Category: Miami Stories

It was February 1964 and Chicago was really cold – a blustery, painful type of cold.

I vividly remember standing on the corner of East Superior Street and Lake Shore Drive, waiting for a bus to take me to the warmth of my new apartment located on Surf Street.

It was well after midnight and I’d just gotten off duty at Passavant Memorial Hospital. I’d been a nurse for just a few months and liked my job as charge nurse on the evening shift. Also, living in Chicago was my dream come true; however, it was January and while waiting for my bus it had begun to snow and the frozen particles were sticking to my eyelashes.

Finally, I reached my apartment, took a hot bath, put on the warmest jammies I could find, curled up on the couch and set about reading the mail. Leafing through my new copy of The American Journal of Nursing (AJN), I spotted the ad: “Nurses Needed at St. Francis Hospital. Come to sunny Miami Beach, live and work one block from the ocean…”

That’s all I needed. I fanaticized about the possibilities and vowed to rise early to make the call that would prove to change my life forever.

The next morning I called the contact person mentioned in the ad: Sr. Marie Francine, director of nursing. She explained that the census at St. Francis was seasonal and filled to capacity during the winter months. Evidently, the hospital relied heavily on “snow birds” to accommodate the heavy load. Although our conversation was short (she hired me over the phone and asked if I could come as quickly as possible), I recognized her to be likeable and endearing. In short order this “snow bird” would come to admire and love this woman very much.

Much to my parents’ chagrin, I arrived in Miami the next month with the intention of staying until spring. The following month, I wrote to the kind folks in Chicago and tendered my resignation. I would continue to work at St. Francis for the next 23 years.

Initially, I lived at the hospital nurses’ residence. It was a terrific deal: monthly rent was $25 – with daily room service. As promised in the AJN ad, the nurses’ residence was one block from the ocean. Those of us who worked the evening shift found plenty of time for the beach. It became routine for me to walk that one block to the 65th Street beach and work on getting rid of my unsightly northern pale. Frequently, prior to hitting the beach, I would stop at Pumpernik’s on Collins Avenue and 66th Street and order the coffee and Danish roll basket – all for $1.

Miami Beach in the ‘60s! To be alive and young during those years was simply the best. Despite the despair of war, we were a nation of young dreamers. Perhaps it was because of the war and the loss of our young president that we were determined to carry on and live life to the fullest – an easy task in Miami Beach.

St. Francis Hospital was located on Allison Island on 63rd Street. It was an impressive site, sitting on this wonderful piece of property that jutted out to the middle of Indian Creek. Over the years as it expanded it was a striking presence on Miami Beach.

In 1964, the hospital was only four stories high, yet quite spread out. Despite the age of the place, it was immaculate. One could plainly see that it had been well tended to by generations of people who provided the loving care that it deserved. From the solarium on the fourth floor one could look out and see nearly all of Miami Beach. In those days, when looking south, there were no high-rise condos and views of the ocean were breathtaking.

As remarkable as it was, St. Francis Hospital was far more than bricks and mortar. It was a community of caring and nurturing that truly made it one of a kind. I believe the Franciscan Sisters maintained an environment of family orientation so pervasive and enduring that all who graced its halls recognized it. Their mission must have been to provide the very best care possible to the community it served, to include the residents of Miami Beach and the many celebrities.

Some of our most famous patients included Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Aretha Franklin, Meyer Lansky and Lou Walters (Barbara’s father). Martha Raye, a famous comedienne of the day ended her weekly television show with “Good night, Sisters of St. Francis Hospital.”

As a nurse, I have embraced my profession with great passion. For me, nursing was a vocation that I have always considered a sacred trust. For some inexplicable reason St. Francis Hospital attracted many others who must have held the same beliefs. Indeed, the sisters must have been very proud of the excellent care provided. I know that I, along with countless others, felt pride in our work.

When I left St. Francis to further my career, I vowed to promote this tradition of ultimate caring. Over the next several years, I was blessed with opportunities as chief nursing officer in three hospitals throughout Kansas. To impart my philosophy and expectations to nurses, I always told the story of St. Francis Hospital and presented it as the perfect hospital, the one for all to emulate.

Since St. Francis Hospital closed in 1992, two reunions have been held. Both were well attended by several hundred people, to include employees representing all departments, administrative staff and physicians.

While working in Kansas over the past 23 years, my husband and I never wavered from our plan to return to Miami. Finally, upon my recent retirement, we have come home.

My adult daughter, Sage Hoffman, lies in a hospital bed, her body attached to numerous IVs, monitors and a catheter. I am in a little cot only a foot away. Sage has just donated a kidney to a long-time friend. Now she is recovering in the ICU unit where the nurses never seem to rest. Our room seems to be the tiniest in the ward. She’s in pain, and I am stressed to the max.

With nothing much else to do, I start to think about how things have changed in our lives since that day in 1987 when we first moved to an Art Deco apartment on Collins Avenue. After a botched nine-month marriage in Broward County, I decided to strike out on my own in Miami Beach. Sage was a junior in a magnet program in a local high school, and I was working for Miami Today newspaper.

We arrived in Miami Beach during a strange and wonderful time. South Beach was still a haven for elderly retirees from up north. But changes were happening. We lived in a charmingly renovated “Tony Goldman” apartment. Tony, like others from up north, was seduced by the bold geometric shapes of Art Deco architecture and the cheap prices of buildings. In South Beach he began buying up and renovating buildings, which was the beginning of Goldman Properties and its many restaurants, buildings and arts programs in Miami Beach and Wynwood.

Some evenings in the mid-1980s, Sage and I would sit on the front porch of our building and watch the world by – and what a different world it was compared to suburban Denver where we both grew up! Right across the courtyard lived Leonard Horowitz, the man who created the pastel palate that transformed the streets of South Beach. Around the corner from our apartment were the Clevelander Hotel with its open-air bar and the Edison Hotel, where Arthur and Charlotte Barron operated a swinging jazz club.

The TV series “Miami Vice” was everywhere. One day Don Johnson and his crew would be shooting scenes in our alley. Another evening Miami Vice set up shop in the beach-side café of the Edison. That day Sage put on her hippest clothes and snuck onto the set as an extra. Later in the season, we spied Sage in a Miami Vice episode. Granted, it was for three seconds, but there she was, seated at the corner table of the Edison cafe.

The streets were also filled with real Miami vice. While retirees rocked on front porches of old hotels, drug dealers and prostitutes were out on the streets. Drug dealing and cocaine cowboys were a reality. One afternoon I heard screaming out in the street. I had always vowed that I would never hide behind window shades as people had done during the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens. I got to the sidewalk just as a guy ran by, clutching a small item under his arm. I surmised that he had mugged an old lady and took her purse, so I ran to see if I could help her. Yikes — I ran right into four policemen running after the guy with their guns drawn. Whoops. Just another 1980s day in South Beach.

At Miami Today I was assigned Miami Beach as my territory for ad sales. I had the fun task of visiting every restaurant, hotel, shop, and art gallery, from Lincoln Road down to 5th Street. What a way to get to know our adopted town! I met people who still are my friends. What a crazy town it was, but Sage and I decided to stay.

We found a 1940s home in the mid-beach area and bought it for about one fifth of what it would cost today. Sage and I then flew back to Wheat Ridge, Colorado, picked up all our stuff that we had left in storage, and drove for five days in a big yellow rent-a-truck all the way back to Miami Beach.

Five college degrees later (two of Sage’s and three of mine), a new marriage, lots of travel, and too many friends to count, we are still part of the South Florida scene. Sage is a director for Mary Kay Cosmetics, and I am the founding director of the Arts at St. Johns at the St. John’s church over on 47th and Pine Tree Drive.

But wait, what about that donated kidney? This is a story of who Sage and I have become. We are not just living off the bounty of Miami, we are part of those people who also give back to our community. Miami is a colorful, sun-filled town, but it is also a place of great need. I give back through my church and the arts program, which uses the arts as a way to address social issues. For example, in spring 2015 we are presenting “Convivencia Miami,” a project that celebrates a time in Spain when Jews, Christians and Muslims lived, worked and created together in relative harmony. We think this is an excellent model today for our very diverse South Florida.

Sage gives back through Mary Kay, in the way it supports and uplifts women. And she also felt called to give away her very healthy kidney (heck, you only need one!) to a friend who was on dialysis and needed a transplant. Her kidney is now alive and humming in her friend, and both are recovering nicely.

Thanks Miami, for encouraging us to become the people we are today!

On the plane ride from Panama to the United States, there was a short layover in Nicaragua. However, we were not allowed to deplane. I looked out the window and asked my mother, “Why are there men with guns outside?” That was my first memory of Nicaragua, where I was born.

The day was Feb. 14, 1985, and I was a precocious 5 year old. I had only heard the stories as my parents spoke with their friends about the events that forced them out of their country. I vaguely knew that the reason we were living in Panama was because of the Sandinistas. It was because of them that my parents were forced to start all over in a different country.

My mother never wanted to go to the United States because she wanted to continue her profession as a professor, which she was able to practice in Panama. In addition, although my father knew how to read and write in English, he saw the United States as a place where he would have to clean toilets, and having been the credit manager of a bank in Nicaragua, he shuddered at the thought. My parents had worked very hard and had overcome many obstacles to become professionals in their country. They wanted more for their children, and that was their main motivation for leaving behind all that they knew.

Under the Sandinista regime, boys would be forced to become part of the military service to defend the “Revolution,” headed by Daniel Ortega, against the counterrevolution, known as “La Contra.” My parents had two boys before me and they refused to allow their children to be used as pawns for something they did not support. So we left for another country without family and without relatives, but where my brothers and I had a chance for a future.

Life always throws curve balls, however, and my brother Lodwin fell sick. My parents took him to doctors and they couldn’t diagnose what was wrong. They took him from specialist to specialist and no one was able to give them a clear answer. After several attempts to take care of the symptoms, the doctors finally came to the conclusion that he had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which spread to his central nervous system and attacked his vision. My 12-year-old big brother had almost completely lost his sight in a matter of a year. The cancer was attacking his body and the only solution that my mother saw was to bring him to Florida and find out what the doctors here could do for him.

My mother was completing her doctorate in education at Universidad de Panama, and we were supposed to be in Miami only temporarily. My father and oldest brother, Richard, stayed behind because they had to continue with our lives in Panama. After all, we were going back once my brother was well. When we walked through customs, I had five dolls. My brother was in a wheelchair wearing dark sunglasses and his lips were cracked and dry; he looked like a skeleton. My mother was strong and swift; she knew what her child needed and she was going to find it here.

We went to stay at my uncle’s studio apartment off Biscayne Boulevard and 29th Avenue in Miami. My mother slept in a chair and my brother and I slept on a couch. My two uncles slept on the floor. Thankfully, the doctors and nurses in the cancer unit at University of Miami/Jackson’s Holtz Children’s Hospital brought my brother back to life. He went through chemotherapy, and a series of other procedures. Eventually he was in remission, and although he had lost his sight, he was a top student in high school.

We never went back to Panama. Instead my father and eldest brother came to Florida and we all became Americans. We left behind all that we knew. My parents were able to work and grow in different fields, and were able to provide a better future for all their children.

This country gave my brother eight additional years of life. He filled the house with jokes, art, and never complained. My identity revolves around being an American. This country signifies life to me. It brought my brother back to life and it has given me a life that I would not have had in Nicaragua, or Panama, for that matter. I’ve been submerged into this culture and I feel like a tourist when I go back to my place of birth.

Living here, I have had the opportunity to graduate from Florida International University in business, and later had the opportunity to change careers. Here, my political party affiliation doesn’t determine the jobs or promotions I will get. How I feel about President Obama doesn’t determine my future. My children will never be judged by my choices and they will be able to decide their own futures. I have the liberty to grow and achieve what I am willing to work for.

Today, I hold a master’s degree and I teach young people who are very much like me. This melting pot, Miami, exposes us to a “ colada” and “ empanadas” and different ways of saying things in Creole, Spanish, and Portuguese. I have met people who have come from Haiti, Argentina, and Iowa – in one sitting. My students reflect that diversity and that same hope for the future. They have their own immigrant stories and they are here because their parents want a future for them that they cannot have in their own countries. There is no other place like Miami in the world. The United States is a beacon of light, when we have come from such dark paths. I tell them this every day as we salute the flag and “Pledge Allegiance” to it.

Oh, Miami! What a wonderful and glorious place to live.

I have been in Miami since 1949.

My parents moved here from Pennsylvania, when I was almost a year old. My father opened a soda fountain on Southwest 67th Avenue and Eighth Street. At the time, it was the closest place for the Miccosukee Indians to come and eat. I remember the pictures of them in their traditional Native American dress.

We lived in a small house behind the store, and when my mother’s family soon followed from Pennsylvania, everyone lived in this small home while my father and his new neighbors built a house on Southwest 57th Avenue and 33rd Street. The mortgage? All of $7,000. The neighborhood is now known as Schenley Park.

When the area on 67th Avenue started to build and added a drugstore, my parents sold the business and my dad took a job at Dressel’s Dairy Farm as a milk delivery man. He used to get up at 4 a.m. to start his milk route. What a great place.

Dressel’s Dairy was a farm with an ice-cream shop, ponies to ride, and cows to watch being born. We used to have great birthday parties there. Sadly, this place also closed and moved upstate to a bigger plant.

I also remember the Holsum Bakery on South Dixie Highway. Who could forget the great smell — a smell you just waited for?

When my uncle Paul went to the University of Miami he would take me to football games and we played on the grass.

My grandparents soon moved into their own home on Villa Bella Avenue. My grandfather continued to work as a food business owner. I loved the trips with my grandmother to downtown Miami where we would go to the old Burdines store and I used to get M&Ms; by the pound because they were not packaged. Burdines had a “ladies lunch room” and an ice-cream parlor, which was such a special treat. At Christmas time there was an amusement park on the roof with wonderful rides and, of course, Santa Claus! So sad, it is all gone now.

One of my grandmother’s favorite places was the cafeteria on Miracle Mile. We would go there for lunch. My grandmother lived in her house on Villa Bella Avenue until her death at 103.

My dad’s favorite things were Bird Bowl and waking everyone up to go to 7 a.m. Mass at the Church of the Little Flower. Mine? The skating rink next door to Bird Bowl. My mom’s? The Slim and Trim club, to which she belonged for over 25 years.

My brother and I would walk to what was then Children’s Variety Hospital. We would fly kites and play football in their front yard. It was such a big place to have fun!

There is a canal a street over from my parents’ house with open towers in which to play “king and queen.” They were sealed shut later because of bats. The boys in the neighborhood would swim in the canal and it was sparkling clean, but I was too scared so I would just walk the wall behind the canal.

The Biltmore hotel had a pool that was so deep you could “scuba dive.” Doctors were trained there. Somehow, my doctor got my friends and me into the pool. It was so deep that it scared us.

We had Fuller Brush men coming door to door selling such great products, and also a knife sharpener who would come by every month to sharpen all of my mom’s knives. One of the most fun things was the man with ponies. He would come to our houses and had hats and costumes to take pictures of us riding. It was just a great thing to do.

When my father worked at the dairy he would get off on Wednesdays, which meant breakfast at Crandon Park. Back then it had grills set up with picnic tables and even spigots to clean with. Mom used to say I loved the spigots more than the beach. But how could you forget the zoo and amusement rides there? What a special treat to go there. I remember taking my children to the zoo and the rides there.

Mr. Crandon had a huge house on 57th Avenue that was set way back; it had a wall around it and the kids used to walk on the wall till the butler would catch us and come running to make us get off. Now that area is filled with houses.

How can I ever forget the Venetian Pool? So cold and so big. It had a snack bar when you first walked in and I just loved to get the cherry sticks, hot dogs and Florida trinkets. They even had a Miss America contest there! The pool had islands in the middle and a cave with an opening you could dive through. You had to swim across the pool before the lifeguards would let you go to the diving boards. How proud I was to do that. The pool is fed with an underground spring and every night it was emptied and refilled with ice-cold water.

We would drive to the pool and have to do a circle around this huge fountain with faces that sprayed water. On special days we would go by the fountain and it would be full of soap bubbles to clean it. But as I grew older, I spent less time at Venetian Pool.

Oh, Miami!

My great-grandfather, Joseph Rapisardo, Sr., was a farmer in Chester, New York, with my grandfather, Leo Nicotra. As the cold and nasty winters arrived every year making crop growing a challenge, they decided to move to sunny Florida in 1950.

After arriving in Florida my great grandfather and grandfather built a home in Homestead, Florida on the corner of NW 8 Street and 6 Avenue. On the adjoining property they decided to plant onions. The crops grew well in the South Florida’s sunny winters. In 1950 the area was rural and Homestead only contained 4,573 residents.

After being so cold in the winter, South Florida was a piece of heaven and that is why for more than 50 years the family has continued to live in South Florida. At first my great-grandfather and grandfather tried to settle in Naples, Florida, but did not care for the area or the soil. They both agreed to move to the small town south of Miami known today as Homestead. It was a perfect fit for raising a family and starting a farming business.

After the elder Rapisardo and Nicotra were deceased, the children and grandchildren continued the family tradition. My father, Gaetano Talarico married my mother in 1962 in New York and in 1967 he also moved to Homestead, Florida. After falling in love with the area he started F&T; Farms, which is now over 40 years old.

I, too, went to school here in the winter and also in New York for the summer to continue the planting of the onion seeds. My uncle, Joseph Nicotra, continued the tradition that his father, Leo Nicotra, and grandfather, Joseph Rapisardo, started back in 1950.

The seeds were planted in December and the plants were pulled in April. Joseph and Leo made the long trip back by truck to Chester, New York, where they were planted again only to be re-harvested in July.

In 1953 the Homestead Air Force Base opened and grew the community to 9,152 residents and became a national center of attention since it contained the closest jet fighter facility to Cuba. With the new growth in Homestead, it still remained a part of an agriculture spot as it is today.

The property to date, now on the corner of NW 8 Street and 6 Avenue, houses duplexes that are still owned by the family. I have now lived in Homestead for nearly 46 years and was so proud to be a part of the Nicotra-Rapisardo family and learning the history of the planting seasons.

Miami and Dade County in the late 1970s and early 1980s had a different atmosphere and environment than they have today.

Truth be told, I was a vastly different person then, too. In those days I was a full-time undergraduate student (living off-campus) at Barry College (which became a university in November 1981) before it grew west of North Miami Avenue. Bob’s Subs, with the best cheese steaks and onion rings around (and, conveniently enough, cold beer), was still across the street from Barry then, at Northeast 115th Street and 2nd Avenue.

I had neither a car nor a phone and was all but penniless — a thrift-store denizen –so I worked part-time as a bartender, a cook and/or a waiter in just about every restaurant around: Lum’s, Pizza Hut, Prime Steak House, The Round Table, Red Lobster, Watsons Family Restaurant, The Jockey Club, Miami Shores Country Club. Most of those establishments have been renamed, changed, or simply closed.

Next to Lum’s (near Northeast 125th Street and West Dixie Highway) was the Pieces of Eight Lounge, my favorite local bar. It, too, has changed, appropriately enough, into a family planning clinic. Around the corner stood Grand Union, an all-night supermarket, where a broke college student, up all night doing homework, could walk at 3:00 a.m., simply for someplace to go.

Without a car but still a “carouser,” I walked everywhere at all hours: to and from work, school, or the Trailways bus station near Northeast 163rd Street and Biscayne Boulevard. I enjoyed walking. Once I walked home from Coral Gables, and thrice from Ft. Lauderdale Beach. (I still enjoy walking but now own a vehicle.)

My fondest memories of Miami and Dade County are of those times I spent walking. Most often it was late at night. The streets were deserted. The sea breeze, without the sun’s heat, would have died down, and stillness prevailed. The trees, many draped with Spanish moss, were like statues.

As powerful and pervasive as the city seemed during the day — people bustling about, noise from traffic — when the late-night hours came and I’d walk through North Miami and north Dade neighborhoods, I’d get an overwhelming sense of the Everglades, the swamp, residing patiently beneath the brassy urban development’s then deceptively thin veneer. The swamp was perceptible. It seemed like a living organism, an abundantly powerful life force, nonplussed by the concrete and the humanity covering it, casually waiting to reclaim its own.

It’s clear that I never really bonded with the city itself, but rather with the land on which the city stood, and the natural environment that surrounded and permeated the land. It was all so abundantly alive and present, regardless of the city that had been built on it.

It seemed that nothing that humanity could do — no roadways, no stone buildings, no canals slashed through the land — could suppress the swamp that, if not constantly held back, would quickly and inexorably break through and devour all that humanity had built, in a lot less time than humanity had taken to build it.

Yet it was so peaceful. For all of its latent power and authority, the swamp didn’t seem threatening — not like the ocean which, with its hypnotically immense majesty, seemed liable to snatch the city from existence with one convulsion. No, the swamp seemed to have a patient, harmonic personality. It was massive, yet finely balanced: an unfathomably complex mathematical equation, trillions of factors in a constant state of flux and yet perpetually attuned with the organic whole.

The more time I spent walking through southeast Florida, the more I marveled at the swamp’s immeasurable capacity, its abundance, complexity, harmony. It was like a song no human being could write, a portrait no human being could render, or an idea no human being could conceive, simultaneously and symmetrically consuming, producing, and providing.

That is all gone, of course. This land is no longer “mine,” and I’m no longer this land’s. The city, with its tall mountains and expansive plateaus of concrete, steel and glass, seems to have dug into the swamp’s heart with quests for commerce and a continually burgeoning population, all of which seem to have erased the swamp’s former beauty. Given the city of Miami’s prominence as the Caribbean basin’s commercial capital, the city will likely only grow.

But to this day–nigh on 35 years later–I’m still spellbound, not by the city of Miami, but by my memories of the land on which it’s built. Since I first moved to this town in 1979–more accurately, since I first moved to southeastern Florida in 1970–a lot has changed, both about the town and about me. I’ve traveled across the seas and around the globe, and I’ve lived all over the country. I’m older–more emphatically, no longer young–and tired, and not so innocent anymore. Similarly, the city of Miami and Dade County have grown huge and become much more crowded: pervasive, overpowering, dominating the land.

But when I see the pink and white cumulonimbus clouds billowing skyward in the east in the morning, and the seemingly endless saw grass plain stretched out to the horizon, and the scrawny Florida pines silhouetted against the red sky at sunset; when I walk the old, North Miami neighborhoods, feel the stillness–quiet, finally, in the wee hours–and recall, rather than still hear, the swamp quietly whispering behind it; when I smell that damp smell that once seemed to hold and to affirm everything, my fondest memories come rushing back, and I bask in the imagery of 35 years ago, when the land beneath the city and the atmosphere surrounding the city still sweetly breathed the promise held ever true in my heart.

Spanglish.

I do not know when I first heard that word, but it pretty much summarizes how I feel about growing up in Miami during the 1970s and ‘80s.

To me Spanglish is not just a mixing of English and Spanish; it is the mixing of two diverse cultures. It is a culture unto itself.

In the 1970s, I lived on 13th Street, five blocks away from Calle Ocho. It was a working class neighborhood — mostly lower-income families living in two-bedroom duplexes. Every morning, I walked to Auburndale Elementary, past Woodlawn Cemetery, La Lechonera, and Velvet Cream Doughnuts. In other parts of the country, I would have played with kids named Mary or John, but in Miami, my playmates had names like Maria and Juan.

At the end of the day, when we were called in for dinner, I would eat beef stew, while my friends had carne con papas. “Ay Mami” and “Oh Mom” translated to the same desire to stay outside ” cinco minutos mas,” or five minutes more.

My mom picked up eggs and milk from Farm Stores; my friend’s mom called it La Vaquita. Because it was a working class neighborhood, both parents worked in many homes. Those of us who came home to empty houses were welcomed into homes with an abuela present, who made sure you got an afternoon snack, did your homework and stayed off the roof.

I took cultural differences for granted. Spanglish was how we understood one another. It blurred the lines between languages and gave us common ground so we could get on with the business of being kids.

Summers are long when you are a child, but in Miami summer lasts most of the year. I spent my weekends with the neighbor’s grandchildren exploring Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, also known as El Farito because of the historic lighthouse. We searched for hermit crabs and sea slugs. We were sunscreen-free with sand baked on to our bodies. We climbed onto picnic tables, ate sandwiches wrapped in foil, and drank water out of a thermos before heading back home to play a few more hours outside.

Other times, I spent weekends with a dear friend who had moved on from our neighborhood. Those Saturdays consisted of all day in the pool and backyard barbecues. We did this all year, never thinking that in September and October kids elsewhere were wearing sweaters. For kids growing up in Miami, shorts and T-shirts were a way of life.

If my brother had extra pocket money he hoisted me on the back of his bicycle, and took me to the Machine Shop to play pinball, or sometimes to the Coliseum, a gorgeous old bowling alley off 37th Avenue. The bowling alley changed over the years, and eventually was torn down and a Publix now occupies the site.

We sneaked into the Gables movie theater on more than one occasion. If we were lucky and my mom had time off, she would take us to the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. I eventually was married there in my 20s.

In the 1980s, Central and South Americans and Haitians became part of the Miami landscape, bringing a new dimension of diversity to a city that already had many identities. The city and its people became media targets.

Miami was the poster child for violence and racial tension. I remember watching Channel 10 news and the broadcasters talked about the violence that was taking place in the streets. I didn’t understand what was going on back then.

Talk of cocaine cowboys and images from the television show “Miami Vice” began to show up everywhere. I did not know this version of Miami. My version of growing up was more like the PBS show “¿ Qué Pasa, U.S.A?” I did not grow up surrounded by violence, I was not afraid to play outside. The only time I ever heard gunshots was when some of the men in the neighborhood shot off their rifles to ring in the New Year.

We moved for a year to Birmingham, AL. It was the first time I experienced the change of seasons; We had a bigger house, I lived in a better neighborhood, and I went to a good school. But I felt like I was missing something. It felt strange to be surrounded by Marys and Johns. It felt strange not to smell café Cubano and sazon criollo wafting from the neighbor’s house in the morning and evening. It felt weird not to communicate in Spanglish.

We moved back after only a year, and the missing pieces fell back into place. I caught up with my old friends and life resumed its normal Spanglish rhythm.

To this day, even though I understand Spanish completely, I speak Spanglish. I have been lucky to travel as an adult. I love the hospitality of the Deep South, the romance of Paris and the hustle and bustle of New York. However, Miami is my heart and its Spanglish culture will always be my home.

The year was 1973, the beginning of October, and for our Indian-origin family of five, the beginning of our new life.
I had just turned 6 and my first memory of our new hometown was actually one of fear. Everything here looked so big and spread out. The city’s bright lights especially scared me. Before moving to Miami Beach, we had lived all over England.

I’ll never forget the drive from Miami International Airport to our two-story apartment building on Normandy Drive. The neighbors living beneath us, Ralph and Betty, spoke Spanish, a language we had never heard before.

My father Virendra Bhuta, a 40-year-old physician, had only come to the United States a few months prior. My uncle had been telling my dad for years to move from the UK to the United States. He also advised him that there were only two possible places where he should choose to live: California or Florida.

After applying to a ton of medical residency programs throughout the country, Miami ultimately came calling Dr. Bhuta. What did my parents know about Miami before coming here? They knew only three things – sunny beaches, beauty pageants, and lots of millionaires!

My father, who had practiced reconstructive plastic surgery before coming to the U.S., unfortunately had to give up his love of being a surgeon. He did a medical residency at St. Francis Hospital in Miami Beach. In 1973, he was only earning an annual salary of $10,000, not much to support a family of five. After only a year of training, my dad eventually turned to emergency medicine. Baptist Hospital in Kendall had the privilege of his expertise in their ER for more than 30 years.

Pravina, my mom, also did more than her fair share. Being 11 years younger than my father, it wasn’t easy for her to take care of my two brothers, ages 4 and 8, and me. She put my older brother, Amar, and me in Treasure Island Elementary. Incidentally, the school’s principal was Christina M. Eve, who would eventually have an elementary school named after her. .

Soon my mom also became an Avon lady and receptionist at nearby Mount Sinai Hospital. Her best customers were the employees at the hospital. Her monthly Avon meetings were around the corner at Howard Johnson’s.

My parents really took full advantage of achieving the “American Dream.” In October 1973, we were living in a two-bedroom/one-bath apartment in Miami Beach. By January 1976, they had already purchased their first home. It was in Kendall, a four-bedroom/three-bath home with its very own swimming pool. My brothers and I attended Blue Lakes Elementary. In fact, we were there the year it “snowed” in Miami. I still remember the snowball fights.

We also went to Glades Junior High and Southwest Miami Senior High. Our higher education came from Miami-Dade Community College, Florida International University, and the University of Miami (where we were national football champs for my senior year). My older brother, Amar, eventually went to Ohio State University medical school to become a doctor.

We have enjoyed many things growing up here in Miami. My dad and brothers would enjoy going to Dolphins games at the Orange Bowl. Of course, we didn’t move here until the year after their perfect season. We also remember attending the spectacular Orange Bowl Parade for New Year’s. I recall the aroma of roasted peanuts and delicious chocolate in the air, along with all the decorating of Winnie-the-Pooh teddy bears.

My teen year weekends always included visiting Burdines and Jordan Marsh in Dadeland Mall. The Falls being built seemed so luxurious, now that we had a Bloomingdales. Eating at LUMS was always a treat, as was being a spectator at the annual Bed Races in Coconut Grove. The Seaquarium and Parrot Jungle were always places to take our out-of-town guests. We also enjoyed showing them the colorful sails gliding on the water at Key Biscayne every weekend. Crandon Park beach was also always a fun time.

My mom even got to chaperone a few beauty pageants in the 1980s. They were all broadcast from the Knight Center in downtown Miami. She did Miss Universe, Miss Teen USA, and Miss USA (the one where Halle Berry was Miss Ohio).

I feel very fortunate to have lived here for most of my life. While I am now 45 and have traveled extensively, I can’t imagine living anywhere other than Miami. Yes, I’ve seen many changes here over the years, but for the most part, they’ve been beneficial for our community.

My parents still live in Kendall, in a different home, near Norman Brothers. My husband, Rajesh, is an interventional cardiologist, practicing mainly at Baptist Hospital and Kendall Hospital. I help with the bookkeeping for his solo practice. I have three daughters.

Seeing my own children and husband live where I grew up is such a great feeling for me.

It’s as if everything has come full circle. For me and my family, Miami will always be our wonderful “Home Sweet Home.”

Yes, I am a Miami native, born in 1951 at St. Francis Hospital on Miami Beach. My dad was in dental school at St. Louis University and my parents came home so I would be born in Miami.

My dad Jerry Denker a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., attended Miami Beach High and played football there in the early 1940s. My grandparents, Julia and Harry Mahler, had a dry cleaning store, DuBarry’s, on Fifth Street.

After the war, my dad met my mom (Gloria, from Woodbridge, N.J.) while she was vacationing on Miami Beach near the store.

After my dad finished dental school, we moved back to Miami and lived in a small duplex on Southwest Seventh Street in what is now known as Little Havana.

I attended the Miami Jewish Community Center (YMHA-YWHA), also located in the neighborhood, for kindergarten.

In 1955, we moved to a new housing development called Westchester. Everyone wondered why we were moving to “nowhere” in the Everglades.

Actually, it was in the area of Coral Way between Southwest 78th and 87th Avenues. There were no expressways and the neighborhood at first was barren, with no trees or landscaping. My father set up his dental practice on Bird Road and I attended Everglades Elementary School.

In 1957, when I was 7, my sister, Marti, was born at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Little did I know that as an adult, I would work at Jackson as a nurse for more than 38 years.

Westchester was a great neighborhood for growing up — playing ball games and riding bikes on the quiet streets, knowing most everyone in the community.

My dad, a proud Gator from the University of Florida, influenced my sister and me in many ways.

Dad was an all-time sports lover and we spent much time in the Orange Bowl, cheering on the University of Miami Hurricanes, claiming season tickets when the Dolphins arrived in Miami, attending the Golden Gloves boxing in Dinner Key, and any other sporting event that came to town.

I have many remembrances of the “sleepy” town of Miami where we did not lock our homes or cars. We picked strawberries and tomatoes blocks from our home.

We walked to the shopping center in Westchester and bought 45 RPM records at Zayre’s. I spent summers hanging out with friends and club members at the Westbrook Country Club (Southwest Eighth Street), later to become the “Y” where my Coral Park swim team practiced. My family liked to go out to eat and some of our favorites were the Red Diamond on Lejeune, the Pub, and Glorified Deli on Coral Way.

My grandparents lived on Miami Beach, and it was always a treat to sleep over and go to Flamingo Park and the beach.

I remember the long ride to the beach weaving in and out of streets through downtown, before the expressways. My girlfriends and I would sometimes take the bus to South Beach and hang out by the old dog track.

If it wasn’t the beach, we would ride the bus to Miracle Mile, shop at Young Sophisticates, eat lunch at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor and see a movie at the Miracle Theatre.

As a result of the sports culture in our lives, I became a competitive swimmer and swam with the Coral Gables Swimming Association at the Venetian pool from 1959 until I joined the Coral Park High School swimming team in 1966. My sister became a competitive tennis player and often played at Salvador Park in Coral Gables.

My mom, very dedicated, would drive us back and forth to swimming or tennis practice, sometimes more than twice a day. We would spend weekends at swimming meets anywhere from West Palm Beach to Miami.

To this day, I continue to swim and work out with groups at José Martí Park. I have great friends from my age-group swimmers and the Masters swimming community of South Florida.

Needless to say, I attended the University of Florida and also became a loyal Gator and a nurse practitioner. I spent a great 38 years at Jackson Memorial Hospital in many roles, caring for the people of Miami-Dade County.

I continue to reside in Miami in a building with a great view of the beautiful bay and downtown skyline, not far from the little duplex that still stands on Southwest Seventh Street.