Category: Miami Stories

In 1950, my dad Hyman “Hank” Bergman left his hometown of Baltimore, Md. to study at the University of Miami on the G.I. Bill.

During World War II, he was a war hero (awarded the Silver Star medal, Bronze Star medal, 4-Bronze Battle Stars, and the Combat Infantryman’s Badge) who served with the “Blue Devils” of the U.S. Army’s 88th Infantry Division.

My mom Anne joined my dad, and the newlyweds moved to Third Street and Jefferson Avenue on Miami Beach. My dad attended college in the mornings and in the afternoons he trained in boxing at the newly opened 5th Street Gym run by Chris and Angelo Dundee. My dad had been an undefeated amateur boxer in Maryland (9-0, 9 knockouts) and thought about a professional career. However, after a 1951 sparring match with local welterweight contender, Bobby Dykes, my dad retired from boxing.

After graduating from the University of Miami in 1952 with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, my dad began a teaching career for Miami-Dade County Schools. He taught 6th grade for more than 30 years at Central Beach Elementary School, later renamed Leroy D. Fienberg Elementary.

In 1957, my family moved to the North Beach section of Miami Beach, where I was born in Mt. Sinai Hospital. I was the only child. Back then, many of the side streets in North Beach were unpaved and covered in white sand.

Growing up in Miami Beach during the 1960s and 1970s was a wonderful time. There were 13 movie theaters (Beach, Carib, Flamingo, Lincoln, Colony, Cameo, Roxy, Cinema, Plaza Art, Sheridan, Roosevelt, Surf, and Normandy) and many showed double features for 35 cents.

There were live Yiddish shows at the Beach Theater on Lincoln Road during the peak winter months. I’d go with my grandmother, Fannie, and we saw such stars as Georgie Jessel and Henry “Henny” Youngman. During the summer, I went to special kiddy shows on Saturday morning, and later as a teenager, to midnight movies.

On Miami Beach, everyone knew most police officers by their first names. Rocky Pomerance was the “coolest” police chief in Miami Beach, and Mayor Chuck Hall drove around in a car passing out candy bars to the kids. I remember the big library bus, which would park in front of Stillwater Park on 85th Street, and I would check out books about Davy Crockett, Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill Cody.

My cousin Harvey Steckler and I appeared on popular local kids’ television shows in the 1960s. We were seen on the Skipper Chuck Show, Banjo Billy, Charlie Baxter’s Circus Big Top, and Jumpin’ Jack. I won free tickets on the Jumpin’ Jack show to the premiere of the movie Operation Crossbow, starring George Peppard, at the Loew’s 170th Street theater.

Royal Castle on 72nd Street and Collins Avenue was my favorite place to eat. They had the best mini burgers, birch beer soda, and lemon pie. A whole meal was less than one dollar.

I went to Biscayne Elementary School where I was a member of the service league in the fifth grade and the co-captain of the patrols in sixth grade. In those days, patrols went outside, even in the pouring rain, to stop traffic, so kids could cross the street.

My first field trip was in the fourth grade to Cape Canaveral. We traveled by Greyhound Bus and it was the first time I traveled away from home without my parents, and the first time I was on an air-conditioned bus.

At Nautilus Junior High, I met the first African-American students who were bused to the Beach to attend classes. At Miami Beach Senior High School, I was a sports writer for the school’s newspaper, The Beachcomber. I also studied acting with the legendary drama teacher Jay W. Jensen. Jay and I remained friends until he passed away in 2007. Jay and I even worked together as movie extras in Last Plane Out and Let It Ride.

Beach High students were allowed to leave the campus for lunch in those days. My favorite place to hang out: Ollie’s and Lums on Lincoln Road. I had a mustache and beard in the 11th grade and was able to order and drink my first beer at Lums in 1975.

In 1972, I followed in my father’s footsteps and trained to be an amateur boxer. My dad took me to the 5th Street Gym. Outside the gym, former heavyweight contender of the 1930s, King Fish Levinsky, would be selling neckties for one dollar. Inside the gym, I met world champions Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Ellis, Willie Pastrano, Luis Rodriguez and Roberto Duran. My nickname was “Big Train” because my opponents said my punch felt like they were being hit by a train.

In 1975, I worked (for free) as a sparring partner for Ken Norton. In one of my first amateur matches, I lost by a knockout to a fighter named Phil Rourke. Phil would go on to become movie star Mickey Rourke.

I also trained at the Elizabeth Virrick Gym in Coconut Grove. When I fought in the 1981 Golden Gloves against Larry Byrd, the price of a ticket was two dollars. My amateur career ended in 1983 and I compiled a record of 17-4 (17 knockouts). I also kickboxed and fought future action film star Jean-Claude Van Damme in 1979. I ended up winning 61 of 71 kickboxing matches.

I graduated from Miami-Dade College, Florida International University, and earned a master’s degree from Nova Southeastern University. Like my father, I became a Miami-Dade County school teacher. I taught English as a second language for adult and vocational education at Fienberg-Fisher Adult and Community Education Center (now Miami Beach Adult Education Center) for more than 30 years.

I’ve seen Miami-Dade County change over the years. I’ve seen good times and bad. My life in South Florida has been an exciting and rewarding one. But, one thing is for certain, there has never been a dull moment living here.

My mom, Jeannette Simon, nee Kronenfeld, came to Miami with her family in 1923. They left Ohio in a Model T for better weather in Palm Beach. When they came to a fork in the road, another motorist told them to head for Miami where “everything was booming.”

My grandfather, Abe Kronenfeld, opened a furniture store on Northwest 36th Street, where he sold not only to local residents, but also shipped furniture to Key West, until the Keys hurricane in 1935 destroyed the railroad. My family rode out the 1926 hurricane in their collapsing, roofless house on Northwest 45th Street. They were caught by surprise in the eye of the storm when the other half roared down upon them while they were surveying damage to the furniture store. Their ice box was the only thing in the house that survived the storm.

It was Yom Kippur, so my grandmother prepared food for dinner and invited all of the neighbors to have a picnic dinner with them in the front yard on blankets and sheets. Mom went on to graduate from Buena Vista Elementary, Robert E. Lee Junior High and Miami Edison Senior High School and then went to FSU (an all women’s college at that time). She taught Sunday School at Beth David and was president of Hadassah.

My dad, Herbert Lee Simon, moved with his family to Miami in 1935. His father, Herbert A. Simon, was born and raised in Monticello, Florida, where his family had settled in the 1860s. Before settling in Miami, my grandfather was an attorney and businessman in Washington D.C. He also had a summer home in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, where he served on the council and was elected mayor.

In 1938, they built a real estate office on the corner of Northwest 27th Avenue and 23rd Street, on the railroad tracks across the street from “Johnny and Mack.” Every time the trains passed by, the whole building shook and the dust from the roadway filled the office. In the summertime, big electric fans blew hot air and more dust around. My grandfather and dad were told that Miami would never grow as far west as 27th Avenue.

Dad graduated from Miami Senior High School and then joined the family real estate business. My dad and mother, his father and mother and his brother, Merton Simon, all worked together in that office until 1968, when they all moved to Southwest 27th Avenue and 27th Street.

Family fun was always an adventure, and fishing or crabbing were favorites. The family almost always owned a boat. In the 40s and 50s, the boats were kept in the Seybold Canal. Afterwards, they were smaller and placed on trailers. Party boats were also a favorite, fishing in Biscayne Bay and loading up on big grouper, snapper, mackerel, etc. Crabbing for blue crabs in the canals along U.S. 41 (Tamiami Trail) near Everglades City was a regular weekend jaunt. After a few hours, our gunny sacks were filled with crabs and we would head home to steam them and have a feast spread on “newspaper tablecloths.”

Mom and dad married in 1940, and lived a storybook romance for 69 years. They were inseparable. They were always involved in school activities like the PTA and the Band Parents’ Association. After my sister Barbara and I graduated from high school, our parents became active in the Miami Board of Realtors, where my dad was elected president three times in three different decades. He served on City of Miami planning and zoning boards and was elected to the first Cocoanut Grove Village Council. Mom was active with the Realtor Associates, headed an anti-graffiti program in the county, and was president of the Museum of Science Guild.

Dad’s most recent honor came in 2010, when Southwest 27th Avenue from U.S. 1 to Coral Way was named “Herbert Lee Simon Avenue” by the Florida Legislature. The signage was installed on Oct. 19, 2010, a year after dad passed away.

Life was much simpler when I was growing up. We did not have a front door key until I was about 10. I walked to school at Shenandoah Elementary, where the crossing guard knew each child by name and called our home if we did not show up. On the way home, we walked by Shenandoah Candies where they made chocolate-covered coconut patties. Each afternoon, the store had “seconds” sitting out front waiting for us. In summer, there was sliced watermelon (the store only used the rind portion for sweet pickles) waiting for us.

On Thanksgiving, we always went to the Miami High/Edison football game, which filled the Orange Bowl. We would alternate “sides” each year, but it never seemed to matter, because Miami High always won. We would go during the summer for a slice of iced, cold watermelon for 25 cents on Northwest Fifth Street near the Eighth Avenue bridge, or a chocolate sundae at Puritan Dairy on Flagler Street across from the Bascom Pet Shop on 15th Avenue.

On Saturdays, we would go to the Burdine’s Tea Room and get a “Snow Princess” or a “Clown” for dessert and then go to the 5 & 10 cent store and press our noses to the store window as the doughnuts “flipped” in the doughnut machine. Or we would go to the Tower Theater on Southwest Eighth Street, and for 14 cents we could see the world newsreel, cartoon, serial, and a feature movie.

At Christmas/Hannukah, grandfather Kronenfeld took a truckload of underprivileged kids to the Tower Theater and treated them to a day at the movies and gave them a “bag of goodies” to take with them. New Year’s Eve was spent watching the Orange Bowl Parade. In those days, everything from oranges and candy to toys were tossed from the floats, and we always loaded up.

When we moved to Coral Gables, I remember the bus drivers leaving their route to drive us to our front door if it was raining. In October, the merchants in Coral Gables allowed the Ponce Junior High students to paint their big windows with Halloween murals, and awards were presented to the winners after the paintings were judged. I marched in the parade with the Ponce Junior High Band (Jessie Blum, director) in the Jr. Orange Bowl Parade. At Miami Senior High, I was active in all the band programs (Otto J. Kraushaar, director). We marched every year in the big Orange Bowl parade to the cheers of the massive crowds.

My husband, attorney Richard Lyons, and I raised our sons, Jonathan and Michael, in Miami. They grew up hearing about the “good old days” and experiencing the special, and different, Miami lifestyle of their own generation. All told, each of my family’s four generations have had wonderful but vastly differing experiences and memories of Miami.

I was born in Atlanta in 1942, but my father was the band leader at the Biltmore Hotel.

He also worked during the day at the Veterans Hospital as a physical therapist. Because my brother, George, had asthma, the doctors thought a warmer climate would be better for him, so we moved to Miami in 1946.

It is hard to know where to begin describing all the changes I have seen over these past years. Sure, life seemed so much simpler then. No I-95, no expressways or turnpikes. And yet it took less time for us to get from Miami Beach to the Gables than it does now.

We used a rotary phone, which were eventually replaced with “princess” phones. We still had a party line where one long ring meant the call was for us and three short rings meant it was for the people who shared our phone line. Phone numbers started with letters: our phone number was HIGHLAND 84321.

When we finally got our first television set, I was around 10. It was a black-and-white picture and you only got three stations: Channels 4, 7 and 10. No remote control. Yes, you actually had to get out of your chair and walk to the TV to change to another channel. And the antennae were just rabbit ears on top of the TV, which constantly needed adjusting. But we felt like we were millionaires because we were one of the lucky ones who even had a television set.

When I learned how to type, it wasn’t on a computer. I learned on a manual typewriter with a ribbon. Heaven help you if you made a mistake typing on one of those. No cut and paste in those days. (I kept my 1946 typewriter all these years, but I gave it to a friend to fix it. Now this friend has disappeared, so if he reads this article, please return the typewriter, even if it is not fixed. It is a wonderful keepsake for my grandchildren.)

I grew up in the Gables and during the summer I would walk to the Coral Gables Youth Center, which used to be one block south of Miracle Mile on Le Jeune Road. My brother worked at the A&P food store, which used to be located across the street from the Publix on Le Jeune and Andalusia. (There aren’t any more A&P’s, are there?)

In the afternoon my brother delivered the afternoon newspaper, The Miami News. On Saturdays, we attended religious school and services at what started as the Coral Gables Jewish Center in the 300 block of Palermo Avenue with Rabbi Morris Skop. It later became Temple Judea, which years later moved to its current home at U.S.1 near Granada Boulevard.

After services, we packed a lunch and spent the day at one of the three movie theaters in the Gables – usually the Miracle Theater, but we also went to the Coral or the Gables Theater.

One thing I remember is the numerous delicatessens in Miami as I was growing up. You had The Stage Deli, Wolfies, Juniors, Rascal House, The Famous Deli, Rubendales, Gold Start and Corky’s to name a few. Each one served delicious and large corned beef sandwiches and kosher dill pickles. Where have they all gone?

Once a week my family would eat at the Coral Way Cafeteria, which later became the Biscayne Cafeteria on Miracle Mile. (I continued that tradition with my husband, three children and even with my grandchildren until the cafeteria finally closed.)

For special dinners (maybe once or twice a year), we ate at the Ember’s Restaurant on the beach or the Pub on Coral Way. Of course, you can’t forget the Studio Restaurant on 32nd Avenue off Coral Way. I can still taste the special garlic bread and onion soup. The Miami Springs Villas had a restaurant that served prime rib that was second to none.

When we were young and would go out on a date we had so many wonderful places to go. We would go in large groups like a swarm of bees. Red Diamond Inn on Le Jeune had to be one of our favorites; the pizza was the best. On Miracle Mile we would go to Jahn’s Ice Cream and get the “kitchen sink.”

How can I forget the hot glazed, Krispy Kreme doughnuts when the bakery was on Tamiami Trail? It is amazing how easy it was to eat a dozen hot donuts then.

A favorite any time of the day was Royal Castle. For those who never experienced Royal Castle, you really missed a treat. Small hamburgers, grilled with onions while you were there, served on a fresh roll with the best birch beer in an ice-cold mug.

As I noted, my father was a physical therapist, and he worked at the Veterans Hospital during the day. Back then, the hospital was located in the Biltmore Hotel.

At night my dad, Shep Barish, worked as a musician and band leader. He opened at most of the hotels on Miami Beach, including the Sorrento, the Algiers, The Fontainebleau, The Eden Roc and the Doral.

Back then all the big stars came to Miami Beach. I remember when he was telling me about a “newcomer” he had played for: Frank Sinatra. I got to watch from the control room on many occasions and my favorite was Vic Damone. I never knew where my dad was going to play each night.

I remember one particular evening, when I was up for Sweetheart of my boyfriend Steve Morris’ fraternity, AEPi. After I had gotten dressed in my formal, I wanted to show my dad how I looked. I still remember the proud look on his face. He was just leaving to go to whatever gig he was playing that evening.

When Steve and I arrived at the Eden Roc Hotel, they held the candidates for Sweetheart and their escorts in a back room until the music started to play and each couple was announced.

As they announced my name and I began to walk out with Steve, I received the surprise of my life. Unbeknown to either my dad or me, his band was the one playing that evening. I could not have been happier.

I did not become the sweetheart of AEPi but I did end up marrying my escort a few years later. Steve is an optometrist in South Miami and last summer was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Optometric Association.

This June we will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Yes, we have seen a lot of changes, but change is good, and we love Miami.

Imagine you are a 26-year-old girl who has just graduated from a teaching college in Minneapolis and arrived in Miami on Sept. 17, 1926, the day before an unexpected Category 4 hurricane!

That was my mother, Lyla Waterbury Haynes, who moved here to take a teaching position.

She was planning to live with her mother, Margaret Waterbury, and her grandmother, Eva Townsend, in their old Florida wood-frame house with a screened-in front porch. They were two early Miami pioneers who came down from Wisconsin to enjoy the balmy climate.

In those days there was little or no warning of impending hurricanes and most Miamians were taken by surprise. My mother tells about how frightening it was when it struck the morning of Sept. 18, 1926, and the small frame house was pounded by wind and rain. The old homestead was located on Northwest 24th Avenue in Allapattah and was only a stone’s throw from Comstock Elementary School, which is still located in the area.

As mother recalled, most Miamians had not been evacuated because the warning did not come until a few hours before the hurricane struck. And many residents did not fully understand the fact that the hurricane was not over when the eye passed over their houses. Some people the family knew had their clothes blown off when the other side of the storm struck. After they found shelter they later returned home in empty barrels they had found.

Toward the end of the storm the roof on the garage blew off and there were other damages to the house, but it held up pretty well, considering the power of the storm. In those days the houses were built for the best exposure to the breezes; there was no air conditioning in contrast to today, when loss of electricity is really an issue.

I remember how we suffered from the intense heat after Hurricane Andrew in August 1992 without air-conditioning. The old-timers did not miss what they had never had.

My great-grandmother tells the story of her concern when the iceman did not deliver ice for several weeks. In those days refrigeration was dependent on large blocks of ice. Finally she caught up with the iceman and asked him why he was not leaving ice. He replied, “When I would call, someone answered ‘No ice today,’ so I didn’t leave it.”

The mystery was solved when the pet parrot sung out the same phrase and everyone had a big laugh. Polly the parrot was a colorful Mexican Yellowhead and lived 75 years.

My mother started work in 1926 at one of the first kindergartens in Miami Beach. She directed a Christmas program with a cast of 1,000 elementary-age youngsters. That would be a tall order these days. The Christmas gala was held in Flamingo Park on the new municipal stage at Jefferson Avenue and 11th Street.

Years later, at age 86, my mom was still working with children and listening to them read at Coral Reef Elementary, where I was an administrator for 11 years. She also volunteered at Whispering Pines and was honored as Dade County “Senior Citizen of the Year” at a luncheon, where she was recognized for her service by Barbara Bush.

She returned to Minneapolis to marry young lawyer James Haynes, and I was born there. The depression was hard on my family, and mother and I returned to Florida when I was 4 while dad looked for work and mom taught school again.

I was allowed to be in her kindergarten class but never got special privileges because I was the teacher’s child. There were 80 children in my class, which would be unthinkable today.

I remember the biggest treat was going to a five-and-dime store on Flagler Street and sitting at the counter having a hot roast-beef sandwich with mashed potatoes. I also remember being taken to beach parties on the Atlantic Ocean in Miami Beach with mother and her friends. They would light a fire and we would roast hot dogs and marshmallows. One man had a pet baby alligator that he would always bring with him.

We lived in Chicago for many years, but frequently returned to Miami to visit my grandparents. When Dad retired they moved to Southwest 128 Street in Miami. I followed with my husband, Loren Henkel, and our two small children, Julie and Richard, in 1962. It was then I started teaching fifth grade at the old Perrine Elementary on South Dixie Highway.

The Cuban Missile Crisis hit home in October and we asked the students to bring canned goods in case there was a war. It was planned that the school might serve as a shelter. We could see train cars filled with army equipment passing by on the nearby tracks.

Everyone was nervous about the prospect of a nuclear war, especially with Miami’s proximity to Cuba. Later I experienced the integration movement when I was transferred from Howard Drive Elementary to Frank C. Martin in Richmond Heights.

It became a sixth-grade center and sixth-grade teachers from five feeder schools became part of this unique configuration.

My daughter, Julie Henkel, has followed the family tradition and teaches second grade at Gateway Elementary in Homestead. My son, Richard Henkel, instructs pilots at Dean International Flight School at Tamiami Airport. So you might say, the family history of educators goes from 1926 to the present day.

My brother and I left Cuba on Aug. 23, 1961. He was 15 and I was 16.

We left our parents behind, not sure of when or if we would be together again. My mother later told me that on the trip back to our hometown of Florida in the Camaguey province, she decided they would immediately start getting the necessary documents to leave the island. They were finally able to leave in May 1962.

Meanwhile, after spending a few days with an uncle in Hialeah, we left for our final destination in New York City to live with another uncle, who was the one who had processed our papers. While we were welcomed warmly by our uncle, aunt, and two cousins, I felt as though I was navigating someplace in midair.

The cold weather did not agree with me and I was often sick. In March 1962, when my uncle was notified that I would not pass the school year due to absences, I was sent to Hialeah to live with the uncle who had welcomed us to the United States a few months before. Two months later, when my parents arrived from Cuba and found me in Hialeah, they decided against their original plan of settling in the New York/New Jersey area in favor of the milder Miami climate.

In time we became acclimated to this city, which was in some ways very similar to our homeland 90 miles away. One month after my parents arrived, my brother joined us in Hialeah after having finished the school year in New York. The four of us moved into a tiny apartment near where my uncle lived. By then a third uncle and his family had come from Cuba and lived nearby making our family group larger and stronger.

By the time I was 17, I was feeling strong and needed to look for work and help the family get ahead. That’s when my mother, who had never worked outside of the home, clearly let me know that I was to go back to school and that she would be the one looking for work. My father found work on the night shift of an aluminum factory near Flamingo Plaza, a couple of miles away from our home. We did not yet own a car so around 2 p.m. every day my father would walk to work, lunchbox in hand, and at 11 p.m. one of my two uncles would pick him up.

My mother found work sewing at a factory and my brother and I enrolled in Hialeah High School. After we got a car, a 1953 Chevrolet that cost $250, my mother and I would drive to downtown Miami some Saturday afternoons and frequent Richard’s Basement, Lerner’s, Three Sisters, and Woolworth’s. We would treat ourselves to a slice of cake with a scoop of ice cream like we used to do when I was growing up in Cuba.

The Sunday treat was going downtown as a family to eat at a restaurant where a plate of chicken with rice and sweet plantains would cost 50 cents and an order of fried rice would be 75 cents. Truly a treat! I don’t remember the location of the restaurant or the name, only that it was advertised as owned or operated by “Rafael and Federico.” Another popular eatery was El Morro Castle, which still exists today on Northwest Seventh Street. We also went to the location that is now La Carreta on Southwest Eighth Street.

Near the Versailles Restaurant was Trios, famous for its open-face sandwiches of roast beef or turkey. Little by little, with effort and diligence, we made progress and after a few months were able to rent a house in the vicinity. Two years after that, with a loan from my uncle, we were able to purchase our first home which, marvelously, came equipped with all the necessary furniture. For the small appliances we relied on collecting stamps given out at grocery stores and gas stations. Two of the stamp companies that come to mind are Top Value and S & H Green Stamps. Filled books could be exchanged for toasters, mixers, blenders, clocks, etc.

By then I had graduated from high school and we decided, in the old custom, that we would all work to help put my brother through school. That is how, in spite of our modest means, my brother graduated from the University of Miami with an engineering degree in May 1968.

My first job was as a clerk at the Cabanas office of the old and beautiful Roney Plaza Hotel on Collins Avenue and about 23rd Street, later transferring to the sales office.

I remember the small Miami airport with the terrace where we would go frequently to greet family and friends who arrived. It was common for groups of people to go to the airport to greet the new arrivals, a welcoming committee of sorts.

My father religiously went to “La Casa de la Libertad” searching for familiar faces to offer them some assistance. Mostly it was people who had just arrived and were waiting to be relocated to another state, so my father would bring them to our home for refreshments and a couple of hours of relaxation and unwinding.

For leisure, it was typical for two or three families to get together on Sundays and spend the day or the afternoon at Crandon Park Beach or Haulover Beach enjoying the time together and reminiscing about Cuba. An activity that I enjoyed very much was attending the shows of “Añorada Cuba,” a musical program put on by young people, many of whom were students at Hialeah High or attended the Church of the Immaculate Conception, under the direction of Father Bez Chaveve.

The changes in greater Miami area over the past 50 years have been many and amazing. To the west, Miami basically ended at 57th Avenue. The old Tamiami Airport eventually became FIU and the Miami-Dade Youth Fair. For the most part, Hialeah was a cow pasture.

In 1966 I found love at first sight and in January 1968 I married a wonderful man, with whom I just celebrated 44 years of marriage. We have two daughters who grew up in Miami. As they formed their own families, their jobs took them away from the area but they regularly come back to spend time with family and for a taste of Miami.

In the early years in Miami I postponed my career plans to help my brother, and later, my husband. When my oldest daughter started college at the University of Miami and my youngest started high school, I went back to school and got a degree in education. I fully enjoyed teaching and being a part of my students’ lives as a member of the faculty at Miami Springs Senior High School for 16 years, until my retirement six months ago.

That’s how, 50 years after leaving Cuba, I consider Miami my home. There is in my heart a special love for the land where I was born, but my roots are firmly planted in Miami.

I cannot see myself living anywhere else but here. Miami will always be home to me.

The migration of my family from Cuba to Miami began in the 1800’s, possibly because of the Spanish-American War, which caused many people to leave Cuba for Florida. One set of great grandparents went to Tampa and another to Key West.

My paternal grandfather, Jose Marcelino Garcia, was born in Key West, and my paternal grandmother, Ana Maria Silva, was born in Tampa. My grandparents met when my grandfather traveled between Key West, Cuba and Tampa as an escogedor (a person who selects tobacco leaves) for a cigar factory in Tampa.

Both of my parents were born in Florida. My Cuban-American father, Aldo Garcia, was born in Key West while his mother was visiting there. My Irish-American mother, Margaret McMillan, was born in National Gardens, Fla. They met in Ormond Beach where my father got his first teaching assignment after graduating from the University of Florida. My mother was one of his students.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my father joined the Army Air Corps. He attended officer candidate training in Miami Beach. The graduation ceremony was in August, 1943 at the Miami Beach Golf Course, formerly known as Bayshore Golf Course. The golf course had been leased by the Army Air Corps as a training facility during World War II. When his tour of duty was over he and my mother moved to Miami where dad had a job teaching at Edison Senior High.

They had two daughters when they moved to Miami: me and my sister, and later had a son. They purchased a home at Southwest 39th Street and 68th Avenue, with the help of the G.I. Bill. There was a goat farm on the corner.

When we left home to go to Coral Gables or downtown Miami, my father would drive east on Bird Road to Red Road or 57th Avenue. On the southwest corner of Bird and Red was Allen’s Drugs, one of the landmarks that still stands. Turning north we would go to Coral Way and turn east. The ride along Coral Way under a tree-lined canopy is very much the same today.

We knew we were getting close to downtown Miami when we saw the birds circling the courthouse on Flagler Street – at that time the tallest building in the city. If you take the same drive today you won’t see the birds or the courthouse until you get very close, as it is dwarfed by skyscrapers.

Sadly, our mother passed away in 1948, leaving my father to raise three children under 6. He sent for his mother, my Cuban-American grandmother Anna Maria Garcia de Silva, who came to Miami to care for us.

She too had been widowed at an early age, leaving her with six children that she supported by working in a cigar factory in Ybor City. Although our grandmother was born in Florida, she never learned to speak English, which is why my siblings and I learned to speak Spanish. I couldn’t know then how important it would become to speak Spanish.

When I was a child I remember looking in the phone book for our number and being surprised to see that there were five Garcias. One was my father and another was my uncle. No one could have foreseen the many pages of Garcias now listed in the phone book.

My father taught at Edison while attending law school at the University of Miami in the evening. When dad finished law school (graduating magna cum laude) he decided to move to Allapattah so he could be closer to his teaching assignment. His dream of practicing law was never realized because he wasn’t able to give up the security of a full-time teaching position. He did, however, take on cases for friends, one of which he argued before the state appellate court.

Abuela, or “Granny” as we called her, took us to Bayfront Park every Sunday on the No. 17 bus. The bus took a circuitous route past the house on Northwest Seventh Street and 22nd Avenue that is built of coral rock. At the park we would walk along the bay from the band shell to Fifth Street, pausing occasionally to climb trees. The band shell was where my sister and I performed a duet during a dance recital by Bunny Stirruz Dance Studio of Miami Springs.

At the end of Fifth Street, we watched fishermen as they brought in their catches of the day and filleted them for sale to the public. On Saturday nights, Granny would attend what we teasingly called “old folks dances,” which I think were held in the building now known as The Freedom Tower.

Another strong memory is of going into Burdines in downtown Miami to visit “Toyland” during the Christmas holidays. The excitement would startwith the first glimpse of the walkway decorated for the holiday that connected both sides of Burdines department store on the second floor.

Also, long before Krispy Kreme brought hot doughnuts to Miami, you could purchase one at either S.H. Kress’s or McCrory’s on Flagler Street. Christmas shopping for our teachers (usually Evening in Paris perfume) was always done at Shell’s City on Northwest Seventh Avenue, a precursor to stores like Wal-Mart.

The movie theater on Northwest 36th Street between 17th and 18th avenues, where we attended Saturday afternoon matinees, is now a discount furniture store. Warm summer nights were often spent outdoors under the watchful eyes of parents and grandparents who sat on their porches while children played tag, Simon Says, or red-rover red-rover. When the sun set we tried to catch fireflies in jars. It has been a very long time since I’ve seen fireflies in Miami.

In the mid 1950s we moved to North Miami, which seemed very far from Miami. Since then, other cities like North Miami Beach, Miami Gardens, Aventura, and Miami Lakes, where I now live, have incorporated. My siblings and I attended North Miami High School. It is the same school my children, who are fifth-generation Floridians, later graduated from.

It was while we were living in North Miami that the Cuban Missile Crisis began. I remember convoys of military vehicles, including tanks, driving south to Key West along Biscayne Boulevard. Because my father was bilingual, he was recruited as a translator to assist many of the Cubans who came to Miami in those early years. I have kept a gift he was given by one of the grateful immigrants he helped – a liquor bottle that through the endeavors of an enthusiastic artist had been changed into a Charlie Chaplin-like clown, complete with wooden shoes. While it has no monetary value, it obviously meant something to the giver.

By far the biggest change I have seen in Miami is the successful integration of the many immigrants who have arrived. The Spanish language that I learned from my grandmother has now become a dominant language.

My dad, Mike Nola, came to this country from Lebanon in 1911 and peddled merchandise door-to-door along the Florida-Georgia border. He served in the Army during World War I, which earned him United States citizenship.

After the war, he returned to Lebanon to marry my mother, Chafica Sawaya. Upon returning to Florida, they opened a grocery store in Live Oak. After their first child died in 1925, they moved to Miami and opened a grocery store on the corner of Northeast Second Avenue and 22nd Street. They lived in an apartment near Biscayne Bay.

During the 1926 hurricane, the bay flooded their apartment. My dad put my sister, Josephine, who was several months old at the time, on his shoulders and walked to higher ground. The store was damaged and merchandise was scattered in the street. The neighbors gathered the salvageable merchandise and returned it to my dad. The wholesalers also restocked him, which helped him recover. He was able to open another store on the corner of Northeast Second Avenue and 25th Street. There is still a market there today.

At the beginning of the Great Depression, my dad went into the hospital for surgery. During his time in the hospital he let two neighbors, who were brothers, run the store for him. In their attempt to impress him, they put all the money they took in into my dad’s bank account, and they charged the groceries. Unfortunately in a tale all too common during the era, the bank failed and all the money was lost. Again, the wholesalers restocked him on credit, and he was able to survive.

I was born in 1930. In 1932, my parents built our home on Northeast 25th Street between Second Avenue and what was then the Florida East Coast Railroad tracks. It was a classic Miami bungalow built of concrete block and stucco, with a screened porch all the way across the front.

The construction cost was $3,000, and the lot was $600. My mother lived in that house until her death 60 years later. My parents never owned a car. The streetcar ran down the middle of Northeast Second Avenue, and it went to wherever we needed to go. One day, my brother Willie and I were taking the streetcar to town to see a movie that cost nine cents; we were counting our money and came up a penny short.

An elderly African-American lady overheard us and gave us the penny. It was an act of kindness I have never forgotten. Sometimes, after seeing a movie, my brother and I would walk to the aquarium at the North end of Bayfront Park. The aquarium had been built into a ship, The Prins Valdemar, which had sunk in Biscayne Bay in January of 1926, and was refloated later and turned into the aquarium.

The admission was 25 cents, which we did not have, but the attendant would sometimes let us in for free.

After the aquarium, we would walk back toward Flagler Street to Pier 5, to see the afternoon catch. About 30 charter fishing boats lined both sides of the pier, and the catch was always awesome.

There were no fishing regulations and “catch and release” was not yet practiced. The skippers kept everything they caught and displayed it on the dock to advertise for the next day’s charter. Once they brought in a 10-foot manta ray.

Biscayne Bay was my playground, and I spent many happy days catching snook and Jacks from the County Causeway (which was later renamed MacArthur Causeway) and catching pompano in a cast net from the Rickenbacker Causeway.

The bay was not always as nice as it is today. In the early days, raw sewage poured into the bay from sewer lines that ran under each street leading to the bay. We did not eat fish from the bay in those days. During WWII, there were many months when the bay was covered with a film of black oil from ships that had been torpedoed off the coast. Then after the war, there were several years when the water was muddy from dredging being done to even out the shore line, and to dig deep canals to make waterfront property.

But the bay did survive to become the beautiful place it is today.

Before Interstate 95 was built, Northeast Second Avenue was a busy thoroughfare. The Budweiser Clydesdale horses, pulling a beer wagon, used to come down Second Avenue and stop at all the taverns.

Before homes were air conditioned, it was a thrill to go downtown and walk past the open doors of the Olympia Theater and feel the cold dry air pouring out. At the Olympia, you could see a first-run movie and a live stage show for 50 cents. In 1956 I remember seeing Elvis Presley there, live on stage for $2.

I attended Miramar Elementary, Robert E. Lee Jr. High and Tech High which later became Lindsey Hopkins Vocational School.After my dad died, I ran the grocery store until I entered the Army in 1952. When the other GIs talked about their hometowns, I remember how proud I was to be from Miami and actually felt sorry for those who were not.

After the Army, I enrolled at the University of Miami and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. My son graduated from UM 30 years later with a degree in architecture.

I met my future wife, Grace Geraci, when she was our across-the-street neighbor on Northeast 25th Street. We married at St. Rose of Lima Church in Miami Shores. Soon after, I took a job in the space and rocket industry, eventually settling in Huntsville, Ala. I retired from NASA 36 years later.

During our early years in Alabama, when our three children were young, we would return to Miami twice each year to spend time with family, often arriving late at night. It was always a welcome sight to see the red blinking lights on the radio towers that line U.S. 27 coming into Northwest Miami.

After retiring, we headed back to Florida and were going to work our way to Miami to look for a place to spend the winters. We didn’t make it past Stuart and have had a home there for 18 years.

We visit Miami often and are in awe of its growth and beauty. It has come a long way from the city of 150,000 when we were young.

We traveled to Miami Beach often, before deciding to move from Cuba for good.

The motivation? My father rejected an influential Cuban politician’s demand to lead his Masonic lodge, and was kidnapped for it. After paying the ransom, we boarded a Pan Am flight, and landed in Miami in the summer of 1943.

We rented an apartment, and I enrolled at Ida M. Fisher – Beach High was not yet built. We lived south of Fifth Street because Jews were confined to that area of Miami Beach, nicknamed “Little Jerusalem.”

African Americans had to leave before sundown, and hotel signs advertised: “No Jews, Blacks or Dogs.”

I spoke little English, and was teased for being one of only three Hispanic kids at school. Back then, being Cuban was rare! I graduated as president of the French Club, and was one of the first Hispanics inducted into the National Honor Society. I went on to graduate from the University of Miami, completed an M.B.A., and then a law degree, and became a professor there.

Life in Miami Beach was simpler then: fishing off the Fifth Street pier and catching grouper in Biscayne Bay. I worked as an usher at the Cameo Theater and as a bellhop at the Marseilles Hotel to save up for a boat. You cannot buy much of a boat from tips, and on the fourth sailing, my boat sank a mile offshore. Luckily, I swam back to shore with the incoming tide.

My wife and I married in a civil ceremony, officiated by the only notary public we could find – our mailman. We joined Temple Beth Sholom, became active members of the Mr. and Mrs. Club, and met lifelong friends. We dined at The Famous, went to races at the dog track on the Beach, and ate ice cream at the Saxony Hotel.

Most of all, we traveled. We started small, taking our Chevy Bel Air and $100, and drove all over the country. We are still going strong, having traveled now to every country in the world, some of them many times over.

In those days we lived in a single room on the roof of the Ocean Reef Apartments, next to the building’s boiler. We may have had to wash dishes in the bathroom, but we had a marvelous view of the ocean.

In addition to teaching, I worked as an accountant for a $1.50 an hour. My office was located on Eighth Street and 27th Avenue. Life changed after the Cuban Revolution. I helped many Cuban arrivals with the loss of their homes and businesses, even traveling to Washington, D.C., to facilitate a new tax rule to recoup Cuban losses. I also campaigned at the UM to allow me to teach newly arrived Cubans to become accountants in Florida.

And we raised a family. Our four children grew up roller skating at Crandon Park (then the zoo), and boating to Rope Island (before it became Fisher Island) to watch bald eagles nest.

Looking back, we’ve traveled the world, our children graduated from Beach High, went on to Ivy League colleges, and some of them have returned to raise their own families. One of my grandchildren even attends Beach High. Is another UM graduate in our future?