Category: Miami Stories

Our family moved to Miami Beach from Brooklyn, N.Y., for my grandmother’s health. It was 1943 and Dad was with the Navy in the Pacific, so it was Mom, Aunt Rose, sister Bonnie, Grandma and me.

We settled in a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment on Third Street and Jefferson. Our apartment was close to the dog track, so we could hear the announcer call the races. Bonnie and I would wager on each race while in bed, and we could hear the announcer proclaim the winners. My best friend, Sonja Lovseth, and I played with our dolls, danced in our house, and rode our bikes everywhere.

South Beach Elementary School was three blocks away, and provided the best education one could ask for. We had an assembly program every week and my sister, Bonnie, was assembly leader. I was captain of the safety patrol.

We learned Spanish beginning in third grade, and I can remember singing the Cuban national anthem in the classroom. Señora Ransom always carried a lace hankie and smelled of Old Spice cologne. The teachers were all wonderful – Mrs. Bleich in sixth grade sex education told the girls to be proud of our bodies, Mr. Little and his violin produced operettas, and Mr. Sanders was our handsome and very dignified principal. Mr. Vasey, the custodian, lived in a cottage next to the school, and he was always Santa Claus for the holidays.

Our apartment on Third and Jefferson was downstairs from Ben Cohen, an attorney for the notorious Miami Beach gambling syndicate, which attracted outside gangsters such as Meyer Lansky. He and his beautiful wife, Joan, had a baby girl and I went upstairs to see the baby.

In the bedroom were about a dozen telephones. I remember asking my mother why anyone needed so many phones. There is a window in the Jewish museum with Ben Cohen’s name and Meyer Lansky’s.

Grandma, as an observant Jew, needed to be near the synagogue, which was on Washington Avenue, and today is the home of the Jewish Museum. My sister and I attended the Hebrew School there. On Fridays when I got home from school, I had to help Grandma prepare for the Sabbath. I usually chopped vegetables or turned the grinder for the chopped liver.

When we were done in the kitchen, I would help her in the bath, wash her hair, and scrub her back, which was crooked from osteoarthritis. After her bath I combed her white hair, set the waves, and she rested for a while in her bed. Grandma had very bad asthma. There was always an oxygen tank next to her bed.

Sometimes I polished her nails. When the sun set, she would light the candles and bring in the Sabbath. Bonnie and I would not write, cut, or, later, watch TV for 24 hours.

During WWII, soldiers were stationed on Miami Beach. They marched by our house, singing army songs, which we quickly learned. Mom and Aunt Rose went to dances at hotels used as a USO (a United Service Organization with a mission to support troops).

Dad returned from the war, lived with us a short time, and then my parents divorced when I was 9. Bonnie and I continued to see our father, who worked in the window at Wolfie’s, Pumpernik’s and the Rascal House as a salad and sandwich chef. Sometimes he would take us for lunch at Burdines in Miami.

Walking on Lincoln Road in the 1940s and ‘50s was like walking on the Champs-Élysées, with luxury shops like Lillie Rubin, Saks Fifth Avenue, and so many others. Once my father took me into Saks and bought me red butter-leather sandals and an emerald-green, silk-taffeta cocktail dress. He introduced me to the finer things of life.

Bonnie and I had always wanted a dog, so when we moved to Miami, we got our first dog, a precious Jack Russell named Bing. Next, we got a blue tick hound named Penny.

We would take her to Crandon Park, where she ran for hours along the beach chasing shadows in the sand. We also had a pet duck named Christine. She followed Penny like a shadow and would greet me when I returned from a date in the evening. One day the duck disappeared. We found out several years later that Grandma had made a trade with the butcher.

I attended Ida M. Fisher Junior High on Miami Beach from seventh through ninth grades. One of my boyfriends was Norman Cement, who later became mayor of Miami Beach. In the 1950s, my grandmother and mother bought a duplex in what is now Little Havana.

I did not want to leave my friends, so Mom arranged for me to be picked up in Miami by Mr. Dutton, my music teacher, so that I could finish ninth grade with friends I’d had since second grade. Later, I attended Miami High.

On my own, I applied for a scholarship to the University of Miami, and did not tell my mother until I was accepted. I majored in Elementary Education.
At the end of my junior year, I flew to Nashville to attend the wedding of my friend, Marie Lefkowitz. It was at this wedding I met my future husband, Irwin Kaplan.

We moved to New Jersey in 1956, after we married. We have been married 57 years, have three children, 10 grandchildren, and four great grandchildren.

My sister Laurie and I share an unusual trait: we are in our 50s and we are both native Miamians.

We were born at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach. My mother, Suzanne Gillette Collins, and her family moved here in 1939, because my grandfather, Jules Gillette, was seeking new opportunities in Miami.

He opened a men’s clothing store on Lincoln Road, Jules Gillette Men’s Clothing, leading to a succession of such stores on Flagler Street, in downtown Miami, and on Northeast 125th Street in North Miami. During World War II, the store became an Army supply store since Miami Beach was a training ground for soldiers.

My mother helped out at the store and she liked to tell the story about the first time a soldier came in and asked for a jock strap. She was clueless.

Although he didn’t know my mother at the time, my father, Ken Collins, trained here with the Army Air Corps during the war. He stayed at the Embassy Hotel on Collins Avenue which, like most other hotels, had been converted for wartime use. The soldiers would drill in Polo Park on Miami Beach.

My mother would watch the soldiers drill. My father went on to fly several missions before being shot down over Hungary. He was captured and became a POW in a German prison camp. Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army liberated the prisoners and my father went home to Ohio.

He went to college and moved to New York for a career in retailing.

My mother graduated from Miami Beach High in 1945 and went to college out of state as well.

My parents met when they both worked at Macy’s in New York. They married in Miami in 1953, but remained in New York for a couple of years before moving to Miami when my grandfather offered my father a job at his store. On Lincoln Road at that time, there were about eight men’s clothing stores and several ladies’ shoe stores.

My parents found an apartment on Marseilles Drive in Miami Beach. The apartment was not air-conditioned, so they agreed to purchase one if the landlord would install it.

They then bought a house on Northeast 175th Street in North Miami Beach. It was one of two houses built on the block at the time, which ended in a dirt road until about 1962. The stately royal palms in the front of our house came from Miami Beach when they were constructing the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

My parents lived in that house until 1991 when they moved to the Highland Lakes area, where my husband and I also live.

In September 1960, Hurricane Donna threatened South Florida. It was believed that the low barometric pressure might induce labor in pregnant women in their late stages. Since my mother was eight months pregnant with me, she and numerous other pregnant women spent a night roaming the halls of Jackson Memorial Hospital until the hurricane threat had passed.

Since I was to be her second child, she was calmer than most of the women, but she told the story of the many large hysterical women who spent the night with her. It sounded worse than any sorority function you could imagine. I was born in October 1960.

In 1962, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We still have my mother’s can of Sterno, and the shovel my dad bought to dig a trench if we needed a latrine. I can’t picture either of them using either device, but they couldn’t say they weren’t ready.

My one grandmother would take us to Junior’s on 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard, where they had great breads and rolls. My other grandparents used to take us to the Roney Pub for dinner. We loved that big quarter-wedge of iceberg lettuce they’d give you with a choice of dressing.

We’d also go to Corky’s for pastrami and corned beef back in the days when I ate big meaty sandwiches. Corky’s used to have a drive-up area where you could order from your car window, and they’d bring your food out to your car and hook a tray to your car window.

As I got older, I’d go to the Sportatorium for concerts with my friends way out on Hollywood Boulevard, before there was anything else built out there.

My mother worked at Temple Israel, where my family were members. My dad eventually opened his own store in Bay Harbor Islands, Ken Collins Men’s Clothing. I used to help out at both places during summers and holidays.

My sister and I went to Sabal Palm Elementary School, John F. Kennedy Junior High School, and North Miami Beach High School.

Two recollections I have that are not among Miami’s finer moments: in 1972, there was an organized boycott against busing, and parents kept their children home from Miami-Dade public schools for two days. I went to school both days; I think I was one of two or three kids in my class who showed up.

I also remember going to work downtown in the summer of 1980, following the McDuffie riots. I remember seeing the smoke rising from Liberty City – and, visible from Interstate 95, the National Guardsmen with their rifles standing on almost every corner.

I went out of state for college, but came back to the “U” for law school, where I met my husband, Peter Bronstein. I am a die-hard ‘Canes fan and bleed orange and green during football season.

We were married on Key Biscayne at the Sonesta. What a beautiful weekend it was, and our out-of-town guests got a wonderful taste of Miami.

We had a Michigan flag at our wedding, since my husband went to the other U of M for undergraduate studies.

We lost my mom several years ago, but my dad and sister still live close by. Miami is home, and other than my years at college, I’ve lived here all my life. In the winter, the weather is beautiful, and in the summer, the crowds thin out.

What more could you ask for?

My Miami story began the day my KLM flight touched down from Cuba at Miami International Airport.

I was traveling alone in 1961 at the age of 11. I was going to some unknown destination, which turned out to be an orphanage in Colorado, arranged by Operation Pedro Pan. I was reunited with my mother and two younger sisters almost two years later in Miami (we were some of the lucky ones).

We moved into an old wooden house near Shell’s City. I was enrolled at Edison Junior High in the seventh grade in 1963, and later I went to Beach High (Miami Beach High School). My mother was now a single mom raising three kids in a new country with a new language.

My first job was delivering The Miami News around Lemon City and Little River. Adjustments had to be made to my bicycle by installing a wooden “banana basket” to the handlebars to accommodate the heavy load from the newspapers. It felt as if I were peddling a Buick. My introduction to mobile journalism drastically ended the day my bike fell apart into several pieces and I had to walk back home in the rain carrying the wheel and frame in one arm and the chain and handlebars in the other. No more banana basket. I was 14.

Fortunately, I was told about a couple of jobs in the restaurant business. One job was as a dishwasher at Junior’s Restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard; the other as a busboy at Jumbo’s Restaurant on Northwest Seventh Avenue. Unfortunately, I was fired from both jobs the same day. Clearly, it was time to find a different line of work.

Another job came up where I was allowed to take the company car home. That was great news because my family needed a car. The pest control company was on the beach. I was hired as a “pest control specialist.” I was the only employee and was told to come back the next day so they could show me around the “company car,” a ’56 rusted four-door Packard.

The windows did not roll down and the car had no air conditioning, making the smell from pesticides and other chemicals suffocating. I sprayed the Seacoast Towers on Collins Avenue, and for the first time —as bad as it was —the family had a car. Nobody bothered to check my driver’s license. I didn’t have one. My mother must have fainted the day I got home behind the wheel of my new, smelly, beat-up company car. I was 15 years old.

We hung out at pool halls, dance halls, movie theaters and food joints in North Miami and Miami Beach. Congress pool hall and Bowlerama come to mind. I will never forget the Paramount Theater, where we skipped school to see A Hard Day’s Night. No more short hair for me after that.

Flirting with girls up and down Collins Avenue became an art form; we cruised past the Neba Roast Beef restaurant, Scotty’s Drive-In and The Castaways. I remember getting my first Beatles haircut from the master known as Evan at a cost of $5. Among our favorite eateries were Parham’s, Royal Castle on 71st Street, Tony’s Fish Market, Nathan’s, Fun Fair, the Bonfire, The Place For Steak, and Jilly’s when we were a little bit older.

We watched Wayne Cochran lift the roof off The Barn. The Hialeah Municipal and all the armories were great venues that showcased Miami’s local bands like NRBQ, the 7 of Us, The Kollection, and many others whose memories are kept alive in Jeff Lemlich’s book, Savage Lost. Man, Miami rocked!

We grooved at Coconut Grove’s first head shop owned by the now legendary Michael Lang, one of the brains behind Woodstock. He had learned from his experience organizing the Miami Pop Festival in 1968 at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale. It headlined a not-too-well-known band called the “Jimmy Hendrix Experience.”

Finally, I found a real job at a well-known auto-rental and leasing firm in Miami with a large fleet of vehicles and a high-end clientele. Driving around and picking up people at the airport was part of my new job. I took a new car home every night. I remember pulling up to the “love-ins” at Greynolds Park in a new convertible every weekend, which made me extremely popular — a rich hippie. The job lasted almost three years. I knew it was only a matter of time until the U.S. armed forces’ Selective Service System would come knocking and drafted me into the U.S. Army. I was almost 19.

I was very lucky to have been permanently stationed in one of the most beautiful places on earth, Ft. Ord on the Pacific Coast Highway in the Monterey Peninsula of California. The Santa Ynez Mountains climbed up from Big Sur. There are not enough colors in an artist’s pallet to duplicate the sunsets I was lucky enough to see along the Pacific Ocean from my ocean-view Army barracks.

San Francisco was a short hop away from Ft. Ord, and on the weekends we hung out at The Haight (not what I expected) and saw a lot of the bands you only heard on the radio. I was having a great time, but sadly the ’60s were coming to an end and so was my Army obligation.

I had choices to make. “Going Back To Miami” was playing over and over in my head, and I knew in my heart what I had to do. It was time to come home. I have no regrets.

My grandfather and other family members were Miami pioneers, having arrived in 1895 from Crescent City, Florida.

My grandfather, T. N. Gautier, was one of 500 signatures needed for Miami to incorporate as a city. He was also the first school superintendent for Miami. His grocery store, Miami Groceries, was listed in the one page 1902 telephone directory as “T.N. Gautier Groceries, dial 9.”

My father, T.N. Gautier, Jr., was part of the Miami “Dirty Dozen.” I have no clue what those guys did. I do know that they were a young group of successful businessmen in Miami back in the day.

I was first introduced to Miami at my birth in Victoria Hospital many years ago. Victoria was a small 30 to 40 bed hospital on Northwest Third Street and Ninth Avenue.

My first real memory of Miami was the Labor Day hurricane of 1935. It hit without warning, as there were no TV hurricane advisories back then. I was 3 years old, but not afraid of hurricanes because I was 3 years old. My dad came home from his job at Burdines during the eye of the storm. During the lull, my family walked through a vacant lot behind our house to Flagler Street where we weathered the hurricane at fire Chief Henry Chase’s two-story concrete block house. It was a fortress against the storm. The Chase’s house was next to Fire Station #3. For me, the highlight of that day was seeing the roof of the Dempsey’s house fly off and sail away. Of course, that was not the highlight for the Dempsey family.

I attended Riverside Elementary School from first to sixth grade. Shoes were optional and many of the kids didn’t wear shoes, and I, “Shoeless Joe,” was among the many. However, I did wear shoes to church and weddings.

We lived five blocks away from Ada Merritt Junior High. It was an easy bike ride for me. Our Ada Merritt boys’ teams won the Dade County Soft Ball Championship every year for our three junior-high years.

The old Miami Orange Bowl was half a mile away from our house. My dad and I would walk there to watch the Miami Seahawks. The Seahawks were a professional franchise in the All-American League. They had an All-American running back named “Bullet” Bill Daley and a lineman named Gene Ellenson who graduated from Miami High and ended up a coach at the University of Florida. Those two men were the only redeeming players on the Seahawks team. Sadly the team eventually folded due to lack of paying fans.

My mother Claire Gautier was a soprano soloist at Trinity Methodist Church in downtown Miami. I was used to her practicing on our piano at home and took her talent for granted. But because I loved football my mother became my hero when she sang at the wedding of Army’s All-American quarterback Arnold Tucker in the mid ‘40s.

The Mackle Company, later to be known as the General Development Corporation, changed the dynamics of home building in Miami as they provided affordable housing for hundreds of families. They developed Key Biscayne and built the Key Biscayne Hotel. They also built other developments, including Ascot Park and Westwood Lakes.

My job for The Mackle Company was titled “Industrial Expeditor and General Coordinator,” which technically translated into…GOFER! When I left Mackle to answer the call of the U.S. Army, the Mackle Brothers gave me a watch that they had engraved, “Joe Good Luck Mackles.” The watch is still ticking to this day. It’s like the houses that they built — still being used.

Fast-pitch softball was another thriving sport. It was an outdoor sport and Miami being hot did not stop fans from going to various city parks to watch the games. This, of course, was before TV and air conditioners. The softball games were an evening of entertainment for people of all ages.

I pitched in all of the city parks, but the one I remember most is Moore Park. There was a man there who went to every game. His name was Scotty. He was a one-man cheering section and encourager to all the players. He knew every player’s name and called it out when they were up to bat. I could always hear him with his Scottish accent yelling out when I got to home plate, “Hit a homer, Joe!” Eventually many thousands of people in Miami welcomed air-conditioning and TVs, and didn’t go out at night to watch fast-pitch softball in the heat and hard benches. It was a gain for them and a death knell for fast-pitch softball.

In 1956, I had the privilege of being one of the coaches for Miami’s Little Major League. The team represented Miami for the Florida state championship held in St. Petersburg. We won the state title. Several on that winning team went on to be baseball stars, including Steve Hertz, who went on to play for the Houston Astros and Eric Wanderon who played baseball for Miami High and received a scholarship for both football and baseball at the University of Miami. Tommy Shannon, a pitcher for our team, got a scholarship to the University of Florida as a baseball pitcher and quarterback for the Gators.

Miami is my hometown, where I grew up and met my wife Miriam. It is where my daughter and son were born and went to school. Living in Miami taught me about living through hurricanes, traffic, hot weather and mosquitoes. Miami, to me, was a great city to grow up in.

I was born at Coral Gables Hospital in 1948. My mother was from Brooklyn, my father from Morriston. He was a CPA, in the Giller Building on the Beach, at the exit off the Julia Tuttle Causeway onto Arthur Godfrey Road. He said that every day when he drove across the causeway, he marveled at the beauty around him.

We lived in the Gables – first on Alhambra Circle where the UM fraternities were, and the athletic field and tennis courts. We played touch football and tennis there on weekends; no one bothered us. Then my family moved to the corner of Old Cutler Road and Santurce Avenue, into a one-story ‘50s house, now replaced by a mansion too big for the property.

There was only vacant land across the street, east of Old Cutler. I asked my father why nobody built there, and he said that it was too close to sea level; it would never be developed. Now it’s Cocoplum. Temple Beth Am was surrounded by vacant land. When they built Dadeland, my parents said that no one would live that far out.

Matheson Hammock was quiet and uncrowded—no Red Fish Grill. We swam at the Venetian Pool. On Sundays my dad would get bagels and lox at Sam and Carl’s on Red Road at Sunset. Across the street was the Holsum Bakery, with that wonderful smell. South Miami was small and sleepy, like a village. Sometimes we went to Pumpernik’s and Wolfie’s on the Beach — the best pastrami sandwiches I’ve ever tasted.

One of my father’s clients was the Melaleuca Motel on Collins Avenue, and when I was little we stayed there in the summer – two rooms and a cabana. The ocean, the beach, the pool, eating out, lots of other kids – I loved it.

I went to first and second grades at Sunset Elementary, then to West Lab at UM (my mother put me on the waiting list when I was born). I had a friend who would take me to his country club in the Gables, and defiantly introduce me as “my Jewish friend Joel.” Nobody reacted, but we all knew that there were Jewish and non-Jewish country clubs, and restricted hotels. Most were more subtle than the one with the sign that said “Great Views, No Jews.”

I road my bike to Ponce Junior High, racing up and over the bridge on Granada. In ninth grade I took drama because there weren’t any tests, and after a few silly skits in class, my teacher, Mrs. Firestone, cast me as the lead in the school play. When I tried to get out of it she said that her class wasn’t a democracy. It was my tipping point.

Everything I’ve done since has involved public speaking – debating in high school and college, moot court in law school, writing speeches in D.C., and then appellate law. Mrs. Firestone wouldn’t remember me, because she was just doing her job — being a teacher – and unfortunately, I never told her.

Gables High was all white, with the first Cuban students from the first wave of immigrants. My world was all white. I remember “White” and “Colored” water fountains, public restrooms, and beaches. Virginia Key Beach, for the “Colored People,”was beautiful, and my friends and I were welcome there.

I drove the ’56 Chevy that my father gave me when he bought his burgundy Mustang; it took all my strength to turn the wheel. My friend Larry and I would drop off our dates and go to the Royal Castle on the highway around 22nd Avenue, and eat four or five of those small hamburgers with the soft buns and the little pieces of cooked onions, and drink birch beer.

A favorite hangout was the Hot Shoppes Drive-In off U.S. 1 at Bird Road. We took our dates to the Flick Coffeehouse on Ponce near the university to hear folk music. Movies were at the Miracle, Gables and Riviera Theatres. Next to the Riviera were Spec’s Music and Swenson’s Ice Cream.

Some of my friends had ski boats, which we took out on weekends. At that time you could water ski anywhere you wanted. During the Cuban Missile Crisis there were military convoys everywhere. Our teachers taught us to crouch under our desks with our arms over our heads in order to survive a nuclear attack.

In tenth grade English they announced on the public address system that President Kennedy had been shot. My first political campaign was Miami Mayor Robert King High’s run for governor. We took a small plane to Tallahassee that was held together by bubble gum. It was terrifying.

The public schools in South Florida were among the best in the nation; some of the smartest people I’ve ever known went to Gables; fortunately for me it had a great debate team; and Gables and Miami High had two of the best football teams in the country. In 1965, the game between Gables and Miami High drew 48,000 people to the Orange Bowl. Miami High’s 14-7 win ended our 28-game winning streak. It was devastating.

When I left for college I had no intention of coming back. The place was sleepy and Southern and in many ways prejudiced. But it had changed radically when we decided to move back from D.C. 15 years later to raise our family. It was becoming a center of art, sports, commerce and finance – bilingual, international. It had acquired a buzz that still buzzes. And the lawyers here are as good as the best lawyers anywhere—in particular my colleagues for 25 years at Podhurst Orseck. I’ve never regretted coming home.

In the 1940s, my father Joseph Lanteigne Sr., worked at the Grain Federation League grain elevators on the docks in Albany, N.Y. My mother, Elizabeth Lanteigne, was a nurse at Albany Hospital.

Each morning, after returning home from working the night shift, Mom would turn on our black-and-white television set to watch the Arthur Godfrey show, which was broadcast from the Kenilworth Hotel on Miami Beach. Watching the sunny skies and the palm trees swaying in the ocean breezes fill the television screen, my mother would say, “This is where we are going to live.” After several bitter winters, our family packed up and moved to Miami in 1957.

My dad was employed with Dade County Parks Department at Matheson Hammock Park, and my mother worked for Dade County Juvenile Court and Domestic Relations in Miami. In the late 1980s, my mother was honored by the Juvenile Court, the only nonjudicial staff member to be so recognized. After more than 30 years of service, my parents retired from Dade County.

It was at our first residence, an apartment on Southwest 27th Avenue and Fourth Street, that my sister Andrea and I first experienced living in the South. It began when we took our first bus ride into downtown Miami on bus route No. 14.

My sister and I got on the bus and began to walk to the back of the bus. The bus driver instantly stopped the bus and in an aggressive tone told us to sit in front of the white line. That was just the beginning. Later that day we saw separate seating at the dime-store lunch counter, and separate drinking fountains and restrooms.

After my parents purchased a two-bedroom home on Southwest Fifth Street and 28th Avenue, we would go to Toby’s Cafeteria at Eighth Street and Beacom Boulevard for dinner on Friday nights. Afterward, we would go grocery shopping at the Kwik Chek Food Store on Eighth Street and sometimes visit Velvet Kreme Donut Shop for an evening treat.

I was an acolyte at the 8 and 11 a.m. services at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church, located on Southwest First Street and 13th Avenue. Between services, Father Garret would take me to Tyler’s Family Restaurant on Flagler Street for a hot Danish pastry.

I attended Miami Senior High School and graduated in June 1960. I believe that the graduating class was more than 1,300 students, which was the largest high school graduating class in the state of Florida at that time. My sister attended Citrus Grove Junior High School and then Miami Senior High School, graduating in June 1962.

Miami High was a wonderful experience back then. The school’s architecture allowed for the Miami breezes and the noise from the planes passing overhead to flow into the classroom.

The auditorium was the home of high-energy pep rallies for games against rivals Jackson, Coral Gables and Edison high schools. The Orange Bowl football stadium hosted more than 40,000 students and family members for the annual Thanksgiving evening football game between Miami High and Edison.

In the summer of 1957, I applied for my first job, at the Dade County School textbook distribution center and warehouse on Southwest 22nd Avenue and Fourth Street. This is where I spent my summer days during my high school years. I also worked in the evenings at the Coral Gables Country Club.

Living and growing up in Miami during the late 1950s and early 1960s was full of wonder. In the winter, we’d wait for the big black vultures’ annual arrival to roost at the Dade County Courthouse from their summer home in Ohio. That was a sign that the Burdines department store Christmas carnival was going to be set up on the roof of the downtown store soon.

On Saturday evenings, we’d often eat dinner at the Shrimp Place on Northwest Seventh Avenue. We’d stand outside hoping to be able to see the Russian Sputnik in the evening sky. I remember the excitement felt when our first space shot was successful. Even more exciting was when our first astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, lifted off from Cape Canaveral. That was an era of great American pride.

The later 1960s and 1970s had their share of history in Miami. There were political conventions held in Miami Beach that sparked civil-rights and anti-war demonstrations. Miami faced many civil-rights demonstrations during that time period, which greatly changed our community, as did the later arrival of the refugees from the Mariel boat lift.

Shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I enlisted in the United Sates Army. While in the First Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas, I volunteered as part of the division’s advance to Vietnam.

When I returned home, I became an internal auditor at the First National Bank of Miami. Later, Southeast Banking Corporation was incorporated and I was asked to transfer and become one of the first employees of Southeast.

My passion for banking began. In 1969, I attended Miami-Dade Junior College, and then transferred to Florida Atlantic University, graduating with a degree in accounting in March 1972. I returned to work at Southeast Banking Corporation in 1974, and it was there I spent the last 20-plus years. I retired in 2013 as president of Mercy Credit Union, located in Mercy Hospital.

My wife Linda Blondet Fondas Lanteigne graduated from Immaculata-La Salle High School in the 1960s. She knew as a child that she wanted to be a teacher. Linda graduated from the University of Miami with her degree in education. Her first marriage took her to the Bahamas where she taught for 15 years.

When she returned to Miami, Linda began teaching first grade at St. Brendan’s, then Blue Lakes, Coral Reef and Kenwood elementary schools. For the last seven years, Linda has been a first-grade teacher at Pinecrest Elementary School.

For the past 18 years, we have lived in our High Pines 1952-vintage home. The first several years, we spent long hours remodeling to ensure we could retire in our home. We were always careful to maintain the integrity of the original house. We now spend most weekends taking care of our tropical garden. Lots of time is spent with Pee-Wee and Chi-Chi, our special Quaker parrots, and Buddy, our faithful Maltese dog.

Miami has gone through major growth and dramatic changes. There is still no place better to see the blue sky and feel the warm, gentle winds. When asked where we are from, with pride we say Miami. Miami is an unbelievable place to call home.

My mother hanging on to the top of a telephone pole is one of my earliest memories of South Florida. It lingers in my mind some sixty years later. Soon after we moved here from up north, a hurricane blew through. My father was away on business, so it was just my mother, my two younger sisters and me.

We were lucky to have long-time Florida residents as neighbors, so we did whatever they told us to do to prepare. We made it through the storm with little damage, but, as usual, we lost power, and telephone. The power came back on in a day or two, but the telephone didn’t.

Over the next week, everyone else on our street got their telephone service back, but ours was still out. Using a neighbor’s phone, we’d call every day, only to be told to be patient. Finally, after about ten days, I watched with amazement as my short, slim mother (I was only eleven, but already taller) shinnied up the telephone pole. Wrapping one arm around the pole in a kind of “death hug,” she used her free hand to reconnect the wires into the main line.

From her perch she sent me back into the house to make sure the telephone worked before she came back to earth. One try and she managed to get it connected. No one from the telephone company ever came.

That definitely “low-tech” repair job was accomplished many years before women would be seen wearing hard hats and working on telephone lines. My mother’s climb provided a telephone that still worked when she moved out of the house thirty years and many hurricanes later.

The Village of Biscayne Park was, during the ’50s and ’60s, a residential community of small neighborhoods squeezed between Miami Shores and North Miami. A single block would house a group of families who were as familiar with one another as they were with close relatives.

In the period following World War II, there were a great many such neighborhoods with adults and children of similar ages. The Baby Boomers were booming.

Children played together in the street and adults had regular barbecues and canasta parties. Everyone knew everyone else on the block. Children spent Saturdays at the Shores Theater. A matinee would have two westerns and possibly 20 cartoons. An afternoon’s entertainment could be had for less than 50 cents. Since we were living in a two-bedroom house, I credit those long matinees for giving my parents enough time to give me a brother to harass.

Polio was very much a part of our lives back then. Two kids on our block were stricken and paralyzed for life. I was playing cards on the living room floor with a friend when she tried to get up and couldn’t. She was rushed to the hospital, where she and her parents got the bad news.

Young children from Biscayne Park attended Miami Shores Elementary, William Jennings Bryan or one of the two Catholic parochial schools nearby. You could walk to the North Miami Zoo — until it was torn down to make way for North Miami Junior High. Their tiger mascot was selected since the school auditorium was built on the site of the old tiger cage.

An evening out might be a trip to Marcella’s Italian Restaurant on West Dixie Highway or up to Nohlgren’s Painted Horse on Biscayne Boulevard for their 99-cent all-you-can-eat special. On a very special occasion, you might be treated with a trip to the Lighthouse Restaurant at the northern side of Haulover Cut. The Lighthouse had green sea turtles in cement-walled aquariums next to the dining room and a large wood-carved 3-D relief of an underwater scene between the bar and waiting area. It had a back patio on the ocean.

During summer vacation time, families would regularly scout the Miami Herald hotel ads to find the best deals on Miami Beach. Our family of four could spend an entire weekend in an air-conditioned room for $20. The hotels would have a pool and beach access. My family would regularly stay at the Carousel Motel, which had a small mechanical carousel out front.

Entertainment was simple. We had radio. One person on our block had the first television, and the neighborhood kids would gather around in his living room to watch westerns and old horror films, the latter presented by Miami’s own M.T. Graves.

When my family finally got a console TV, I had the pleasure of traveling with my dad to the Eagle Army-Navy store in North Miami to use their tube tester. We would walk in with a brown paper bag full of vacuum tubes and we would proceed to test each one.

The Army-Navy was next door to Royal Castle, famous for its nickel birch beer and 15-cent hamburgers. I would later work at that “RC Steakhouse.” I was behind the counter in 1963 when the manager came in to tell us that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. We listened to the radio until we heard that the president had died. Everyone remembers where he or she was on that day.

My grandmother lived on Northeast 31st Street. We would visit her often and I would do odd chores around the house. When I was finished, I could visit my grandmother’s neighbors, one of whom was a tinkerer/sculptor and had a little workshop in his garage. I was always fascinated with his little projects.

Shopping during the 1950s generally meant a trip to downtown Miami. Such trips in late November and early December could mean only one thing, Burdines. They had a giant illuminated Santa on the Miami Avenue crossover, and the west-building roof had a small carnival with rides for kids. Moms would drop off their children while they shopped. The other major shopping venue was Shell’s City (aka Shell’s Super Store) on Seventh Avenue and 58th Street.

Another of our family’s regular vacations consisted of trips to Key West to visit my aunt. We would drive from our house all the way on U.S. 1, the only route. Bridges were narrow and the guardrails were rails from the old Florida East Coast Railway, destroyed by the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, before my time. On the way down, we would stop at Shorty’s Bar-B-Q in Miami or Sid and Roxie’s Green Turtle Inn on Islamorada.

Dade County Junior College opened officially in 1959 at Central High, but didn’t have a real campus until 1963. They opened Building A, later called Scott Hall, at the old Naval Air Station. I commuted to the campus daily, along with 30,000 other kids in 1963. My drive down Northwest 119th Street took me past the old Bottle Cap Inn and the Tomboy Club.

Miami life was simple when the white and yellow pages fit in one book.

In various cultures, grandparents have been seen as a rich treasure. A grandparent’s life is one to be mined for the depths of riches shared in the form of unique stories.

One example was the late Winifred Ann Jackson Herzog, my own beloved grandmother. This is an account about how she led a motorcycle club across the $30 million Overseas Highway to Key West as part of the official opening ceremonies of July 2-4, 1938.

My grandmother was born in Richmond, Virginia, in May 1919. From her early years, Nana, as I called her, had many wonderful anecdotes which she shared before she passed in 2008.

Foremost among these was the role she played in the Key West festivities of July 1938. It was remarkable from both a historical and societal perspective. She helped Miami to do its part in carrying out a three-day holiday dubbed the “Gala Fiesta” in local newspaper accounts.

That year, the nation and particularly the Key West area was still suffering from the devastating effects of the Great Depression. The national unemployment rate was 19 percent. The morale boost from the manufacturing drive of World War II was just over the horizon as was the “Rosie the Riveter” campaign to promote contributions of women in shipyards and factories.

It was thus no small feat which occurred on Saturday, July 2, 1938, when my grandmother was 19. That day was when she set out to lead the Miami Motorcycle Club along with a special motorcade of city residents in making the trip from Miami to Key West. Nana rode the lead motorcycle, which was an Indian Four model.

Just how did she find herself leading this motorcade? As recalled by my family, Nana had met John Hays Long, my future grandfather, some months prior to this event. At the time, she had a job “hopping curb” at Pixie’s Ice-Cream Parlor. She served customers while wearing roller skates.

Nana had close friends named Thelma and Doris. Their brother, James, had given her a “basket case” motorcycle to take in for repair. The business she chose for service was none other than Long Motorcycle Sales in Miami. That is how she met John, the founding owner of the business and her future husband. (They would end up married the next year.) After meeting John, my grandmother grew interested in motorcycle club activities.

A few months later, local newspapers prominently featured the meticulous planning leading up to the three-day fiesta. The Miami Herald of July 1 reported that more than 1,000 people were expected to participate in the Miami motorcade sponsored by the Key West Club of Dade County. My grandmother led this group when they started out for Key West at 1 p.m. from the intersection of Northeast 55th Street and Biscayne Boulevard.

The Miami Daily News of July 2 reported: “This was the largest single motorized caravan expected to pass over the new highway during the celebration. Headed by a special motorcycle escort, the nomads of the open road traveled at a moderate pace through lanes of curious onlookers who assembled in the small communities along the route.”

In setting the context, it is important to consider details shared by my grandmother years later. In the 1990s, Nana told me that the motorcycle club members wore unique garb when you consider the perceptions of bikers in more recent times (such as the Marlon Brando look). Each club member wore a scarlet tunic or shirt along with khaki jodhpurs and riding boots.

Their mission was clear: to lead Miami residents in joining official ceremonies marking the occasion. This in turn provided a much needed “shot in the arm” for the state and nation. The festivities included inspections of U.S. and Cuban warships (with no cameras allowed), wrestling matches, a motorboat regatta, fireworks displays, and all-night dancing at a special “queen’s ball.” Amateur boxing matches were even held between Miami and Cuban fighters. The referee presiding over the fights was Ernest Hemingway.

Nana led the Miami motorcade for the approximately 130-mile trip from Miami to the awe-inspiring backdrop of the Bahia Honda Bridge, some 65 feet above the water. The ribbon cutting was held at 5 p.m. on July 2. The mayor of Key West, state and federal officials, and a representative from the Cuban government were in attendance. Bernice Brantley — the woman who had been previously designated “Miss Key West” — was given the honor of cutting a 60-foot, red, white and blue ribbon that stretched across the bridge.

The motorcade participants then drove the remaining 50 miles from the bridge to Key West, arriving there at approximately 6 p.m., July 2. As my grandmother resumed the lead position, more excitement awaited ahead. The Miami Herald of July 3 reported: “Led by members of the Miami Motorcycle club, the mammoth parade moved into Key West. From the entrance to the city limits on Roosevelt Boulevard down the broad expanse of this thoroughfare to Division Street and then on down to Duval Street the motorcade was greeted by a wild, cheering throng.”

The July 4 Herald reported that 10,000 people lined the streets to greet the motorcade. The importance of the festivities was underscored as follows: “Key West, once the state’s largest city, lost its importance years ago and its industries slipped away and was rendered destitute by the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane that destroyed the Overseas railway.”

Looking back now, it is interesting to note that Long Motorcycle Sales has continued to stay in business until this this day. During World War II, Nana helped to run the dealership with help from her father, William “Bill” Jackson. They kept the dealership running while Nana’s husband, John, served in the U.S. Army. In 1946, Nana and John were divorced. Today the business is located at 800 NW 12th Ave. in Miami and the family legacy is carried on by John A. Long, my uncle.

My mother Myrtis Virgina Bell came to Miami in 1913, her birth year, from Polk County. Charles and Virginia Bell, my grandparents, worked in a phosphate mine there.

In Miami, they successfully built houses in the Shenandoah area. They had two more children, Jack and Donald, before they divorced, leaving the three children for Virginia to raise.

Charles retired after building projects like the Miami Shores Country Club. Virginia struggled through the roughest part of the Depression. She sold crystalized citrus peels, avocados, or anything she could think of to provide income.

Virginia never learned to drive. Charles taught my mother Myrtis to drive the family car. She would drive her father to work, and then drive her mother on her errands, and then drive back to pick up her father.

She died at 98 in 2011, having retired from the University of Miami at 65 with the last mechanical typewriter on campus.

My first memory of my baby sister, Joan, was on my third birthday. We were introduced in Victoria hospital; she was born on the same day as I.

I started school at Riverside Elementary. I loved the Norman Rockwell setting, and looked forward to school. We moved into our new house at the edge of the Everglades: Southwest 63rd Avenue and two blocks off Flagler Street. I enrolled in Kinloch Park School for the third grade. It was a complete change. Most of the boys didn’t have shoes and they all had to establish a pecking order over me.

There was one classmate who rode the same school bus and delighted in throwing me out of whichever seat I picked. I learned to escape to our small community and still look on the neighbors as extended family. Originally, it was a planned neighborhood, with cast-iron lampposts and sidewalks.

The noises at night were a lot different than city sounds. There was a winter home for the circus, a hit-and-miss motor supplied the power for pumping water to the few houses scattered in the neighborhood, and early Sunday morning, a big cast-iron bell on the top of West Flagler Baptist Church would start ringing, summoning everyone to church. The original building had a baptismal pool behind the pulpit where I was baptized. My best buddy, Bruce, married his wife there, with me as his best man.

My mother attended Shenandoah schools in town but graduated with the first class of the new Miami Senior High School. My sister and I attended Kinloch, Citrus Grove School and Miami High.

My dad James Posey Boyer with only one ear drum was 4-F (classified unfit to serve in WWII). But he went to work as a machinist, first in Trinidad and later in Cuba. He helped establish U.S. military bases there at the beginning of the war. He and my mom opened a sundry store on the ground floor of a Masonic hall on Northwest 15th Avenue and First Street.

The Orange Bowl Stadium was just down the street. As a kid, I worked there after the games, picking up empty glass Coke bottles, where I got five cents for each crate. Competing with other kids, you really had to hustle to earn two bucks.

As kids, we camped out and fished on Key Biscayne, and even built a driftwood shelter on Fair Island. We could ride the bus all the way to the jetties for 10 cents. There were hundreds of vacant places for beach parties. In the summer, some hotel rooms were a buck a night. A birch beer and hamburger at Royal Castle was only 15 cents.

My dad used to take the family to Old Cutler, break an oyster-filled branch off a mangrove bush, build a fire, and roast it until the oysters opened. He would get us up early, catch a few fish and cook them on an open fire, for breakfast on the beach. Fish was a large part of my family’s diet. I now realize it was readily available and cheap.

I had a paper route, and I used a chicken crate to carry the papers. I started at 52nd Avenue and Flagler and went north to the Tamiami canal, all the way to the Flagler Street Bridge and Milam Dairy Road with only 110 customers.

Every year we made a trip to Pompano to find a Christmas tree, imagining them standing upright, because all the short needle pines were bent over to the west from the constant wind off the beach. Several times during the war we heard about a ship being torpedoed and on fire, and we would go to the beach to watch.

I got my first bike at 9 and gave it away after high school, when I had to report for basic training. The USAF 435th was activated at the beginning of the Korean War. I dream about those times in early Miami, and for sure I lived through the greatest time in history, in the greatest town God ever created.

She died at 98 in 2011, having retired from the University of Miami, at 65 with the last mechanical typewriter on campus.

My first memory of my sister was on my third birthday, being introduced in Victoria hospital, to my baby sister, Joan born on the same day as I. I remember being taken across the street from our apartment, in 1935, to spend the night in a bigger building; because a storm was coming; and then sleeping through the whole thing.

I started school at Riverside Elementary. I loved the Norman Rockwell setting, and looked forward to school. We moved into our new house at the edge of the Everglades, Sixty-Third Avenue and two blocks off Flagler St. I enrolled in Kinloch Park School for the third grade. It was a complete change.

Most of the boys didn’t have shoes and they all had to establish a pecking order over me. A couple of the more infamous attending were the Cash brothers; and the one who made my life the most miserable was later known as Long John Fulford. He rode the same school bus and delighted in throwing me out of whichever seat I picked.

I learned to escape to our small community and to love our in their small houses, and still look on the neighbors as extended family. Originally, it was a planned neighborhood, with cast iron lampposts and sidewalks. They never paved the streets because of the crash in 1929.

The noises at night were a lot different than city sounds. There was a winter home for the circus, a hit-and-miss motor supplied the power for pumping water to the few houses scattered in the neighborhood, and early Sunday morning, a big cast iron bell on the top of West Flagler Baptist Church would start ringing, summoning everyone to church. The original building had a baptismal pool behind the pulpit where I was baptized pre-teen.

My best buddy Bruce married his wife there, with me as his best man. My mother, Myrtis Virgina Bell, attended Shenandoah School and High school in town but graduated with the first class of the new Miami Senior High School. My sister and I attended Kinloch, Citrus Grove School, and Miami High.

My dad, James Posey Boyer, (with only one ear drum), was 4-F; but he went to work as a machinist, first in Trinidad and later in Cuba. He helped establish US military bases there at the beginning of the war. He and my Mom opened a sundry store on the ground floor of a Masonic Hall on NW 15th Ave and 1st street.

The Orange Bowl Stadium was just down the street. As a kid I worked there after the games, picking up empty glass coke bottles, where I got 5 cents for each crate. Competing with other kids, you really had to hustle to earn 2 bucks.

As kids, we camped out and fished on Key Biscayne, and even built a driftwood shelter on Fair Island. We could ride the bus all the way to the Jetties for 10 cents. There were hundreds of vacant places for beach parties. In the summer some hotel rooms were a buck a night. A birch beer and hamburger, at Royal Castle, was only 15 cents.

My dad used to take the family to Old Cutler, break an oyster- filled branch off a mangrove bush, build a fire, and roast it until the oysters opened. He would get us up early, catch a few fish and cook them on an open fire, for breakfast on the beach. Fish was a large part of my family’s diet. I now realize it was readily available and cheap.

I had a paper route, and I used a chicken crate to carry the papers. I started at 52 Ave. and Flagler and went north to the Tamiami canal, all the way to the Flagler Street Bridge and Millan Dairy Road with only 110 costumers.

Every year we made a trip to Pompano to find a Christmas tree, imagining them standing upright, because all the short needle pines were bent over to the west from the constant wind off the beach. Several times during the war we heard about a ship being torpedoed and on fire, and we would go to the beach to watch.

I got my first bike at nine and gave it away after high school, when I had to report for basic training. The USAF 435th was activated at the beginning of the Korean War. I dream about those times in early Miami, and for sure I lived through the greatest time in history, in the greatest town God ever created.