candidate School. This was the time of the Korean conflict and all boys over 18 had to serve. After serving three and a half years, I was honorably discharged as an LTJR (junior lieutenant). During this period I was on an aircraft carrier stationed in the Mediterranean. My next tour of duty was as an aid to the commander-in-chief of the fifth fleet in Norfolk, VA, where I greeted all of his visitors.

After my discharge, I returned to my home in Miami, where I began my career as an architect with Bob Bleemer, a high school friend. We opened a very small office on 40th Street in the Design District and were successful. It was a time of construction and growth in Miami and we were a part of it.

We borrowed money and built an office building in the neighborhood and eventually employed 35 designers and architects. We became well known and designed more than 40 condominium interiors in Miami, plus many projects around the country and in South America. Miami grew and we grew with it.

After 20 years, I partnered with Pepe Calderin and we became Levine Calderin & Associates. We won numerous awards.

I received a lifetime achievement award from the American Institute of Architects, and then finally retired to spend time as president of the American Foundation for the Arts, which I founded. In the 1980s, we created an exhibition space in the Design District on 40th Street and Second Avenue. This was a period when Miami only had a few galleries and a small museum of art, and The American Foundation of the Arts played a major role in Miami’s developing cultural life.

We helped bring numerous artists to Miami for exhibitions and lectures, among them Christo who draped the islands of Biscayne Bay in pink and pop artist Alex Katz. We also gave many local artists their first show and produced beautiful catalogs for each exhibition.

During the creation of the museum, I learned about the artist Purvis Young, who lived in Overtown. The Miami Herald ran a big story with a color picture of “Goodbread Alley” where Purvis lived. The article said that many of the wooden homes and fences in the neighborhood were to be demolished, including paintings that were nailed to the houses.

The next day, I went to “Goodbread Alley,” met Purvis and purchased 80 of his paintings. Purvis’ work is now in many museums and private collections throughout America.

The city has grown and today has many outstanding cultural institutions. It is a vibrant, cultured, and fabulous place to live. It was wonderful to be a part of the growth of the Magic City.