Category: Miami Stories

I came to Miami Beach as a New York transplant along with my father Irwin, mother Fay and older brother George.

Dad was a self-taught gentleman with a sixth-grade education. Our small library was filled with Reader’s Digest books and the music of the classics. When we arrived here in 1944, the only place we could find to rent was an efficiency at 1417 Collins Avenue. I can never forget this place because in the same bed I shared with my brother, we twice found scorpions.

Dad’s first job in this beautiful resort town was working as a bookie for an illicit gambling syndicate in the South Florida area. Dad didn’t want to embarrass his family by getting arrested; fortunately the opportunity to start a fruitful career in the hotel industry came upon him.

Starting as a hotel clerk at the Edison Hotel on Ocean Drive, he quickly rose to the position of manager. I was 11 years old at the time, enjoying being able to hang out with my dad often. This is where I spent my first hurricane, helping to feed hotel guests. We opened the coffee shop with our family doing our best to operate it, with me taking the orders.

I learned a lot at that old hotel. I could run the telephone switchboard, the elevator (they were manually run), and could even man the desk to sign in the guests. As a matter of fact, that is exactly what I did on V – J (Victory over Japan) Day in 1945, when the war ended. All the staff went out to celebrate, leaving me in charge to manage the hotel. It wasn’t too long as I remember, that Dad started his move north on Collins Avenue.

The next hotel was called the Alamac. There, I learned to dance the tango at the age of 12. This beautiful blond lady who had a dance studio on the premises asked if I would like to learn. Since I I had a crush on this woman, I jumped at the chance. She had me dance with her in the evening, on the patio, where the guests enjoyed the beautiful weather. I believe she wanted to show that if she could teach a 12-year-old boy to tango then anyone could learn.

The next hotels up the line were small, twin, side-by-side structures on Collins Avenue called the Seacomber and the Surfcomber. Dad managed both at the same time. Next came a hotel south of what became the Fontainebleau . Dad’s new position was to run the Sovereign Hotel where again, I occasionally had a chance to help operate a telephone switchboard. I had a chance to meet some celebrities such Una Merkel and Charles Atlas, the bodybuilder featured on the back cover of so many comic books and magazines touting his exercise program.

Later on, the last of the hotels in my father’s career turned out to be The Raleigh, at 17th Street and Collins Avenue. It wasn’t as famous as it is today, but it was a beautiful place.

I started schools in Miami Beach at Central Beach Elementary, moving on to Ida M. Fisher Junior High, and Miami Beach Senior High at the same location. At lunch time, my friends and I would go to the Dolly Madison ice cream parlor on Española Way. Next door was a place where I would play the pinball machines and buy comic books throughout the ninth grade.

With a love for photography, I was able to convince my parents to let me attend Lindsey Hopkins vocational school (which at that time was called Miami Technical High) for 10th through 12th grades. While in school, I had part-time jobs at several movie theaters in the area; I ushered at the Beach, Lincoln, and Sheridan theaters. The pay then was 35 cents an hour.

We eventually moved out of the efficiency and rented apartments on Marseille Drive in Normandy Isle. We were close enough that my mother would suggest that she and I go fishing at all hours of the night on the 79th Street Causeway bridge. These were some of the most memorable nights I remember about my late mother.

When I got my driver’s license and dated, friends and I would travel around town to places such as the Big Wheel drive-in where we could get a whole bag of French fries for $1. We would go bowling at the Coliseum on 16th Street and Douglas Road, or across from the old Sears store at 13th Street off of Biscayne Boulevard. Swimming at the Venetian Pool was a must for me and my date. We loved the grotto cave where we could “neck” (just a lot of kissing).

After high school, I entered the military, got married, and after nine years of service returned with two sons to the place I loved the most, Miami. In the years that followed, my careers have taken me from being a business owner of “Herb’s T.V.” for over 25 years, to teaching high school starting at the age of 55 for another 19, at Miami Jackson, and later, Hialeah High.

Now as a great-grandfather of two, I am living my retirement years in South Florida where I belong. Recently, I was at a North Miami car dealership, and found on the wall a very large B&W; picture taken circa 1945 of the Edison Hotel, my dad’s first manager’s job; I could not get over it.

This is an interesting story about a creative, talented man (my dearest husband of 50 years), Herbert Marks. He had an office on Lincoln Road for 60 years. His talent for show business started as a boy when his family had a theater in Boston where they had movies and let talent try out.

When Morris Landsberg had five hotels, Herbert produced full-length Broadway shows and he had all guests come to the Deauville to see the productions. Leon Leonidoff from Radio City Music Hall designed the stage.

Herbert also had a Lou Walters review at the Carillon and, of course, big bands at all the hotels. Herbert supplied talent for [Jackie] Gleason and booked big names into the Olympia Theater. He booked shows at the Indian Creek Club, private clubs, La Gorce Surf, the exclusive Everglades in Palm Beach, the Whitelaw Hotel and Boca Raton Hotel.

Herbert also supplied talent for big conventions. He got Sammy Davis for an automobile convention. He also provided entertainment for the children’s wear conventions, started in the ’60s by Sam Kantor.

Herbert managed the McGuire Sisters and got them on the Arthur Godfrey show. He had water shows at the McFadden Hotel (now the Deauville), was the booking agent for the Olympia Theater (where I danced many times) and supplied the talent for Miss Universe. Once, he took the producers to see a circus act and the car got stuck in the mud, but the elephants lifted the car up. Herbert also helped Bob Hope produce shows in Miami to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease.

It’s good to remember the heyday of Miami and Miami Beach. I am 92 and enjoy the memories of the Golden Era here.

A few tidbits about me: I was a dancer. I was the opening act for Dean Martin and Alan King. When I worked with Dean in Philadelphia we used to go dancing after hours. He did not drink whiskey but did drink iced tea. He put on the act of drinking all the time, but that was not true. He proposed to me then. I was too young to take that responsibility. It would have been fun I’m sure, but my mom said no. I kept in touch with him and called him years later when he and his family were interviewed by Edward R. Murrow (in Philly).

I continued working many nightclubs in Miami and Miami Beach, including the Copacabana, which was run by Bill Miller, and the Kitty Davis Airliner, which was a very popular club down here in Miami Beach. The service men loved going there. I was also voted “Miss Olympia.”

The Biltmore Hotel was a veteran’s hospital and I volunteered there as a “gray lady,” which was what we were called. We’d write letters and read to the boys. I loved it there trying to make the soldiers happy. Everything I did for the soldiers and the officer’s club was great fun for me and the servicemen. I did shows for every branch of the service.

Well, when I got married in 1947 my dancing days were over, though my husband and I were still going to the Eden Roc and Fontainebleau for dinner and dancing. We joined the Palm Beach Club, which attracted many celebrities. We also joined the Jockey Club as I was an avid tennis player up until a short time ago.

We had a son, Randy, who worked for the city for 25 years and is now retired.

Several years ago, Alan King was here at the Fontainebleau and I called him. He used to follow Dean and me around. He told me that who he was really following was me! I didn’t know. That’s why they say that youth is wasted on the young.

As it happens with all the affections destined to last, my love for Miami was initially tentative, and needed time to mature. Since my childhood, living in Argentina, I associated South Florida with intrepid pirates raiding the Caribbean waters.

Its name awakened the traveler in me, that wanderer that we children of immigrants carry in our hearts.

Miami was the preferred place to vacation for friends and relatives, those fortunate enough to be able to afford a trip overseas, but I had dreamed of visiting Disneyland in California unattainable for a modest-means family such as mine.

As a child years later, when the world of wonders that was Disneyworld opened in Orlando, I was certain that someday, somehow, I would get there.

Further down the road, in the early 1980s, the TV show “Miami Vice” was a somber global ambassador and tourist guide for all of us who never set foot in Florida. In 1987, when my husband Tomás Jakovljevic and I decided to accept the long-standing job offer from his family to move to Cleveland, Ohio, to work at his brother’s construction company, a friend asked: “Are you sure you want to stop in Miami? Keep in mind that there is a lot of violence there, drugs and weird people – and your daughter is only eight years old.”

At the time, our relatives living in Ohio did not dare risk coming down farther than Orlando, worried of a vaguely threatening environment, foreign to them as much in culture as in language, known through police news reports. The fact that some urban areas of Cleveland at the time were perhaps more violent and dangerous than Miami did not cross their minds.

So, the Caribbean was calling, and the three of us landed in Miami in April 1987. The city embraced us with a gulp of tropical air as soon as the doors of the airport flung open, a delightful welcome since we just had left Bariloche, a small winter tourist city at the foot of the Andes, in Patagonia.

We felt exhausted after severing all our physical ties to our old life – family, friends, home, school, and business, but we were sure it was the best for us and, in particular, for our daughter Adriana.

We called a taxi and asked to be taken downtown. The best way to know a city, in our experience, is to see its oldest parts, and check how it is maintained. Miami was a disappointment. It was flat, irregular, unkempt.

Nonetheless, some changes were sprouting here and there, like the metro mover and the recently opened Bayside with its nearby park. We stayed overnight in an old hotel – now demolished – right across Biscayne Boulevard. The next day we rented a car and decided to move near the beach. We found the perfect place driving through the almost deserted South Beach with its beautiful and faded art deco buildings.

The hotel was called The Netherland, and it was well kept and cared for by its owners, a nice Cuban family. The reception area had big openings with light, gauze drapes swinging in the breeze. Several fans hung from the ceiling over big pots sporting luscious plants. The intensity of the sea behind the palm trees through the windows of the efficiency won us over. I wished to be a painter to reflect on canvas the pastel beauty that surrounded us, the languorous palms, the elderly sitting on their rocking chairs in the shade of the verandas. The quiet beauty of the place conquered our hearts.

The hotel was home base for our sightseeing trips. We stayed for three weeks, alternating between visiting nearby points, and resting on the beach or at the pool. A few days after our arrival, Adriana asked, puzzled: “Dad, when are the Americans going to start speaking English?” He laughed and answered: “When we get further North.”

Three times we drove to Disneyworld. The child I was once, dreaming of visiting Disneyland, finally got her wish, and the adolescent reader of adventures reached the turquoise, fantastic waters of those fabled Caribbean pirates. Adriana was fascinated.

Through the years we would return often, witnessing the changes that, to us, wiped away much of that Miami soul that we got to enjoy briefly. The Beach’s commercial and gastronomic renaissance, with its visitors from the American gay culture, gave a touch of pizzaz and cosmopoltanism to our vacation days.

Every couple of years the three of us would immerse happily in a feast of the senses, being among people from all over the world. Our ears delighted in the variety and musicality of the unintelligible languages and our eyes admired the toned and tanned bodies and the famous faces parading in the evenings in front of the cafés.

The old and abandoned downtown had its rebirth, too, opening during daytime in a thousand shades, like tropical hibiscus, to fold down in the evenings under metallic fences.

Then, one day by the end of 2000 we bought a home in Miami-Dade, and in March of 2001 we packed all our home belongings in a U-Haul and drove down to live under the palm trees in a quaint, bird-sanctuary neighborhood called the Village of Biscayne Park. We started anew jobs, friends and outdoor life.

My husband took the plain, abandoned – but structurally sound – house and, slowly and all by himself, designed and transformed into a modern, very comfortable Floridia home.

Our daughter Adriana left for graduate school, got her degree and married a bright Connecticut man with whom they had a beautiful baby girl, Sofía, last February.

In my spare time, I go back to my long abandoned manuscripts and find a lively, interesting, vibrant literary life in writing groups, conferences, and book presentations around the city.

So we will stay happily in Miami, to share good and bad times, dodge dangerous summer storms, enjoy the peaceful evenings next to warm tropical waters and take in the luxurious pleasure of feeling the perfume of native flowers in the winter time.

Certain deep loves mature slowly, but they are meant to be forever, as the song goes.

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.

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1932. I had a wonderful time growing up in Cincinnati, playing outside, flying model airplanes and kites, playing baseball, and most everything kids did in that day and age.

My father, an Italian immigrant, came to the United States and settled in Cincinnati. He worked as a machinist and became ill, diagnosed with silicosis, known as dust on the lungs, and was advised by his doctors to leave Ohio to find a warmer climate. My father had a cousin in Miami who invited him down for two weeks. After he arrived in Miami, he called my mother to tell her he had “found paradise” and for us to come to Miami to see if we liked it here.

I was 10 years old when we left Ohio in 1942, arriving in Miami after three days by Greyhound bus. When the bus pulled into the terminal, we could not find my father. Much to our surprise, he approached us in a Hawaiian shirt, hat and sunglasses. We saw the sun, the skyline and water and could not believe the beauty that was upon us.

My father took us to a drugstore with a diner and we had dinner. As we ate, Mom and Dad discussed selling the house in Ohio and moving to Miami. Dad rented a two-bedroom apartment in what is now Little Havana, where we lived while Dad sold the house in Ohio.

Dad purchased two lots in Hialeah, at Ninth Avenue and 12th Street, on the west side. This is where he built our new home. The other lot was plowed and my father kept livestock there and grew fruits and vegetables. In Italy, he had been a farmer, so he used his skills to farm the land. We sold vegetables, fruits, milk, and eggs in order to make a living. We also had chickens and goats.

Mom enrolled me in school and we had a great life while I was growing up in Hialeah. We had land all around us and lots of fields to play in and have fun. We had only one station on television and that was Channel 4. The station went off the air every night at 9 p.m. We had no telephone service, no air conditioning, and did not even have garbage pickup. Dad would bury the garbage in the back yard.

Later, my father bought five and a half acres of land in West Hialeah and began farming that land, too. He sold the crops from the back of his truck in Hialeah every day, and I would help. The silicosis had disappeared and Dad worked hard every day to support me and Mom.

The years passed and I began high school. I played football for Edison High, ran track and field and played basketball. There was a little soda shop across the street from Edison and all the guys and girls would gather there after classes for sodas and just hanging around with all our friends, listening to music and talking. Saturday was date night with our girls, and there were dances and parties all the time. I worked in a laundry that I helped build so I could get enough money to buy a car.

I built model airplanes and flew them at the Hialeah Recreation Park at night on the ball diamond. My friends and I would fly our free-flight models on the weekends in the cow pastures on Hialeah Drive.

We fished in the canals and would hunt in the woods around Hialeah and down in Kendall, where it was no man’s land. We hunted rabbits on Okeechobee Road, and in the Everglades for ducks and pigs. We would bring our game home for my mom to cook, and boy, could my mom cook. Mom was also Italian and she would put on a spread for an army.

My teen life came to an end and I joined the United States Air Force and was a sheet-metal mechanic. I was stationed in Texas, California, Japan, Georgia and the Korean war zone. After four years in the service, I returned to Miami.

My family and friends gathered for a party and I met my wife Vilma, a beautiful Italian woman I fell in love with from across the room. We dated for a year and married in 1955 at Blessed Trinity in Miami Springs. I built a house in Hialeah and we had two children. I worked at National Airlines as a sheet-metal mechanic for a few years while studying at the New York Institute of Photography to become a professional photographer, beginning at the Home News newspaper in Hialeah.

I spent many years as a professional photographer in Miami and worked for many major corporations – Grand Union, Winn-Dixie, many developers, and companies of the food-trade industries. I had the pleasure of photographing and meeting the mayor of Hialeah, Henry Milander, Senator Bob Graham, President John F. Kennedy, Moshe Dayan, and many other dignitaries. I flew aerial assignments all over Miami, and photographed the wonderful skylines of Brickell Avenue and downtown Miami.

My years have caught up with me now and I no longer can do what I did. But what memories I have of this beautiful Miami that my father called paradise. I love the paradise he found and what I helped shape in such a little way.

As a 16-year-old boy, traveling alone, I first met Miami in 1942 as I stepped off the train at the railroad station just north of the Dade County Courthouse, on the way to visit my girlfriend in Santa Clara, Cuba.

Flying to Cuba during World War II required me to check in the day before at the Pan American ticket office at the corner of Flagler and Biscayne Boulevard. Passengers had to deposit their luggage there for the next day’s flight so it could be searched by the Army.

The next morning, we 19 passengers assembled in a Pan Am jitney bus, which drove us to Northwest 36th Street, then to the runway behind the small airport terminal to board the two-propeller plane, with one passenger on each side of the aisle that slanted down to the small tail wheel.

The night before boarding, I rented a room at the Royalton Hotel, on Southeast First Street, for $3 for the night. I began to explore fascinating Miami. I watched a professor giving free lectures on astrology and selling his horoscopes on Biscayne Boulevard and Southeast First Street. I smelled fresh doughnuts at the Mayfair doughnut shop and the hot dogs at Howard Johnson’s.

I heard a band playing at the Bayfront Park bandshell. Two blocks north on Biscayne Boulevard, I watched people dancing to the sounds of an orchestra playing on the roof of the Columbus Hotel. Hungrily, I continued north on the Boulevard to Eighth Street where Pan Am had told me Manning’s Seafood Grill had the best seafood dinner in Miami for $1.50. After dinner, the salty, sweet smell of fresh fish lured me across the Boulevard to watch the fishing vessels arrive at the municipal docks (now Bayside) and sell their day’s catch to the waiting public.

The next day, I was off to Cuba to visit my girlfriend, Emily Iznaga. Her father, a doctor in Santa Clara, Cuba, wanted his family to learn English by attending a typical American school in a town where no one spoke Spanish.

He chose Daytona Beach where my family had just moved. I met Emily in the registration line the first day in the ninth grade. I was smitten and the rest is history. When World War II started, fearing future difficulties in traveling, her father called the family back to Cuba. Thus, my trip to Cuba in 1942! Visits continued, but soon I was off to the Air Force.

In 1948, after the war, Emily and I were married in Santa Clara, Cuba, and moved to Miami. We moved into a brand-new apartment on Red Road at Southwest 77th Street, where four city blocks of apartments were being finished for returning war veterans.

I graduated from the University of Miami under the GI Bill in 1950.After graduating, I became deeply involved in Miami as a realtor-developer and federal trustee for major real-estate bankruptcies. In 1950, home prices were $25 per square foot.

To be closer to my office downtown, Emily and I moved to a 2/1 in the Roads section of Miami, and later to Natoma Street in Coconut Grove. When, in the 1970s, the first house in Miami was sold for $1 million, we toasted the event, but also thought who in their right mind would pay $1 million for a house!

Emily and I, with our three small children, Eric, Vicki and Ronald, would go to ride ponies downtown, where the Omni Hotel was later built. We went to childrens’ Saturday matinees, and in the evenings, to the Tropicare Drive-in Theater on Bird Road where the three children, brought in their pajamas, soon fell asleep and we parents had the short time alone we seldom had.

In the summer, we swam in the lagoon at Matheson Hammock, the Shenandoah public pool, Crandon Park with its zoo, Ferris wheel and roller skating rink, or in the freezing waters of the Venetian Pool, which had originally been built from a rock pit.

Emily died young and Geraldine Griffin, whom I later married, became the second mother of our three children, plus a new sister, Nadia. Gerry, a native Miamian, remembers, as a child, sleeping during hurricanes in the ice plant at the corner of Southwest 37th Avenue and U.S. 1- what a cool shelter!

In 1971 Gerry and I, the four children and “Mama,” their grandmother, moved to Rock Reef on South Bayshore Drive, opposite a mangrove thicket that was the shoreline of Biscayne Bay. Our family loves living in and being a part of Miami – a multilingual dynamo poised for the future.

I was born in Nassau, Bahamas. I came to Miami when I was four months old in 1919. My dad came first on his way to visit a brother in New York City.
He was going to buy some printing equipment in order to go into business for himself in Nassau. He met some of his compatriots who had come over from Nassau and were living here. They said that this was a great town. They saw a lot of progress and opportunity in this young city. He must’ve seen it, too, because he decided to stay. He sent for my mother, my three sisters and me.

He had a sister living in Miami at the time and she rented a place for him on Northwest 15th Street between Second and Third Avenues. We lived there for a few months and then my dad bought a home in the 1900 block of Northwest Fifth Place. That’s where we all grew up.

Living in segregation, I wonder how I managed to get through without being hurt too badly. Back in my day, lynchings were every week. My mother sheltered me to keep me from getting involved with white people. When I returned from my duty in World War II, I gave my mom a list of cities that I would rather live in than Miami. She said that a lot of these places weren’t that different from Miami. They’re segregated just like it is here.

She said, “Anywhere you go, you’re gonna find the same kind of people and you’ll always be black.” She said that I’m not a person to run from something. If something isn’t right, then I ought to fix it.

When Martin Luther King came down, I attended some of his meetings. My friend was a good friend of King’s and I used to attend meetings where he would preach to us about nonviolence. I remember talking to Martin a few times and I said, “Martin, you really believe that if I was somewhere and a white guy spat on my face, you think I would walk away from that?”

I said I’d try and kill that son of a b—-. He said, “That’s why you’ve got to try to learn to control yourself.” I liked him.

Working for my father at The Miami Times is the only job I’ve ever had. I was working in the printing department, where the money was. The former state president of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) used to come by my office all the time and talk to me about becoming more active in the NAACP. I said that my dad handles all that at the newspaper with the coverage. He thought my dad was too hesitant about taking a stronger stance and he knew I was tougher. His name was Father Theodore Gibson. He had Christ Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove. He said he needed my help, so I started helping out the NAACP a little more.

The first project I got involved with was integrating the golf courses in 1949. Back then, we could only play one day a week and that was Monday. That was the day that they maintained the golf course. They watered the lawns and cut the grass and we’re out there trying to play golf. I went and I talked to Gibson about it and started thinking about how we can attack it.

We decided to file a suit. We went out to the golf course in Miami Springs on a Wednesday instead of a Monday and presented ourselves to play golf. They wouldn’t let us in. I think it was two days later that we filed a suit. It took us seven years before the Supreme Court wrote a decision and said that you cannot take a person’s tax dollars for a municipal golf course and tell that person that they can only play once a week because he’s black.

After that, we had the beach. Twenty-eight municipal beaches everywhere but one beach for blacks, Virginia Key Beach. We decided we’d go after them in 1957. We called and arranged a meeting with the County Commission.

We got a good solid group together. We made sure that all of us were registered voters and all of us were freeholders. We had read the rules and believe it or not there was nothing in the county charter that said black people were restricted to one beach. But we had been told so many times and refused entrance to a white beach.

We had a meeting at 10 o’clock at Crandon Park. We went in and all the county commissioners were there. We made our appeal. They sat there and didn’t say a word. Nobody. We went on saying that it was wrong and that we wanna know what they’re planning on doing about it. They didn’t say anything. I guess they thought we’d just go away.

We then said, “It’s 10:20 now but what we plan on doing is coming back over here at 2 o’clock, and we’re going in the water. It’s up to you to do whatever you please. You can beat us up like most of you police always do when we go to the white beaches.”

Two o’clock came and our 12 had dwindled down to maybe about six of us. Oscar Range, whose wife went on to become our county commissioner, and myself, put on our trunks under our shirts and pants and just had on some sneakers. There were police out there just standing around us as a preliminary thing. We walked straight down to the beach, we kicked off our shoes, took off our shirts and we jumped in the water; just two of us. We were waiting for 20 minutes on something to happen, and nothing did.

We came back, put on our shoes, shirts and left. The next day, I called the NAACP and told them, “We’d like you to go to the beach tomorrow, any beach other than Virginia Beach.” We showed up and nobody said anything. The County Commission got the word out what we were doing and they knew they couldn’t defend it. From that day on, black people have been using all 28 beaches in Dade County.

Those are two things I’m most proud of. It taught me a lesson that you just gotta push and do your homework. First, you gotta be right. You’ve gotta have the right cause and you’ve gotta involve the right people. You just need some warm bodies to take a stand and get to the course and you’ve got a good chance.

(This story was compiled by Museum of Miami intern Lisann Ramos as recounted by Garth Reeves).

Garth Reeves was the publisher of The Miami Times newspaper and passed away on November 25, 2019 at 100 years old.