Versailles Restaurant has been the epicenter of the Cuban exile community in South Florida for 50 years, but on a personal level it was also a very significant place for my late husband’s career as a sculptor. His name was Marc Andries Smit and his first commercial piece was purchased by Mr. Felipe Valls, Sr. […]
On January 9, 2016, my husband of twenty years passed away leaving me with our 5 and 7-year-old daughters. Friends and family from all over the United States came into town for the wake, funeral, burial, and to help me pull my life back together. When it was all said and done, my three girlfriends […]
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 […]
My Miami story began on March 24, 1944, when my father’s B-24 Flying Liberator, the “Thunder Bay Babe,” was shot down while on a mission to bomb the railroad marshaling yards at Steyr, Austria. Flak hit one of the bombs over Mostar and the plane exploded. Out of a crew of 10, my father was […]
The year was 1944. My stepdad, Charles Beatty, and my mom, Margaret, and sister Blanche and I lived in an upstairs duplex on 11th Street and Jefferson Avenue in Miami Beach across from Flamingo Park, where the U.S. Army Air Forces trained our boys to serve. My name was Jeanette Seligman at that time. I […]
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 […]
When people ask me if I love a person romantically, I kind of laugh. I laugh because I’m sort of having an affair. I love my Venezuelan wife, whom I met in Miami. But, truth be told, I am already in love with something else — the city of Miami. My love has drawbacks. She’s […]
I remember vividly the days that led to my coming to Miami from Cuba. I was only 9 years old and turmoil, to say the least, was at hand. We were leaving my country for a short period of time. No one in my family thought it was forever. But even as a goodbye, it […]