Tag: Written

Little did we know when Ben and I got married in Havana in 1958 and came to Miami for our honeymoon that this city would be our home for the rest of our lives.

We spent two wonderful weeks in Miami Beach in a hotel named “Sands,” and visited all the tourist attractions, such as Vizcaya, the Seaquarium, Coral Castle, the Boom Boom Room at the Fontainebleau Hotel, Eden Roc, Castaways and so on. Miami was a sleepy town where all restaurants closed before 10 o’clock. However, there was night life on Miami Beach.

We came back to our peaceful lives in Cuba, but on December 31, 1958, the communist government took over.

Every day we were waiting for something to happen that would end that horrible nightmare. We could not comprehend how the American government would allow a communist regime with Russian missiles, 90 miles away.

In 1963, the American Red Cross put together a fleet of several cargo ships to transport the Bay of Pigs prisoners and their families to the United States. At this point, we decided to leave our country. We had to abandon all possessions and leave everything behind. It was heartbreaking. We came in the berths of a ship named American Surveyor, and because we both were fluent in English, we were selected to be the ship’s translators.

We were given one cot for every two people, but I was bringing a 9-month-old baby girl to her parents in Miami, so she got our cot. My parents, Mariano Cordova and Dulce Maria Tascon, and my brother-in-law, Daniel, also came with us in this ship. We brought our dog, Canela, as well. We encountered extremely rough weather and as a result, the trip, which normally would have taken 12 hours, lasted 20. Parents with babies were bringing them in shoe boxes (for lack of cribs). It was really horrific.

We finally arrived at Port Everglades on April 29, 1963, all disheveled and dirty from the ship furnaces. We were transported on buses to the old Opa-locka airport where our relatives and friends were waiting for us. I gave the baby to her parents and never heard from them again. She must be 51 years old by now. I have always wondered what became of her — did she marry, and does she have any children? Has she ever been told how she came from Cuba and who brought her?

Because Ben’s relatives were living in Miami Beach, we started our life there and rented a one-bedroom apartment on Ocean Drive in the “Ocean Front Apartments.” It belonged to two older brothers and a sister who were marvelous with us refugees. They learned to speak Spanish and played dominoes with us. It was like a big family.

I remember the two movie theaters, the Cameo and the Cinema, which showed movies for 25 cents before 6 o’clock, and after that it would go up to 50 cents. We ran like crazy to get to the movies before 6 p.m. We were so far behind in the movie business that any film was brand new to us.

I landed a secretarial job at the Mercantile National Bank at 420 Lincoln Road. My husband was offered a position as a teacher’s aide at Southside Elementary in downtown Miami, where all of the newly arrived Cuban children were studying. He served as an interpreter, teacher’s aide, worked at the school office, and did whatever the principal would ask him to do, such as bringing her coffee and doughnuts from the Royal Castle nearby. This school has been designated a historical landmark in downtown Miami.

We were able then to rent a two-bedroom apartment on Euclid Avenue. My brother-in-law slept on the couch and got a job at a Hialeah factory making plastic hangers. He did not own a car and had to take two buses from Miami Beach to Hialeah to get to his job on time. Later on, he bought himself a 1952 Chevrolet for $250. It felt like a Rolls Royce to him.

Our family outings were to Crandon Park for picnics or to Rickenbacker Causeway to fish. They were simple times, but very happy. We remember the small zoo at Crandon Park with lots of parrots and an old lion.

We became proud American citizens on July 4, 1970 in a swearing ceremony held at the Dade County Auditorium.

One Mother’s Day we all went to Shorty’s in Kendall to celebrate, but my mother fell ill and we took her to Mercy Hospital, where she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She passed away two weeks later at the ripe age of 54.

We decided to leave Miami Beach and were able to buy our first home in the Coral Gate neighborhood in 1966, where a two-bedroom, one-bath would go for $15,000, with $450 down and $110 per month.

I remember that Ben only had a $10 bill in his pocket and that was what the realtor, Fred G. Smith, accepted as our initial down payment. That night, he came to our home, we gave him a check for the full down payment, signed the contract and he returned the $10 to us. I understand this area was developed in the 1950s for World War II veterans under the G.I.Bill.

My father was living with us, and he shared a bedroom with our son, George. We lived one block off Miracle Mile and our outings were confined to McCrory’s and F.W. Woolworth, and Sundays to the ponies and Burger King. I remember the park on Northwest 22nd Avenue, which belonged to the Police Benevolent Association, where all the neighborhood children went and had a fantastic time. We used to pick green peppers, tomatoes and strawberries at 117th Avenue, where Kendall is now a bustling neighborhood, and brought home bags full of freshly picked vegetables and fruits.

We decided to move to a younger neighborhood full of children and excellent nearby schools, Coral Park Estates, where we have lived for the last 40 years. George attended Coral Park Elementary, then Rockway Middle School, Miami Coral Senior High, Miami-Dade Community College and finally, FIU.

When he married Janet, they decided to buy a home in the same neighborhood so that their children would attend these schools. My granddaughter, Gia, attends Coral Park Elementary and is now in fifth grade. The cycle repeats itself!

My husband passed away three years ago and I still live in the same neighborhood. I have been in Miami for 50 years already, longer than in my own country, and have always considered this our only homeland. Over the years, we have witnessed the transformation from a sleepy town to a beautiful and vibrant city — an experience that I wouldn’t change for all the money in the world.

I was not allowed to talk at six o’clock when the news came on. Dinner at the pull-down table in the breakfast room was a silent affair, but for the radio.

Edward R.Murrow was reporting: Hitler’s crossing this river, that river. Daddy fumed that he wanted to go “over there,” to help our country – but he was too young for WWI, too old for WWII and he and Mommy were saddled with 3 little girls and one on the way. Mommy would say, “Why am I bringing another life into this horrible, hopeless world?”

A recurring ghastly nightmare — me, 5 years old, swinging on the playground at North Beach Elementary – and suddenly Hitler was standing on a giant swing, arcing over the playground, with a uniformed German on each side in identical mustaches and on swings, each one scoo-o-o-oping up little children – me, one of them, disappearing into instant night.

During the day I would march alongside soldiers outside my house on Royal Palm Avenue and in Polo Park (where Nautilus Middle School now stands). The army was occupying Miami Beach hotels, with the streets as their training grounds. One of my first songs was, “Over there, send the word . . . that the Yanks are coming. . . .” Me wondering, who ARE the yanks, anyway?

There were blackouts every night and rationing; my parents were on Civil Air Patrol “birdwatching” from the Roney Plaza hotel tower for German subs off the coast.

In school, I remember wrapping bandages for the war effort and singing, “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder. . . .” There were daily drills and we had to duck under our desks.

Then, on Fox Movietone News, concentration-camp skeletons were being liberated. Then came the great day! I was nine years old, and my whole childhood of memory had been nothing but war. Now that childhood was almost gone – I danced around the radio with my sister singing, “The war is over, the war is over, the war is over!!!!”

As a kid growing up in a small New England town, I remember people going on winter vacations to Miami. They always returned with stories about what a magical town Miami was – 70 degrees in January!

The sunny snapshots always featured palm trees and other beautiful tropical plant life, so from an early age I always associated Miami with beautiful summers in winter. My family never got to go on vacation though – my father’s “vacations” consisted of painting the house or putting in a new lawn or something else equally exciting.

In August 1968, a friend invited me to accompany him on a vacation to MIAMI! After two days of driving, we finally arrived. Even though it was the hottest month of the year, that didn’t bother me because Miami was even more beautiful than I’d imagined.

After returning home to New England, I just couldn’t get the place off my mind, and I couldn’t get the girl I’d met there off my mind either. After a couple of months of phone calls and letters, that girl drove up north and, in September 1969, we were married. In November 1971, we moved to Miami along with our brand-new son.

Since my wife’s family was in construction, I soon became a carpenter’s apprentice and worked as a carpenter until 2007, enjoying almost every day of it. Miami was the perfect place to live. Where else can you work outdoors year-round? I must have installed at least 5,000 windows. Now, I notice buildings that I helped construct or renovate: Winston Towers; the Palm Island home once owned by Al Capone; the Imperial House in Miami Beach, where I ran into Meyer Lansky; and the Burleigh House, where I installed doors for Barbara Walters’ parents.

I also like to think back to the weekends – going to Crandon Beach, where the Miami Zoo was also located, with my wife, son and daughter, who was born in 1980. Driving along Bird Road and stopping to eat at Pizza Palace on 87th Avenue or Arbetter’s across the street. There was a Mister Donut and Daddio’s Hot Dog Emporium on 163rd street. Most of those places are gone now but they live on vividly in memories.

We did take one short detour, though. In 1984 we decided to give small-town life another try, as most of our friends were doing at the time. But we just couldn’t get Miami off our minds. Watching the television show, Miami Vice added to our homesickness. One year later we returned, broke, but determined to start over again.

We made a good life here. In September, that girl I met on vacation in 1968 and I celebrated 43 years of marriage. Our son works with the Miami Herald and our daughter is now a teacher at Felix Varela Senior High School. When I turned 62, I retired from construction and took a job at Publix, where in November, I’ll have been for five years.

And, as for my wife and I, we’re still busy soaking up the magic of this town. Miami still is and always will be, “The Magic City.”

My father George Alberts was a reserve officer in the United States Air Force. When he was called to active duty during World War II in 1943, some of his basic training took place on Miami Beach. This was to have a huge influence on the Alberts family 10 years later.

I was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1946, and my family lived there during the first 5 years of my life. In 1951, my father, who was an Air Force navigator, got called up again because his services were required to navigate military aircraft between Tokyo and Seoul. When it became apparent that the fighting would be prolonged, he was allowed to send for his family, and we lived in Tokyo for a year and a half.

He was discharged from active duty in 1953 and we then moved to Wisconsin. My mother did not like the cold Wisconsin winters, so my father, recalling the beauty of Miami Beach, decided to take the family to live in Miami. He rented a two-bedroom apartment near the University of Miami where he finally managed to complete his college education that had been interrupted twice by war. He graduated with a degree in business administration in 1955.

Miami was a much different place in the mid-1950s. I can recall going to a food market in South Miami in 1954 with my mother and sister Maureen, and hearing my sister complain to my mother that the drinking fountain in the back of the store labeled “colored” was out of colored water! Fortunately, that sort of overt racial discrimination stopped by the end of the decade.

In 1955, my father started his business known as Alberts Advertising. Dad also purchased a new home on Southwest 18th Terrace and 82nd Avenue. Back then, the area that is now known as Westchester was so rural that I can recall seeing hunters with shotguns bird hunting across the street from our house.

Many of my fond memories from the early 1960s are of things that happened at the former Westbrook Country Club, which was located on the southeast corner of Southwest 87th Avenue and Eight Street. This club was very popular during the summer because it had an Olympic-sized swimming pool which, viewed from above, looked like a giant W. All of my friends and practically every lovely young lady I knew swam in and sunbathed around that pool. Unfortunately, the club closed in the mid 1960s. The beautiful pool, cabanas and two-story clubhouse with its formal ballroom are gone.

My mother was pretty much a stay-at-home mom. She did like to dine out frequently and in the mid 1960s she had dinner at a small restaurant on Southwest 32nd Avenue called The Studio Restaurant. She became fast friends with the owner and was hired as a hostess. She loved to tell us about people standing in line for up to two hours, sometimes literally fainting from heat and hunger.

Later on, Mom also worked as a hostess in another small restaurant that was located on Bay Harbor Islands called the Inside Restaurant. This establishment was owned by Dick Schwartz who was Meyer Lansky’s stepson. Lansky, the mob’s financier liked to dine at the Inside. He was frequently seen huddled with his associates having a quiet conversation at his favorite table in the back of the restaurant.

A few years after my mother left this job, Dick Schwartz was having drinks at the bar of the Forge Restaurant with a “made man” from the mob and they got into an argument about something. Dick drew a handgun from beneath his jacket and shot the man dead. A few weeks later, as Dick was getting out of his car parked in the lot adjacent to his restaurant, retribution came in the form of a shotgun blast that ended his life.

I received all of my education in Miami.

The first school that my sister and I attended was Sunset Elementary School. I spent my middle school, or what was then called junior high school years at West Miami Middle School. In 1962, I started 10th grade at Southwest Miami Senior High School. I wish I could say that I was an honor roll student but, unfortunately, I wasn’t wise or mature enough to take advantage of my educational opportunities.

What I did take advantage of was the fabulous social scene. Back in the early to mid-1960s, high school sororities and fraternities were very popular. There were legal (supervised by responsible adults) and illegal clubs. My passion was to socialize and party with my “brothers” in my illegal fraternity known as Eta Sigma Phi or “Eta Sig” for short. Southwest High, Gables and Palmetto all had these social clubs. Most of these fraternities had students from only one school. One of the nice things about Eta Sig was that it was comprised of students from all three schools, which helped widen the circle of my social contacts.

Most clubs followed the college tradition of using Greek letters, but others had more creative monikers. Readers who lived in southwest Miami Dade and attended high school at this time may remember some of these club names: Ching-Tang, Counts, Lynx, Decalion, Saxons, Bucks, Centurions and Tri-Sellet, to name a few.

The main purpose of these clubs was to throw parties. The instructors and administrators of the schools and local law enforcement did their best to discourage these clubs and the underage drinking that they promoted, but they remained popular until the late 1960s.

My freshman year of college was spent at Miami-Dade College, popularly known at the time as Dade Junior. In 1965, there was no South Campus so classes were taught at Palmetto High School in the evening. In 1966, I transferred to the University of Miami. My tuition for 15 credit hours of classes was $700. At my UM orientation, I recall a guide proudly showing the new students the school’s IBM 360 series computer, which was housed in a large room behind a glass wall. Can you imagine, the school only had one computer!

I majored in business administration and my time at the university was fairly uneventful except for the Vietnam War protests, which fortunately helped bring that conflict to an end several years later.

Today, Miami is a very different place with its multicultural and multiethnic population, its sprawling communities and its many beautiful buildings. Miamians have much to be proud of, but I also believe that among long-time residents there is a consensus that a relaxed, less stressful existence has been lost.

I guess my earliest memories are from the time of World War II, when I was aged 6 to 10, and all of Miami Beach was an OCS (Officer Candidate School) for the Army. Soldiers were marching in the streets, coming to our house for dinner, and training on the golf courses, where “obstacle courses” were set up.

Car headlights were painted black on top. Windshields had stickers to show the amount of gas you were allowed (according to need). Once or twice, my dad or someone drove us to the beach to watch a freighter burn that had been torpedoed by German U-Boats. On Purdy Avenue, there was a fenced-in area where they kept German POWs for a short time. I remember walking by, but don’t remember saying anything to them.

Port Elco, a marina at Dade Boulevard and Purdy Avenue, is a good place to start a tour of our neighborhood. I remember that I was at Port Elco on VJ Day (the end of the war). All the boats in the marina started blowing their horns, and everyone was shouting, “The war’s over!”

Right next to Port Elco was the bridge to Belle Isle. It made a good ramp for our home-made skate scooters (an apple box, nailed to a 2×4 with roller-skate wheels) and was a good place to fish with our drop lines, and especially good for dropping our home-made crawfish and stone crab traps. Back then, we thought that shellfish had to be cooked alive, so we just ran home with them.

The mouth of the canal, where the tide either came in or went out under the bridge, was another great fishing spot. That’s where I kept my rowboat, and later on it was a hurricane refuge for my brother Tom’s and my sailboat.

Mother Kelly’s was a nightclub on the corner of Dade and Bay roads. Mother Kelly (no relation) was a round, white haired, Russian man with three grown sons. Because I lived so close, I was adopted as their mascot. Sometimes, on Sunday morning, I would help Mother Kelly clean up the bar.

Three blocks south of Lincoln Road was the start of Flamingo Park, the biggest park on the Beach. It had red clay tennis courts (sometimes when I went to play, my sister Babe would give me her white tennis shoes to take along and scuff up to look worn), basketball courts, softball fields, a football field (my high school, St. Pat’s, played our home games here), a band stand, a professional baseball field (AAA), and two four-wall handball courts. Some of the best players in the country played here. In my late teens & early 20s, they let me play with them if they needed a fourth.

In the beginning, when we left the neighborhood, it was either by foot, thumb, bus, or jitney.

There were not enough bikes to go around. In fact, I think I had the only one for a while. It was a hand-me-down from my sisters, which I used on my paper route until I saved enough to buy a new Columbia from Western Auto. Of course, we also got rides in my mother’s car – mostly to the beach at 21st Street and Collins, but also many other interesting places, like Matheson Hammock, Tahiti Beach, Venetian Pool, Greynolds Park, and many others.

The bus system in those days was great. If my mother wasn’t taking us to the beach, we caught the “L” bus across from Mother Kelly’s to the 21st Street beach. The L bus was also our ride to downtown Miami, across Venetian Causeway, down Biscayne to Flagler, the last stop for the beach bus, and beginning for all Miami buses. At this stop was the famous “Jahn the Magic Man” hobby shop. Model trains, planes, boats – the works. At one end was a small stage where Jahn would put on magic shows.

On Saturdays, I got to work with my dad at his produce company. I’d help put up orders, and ride with the drivers. Dad and I would go to breakfast at Charlie’s Marketview Restaurant. We always sat at the same table and had two cake doughnuts.

Dad’s warehouse was on the railroad tracks and when the circus came to town, he brought me down to the station to watch them unload the animals and gear. The field where they set up was also nearby, so we got to watch them put up the “Big Top” and lay out the midway. They used elephants to help put up the tent, carry the gear, and pull up the center pole. Just as much fun as the actual circus.

When Tom came back from the Army and UF, about the time that my father died, I was 13. I gave Tom my paper-route savings (about $400) and he put up the rest, and we bought our first sailboat – a 20-foot center-board sloop with a star rig. Tom came up with an enterprise for her: advertising for Picciolo’s Restaurant. My mother sewed a sign on the boat’s sails in red letters, “TONIGHT DINE AT PICCIOLOS” on the main sail, and “DINNERS $1.25 & UP” on the jib. Mr. Picciolo paid us $100 a week (weekends and holidays). The “enterprise” ended when we turned her over in Government Cut and tore up the rig on the jetties.

After her demise, we bought a 30-foot sloop with a cabin and gas inboard. She was a “double-ender” and looked like a submarine when motoring. We named her Gypsea.

We sailed her down to Matecumbe one time for her most eventful cruise. She sunk at her mooring behind the VFW hall, when she impaled herself on a submerged piling we didn’t know was there. After that, we moved on to power.

Well, that takes us up to the ‘50s, and the days of my first car, a 1937 Ford Coupe, black, 3 speed on the floor. Cost me $35 and she ran! Needed a new transmission pretty quick, which I got at a junk yard for $18. A friend of Tom’s put it in for me, and off I went. The 50s were right out of “Happy Days,” and happy they were, but a little too wild for these pages.

I was born in Guantánamo in 1956. I moved to Havana as a teenager to study and ultimately graduated with a math degree. In 1994, I decided take a raft to the United States.

I had to leave Cuba. I had no future there.

I graduated from the University of Havana believing that if I had a good education and worked hard, I would succeed in life. But because I wasn’t integrated enough with the government, there weren’t opportunities for me. So I resorted to selling produce on the streets with my university degree in my pocket. Later, I cleaned floors at the Hotel Inglaterra.

I also wanted to leave because I valued my freedom and found that I didn’t have the freedom to express myself in Cuba.

I started plotting my escape with a plan to try to get through the border fence at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay. On Aug. 1, 1994 I went to my 1-year-old niece’s birthday party in Guantánamo. That was the last time I saw many of my family members, including my father. I couldn’t even tell most of them that I had plans to leave. But it proved too difficult to try to get passed security and onto the base.

On Aug. 5th, I returned to Havana to find the streets filled with protesters. Several days later, Fidel Castro announced that whoever wanted to leave, could go. So I got in contact with a cousin who also wanted to leave and we started working on a raft.

When it was ready, everyone in the neighborhood helped us get the raft on a truck we had rented. They wished us well, hugged us and gave us blessings. Many of the old women cried.

We drove the truck to the Brisas del Mar beach east of Havana. Even the people at the beach helped us get the raft out on the water. A neighbor of mine, who had planned on going with us, backed out at the last minute. And my cousin, who was just supposed to help us get out, ended up coming along.

We left on Aug. 30, 1994.

I was the guide on the raft. I had the compass. Before we knew it, the coast of Cuba was gone. We left in the late afternoon so we saw nightfall.

The night out on the water was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever experienced. The only light you see is the moon. We would see empty rafts out on the ocean. I later realized that those probably belonged to people who didn’t make it because when the U.S. Coast Guard rescued rafters, they would usually sink the raft.

We were out on the ocean for the entire night. Our sail didn’t work so our hands were destroyed from rowing all night. Our drinking water had been contaminated and we were too nervous to eat.

There was a point when everyone saw an image in front of us on the sea. I’m not a particularly religious man but, to me, it was an apparition of the Virgin Mary. She stood in the direction that we were supposed to be heading. She came at a time when things were getting desperate for us. Next thing we saw were helicopters.

At this point, night was falling on our second day at sea. We had been out there for a little more than 24 hours.

We were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard and they took us to a ship that was full of people. We were in bad shape. The ship had the biggest American flag I have ever seen. For me, it was like an angel hugging us and welcoming us to the United States. It was the first time I felt safe since I left Havana’s shore. Even in Cuba I didn’t feel safe. So it was the first time I felt that way in a long time.

I knew there was a chance that I wouldn’t be able to get into the U.S. Nothing was guaranteed. But I had to try. The freedom to express myself and have a voice was worth it.

We were on the ship for about a week. We would travel around the Florida Straits picking up more people on rafts. Then we finally made it to the base in Guantánamo.

We stayed in tents on the sand in extremely hot weather and with barely any clean water. I was in Guantánamo for a little more than two months. With conditions as bad as they were in Guantánamo, they began building camps in Panama. Some friends and I decided to go there.

When I got to Panama, all I had on was shorts and shoes that I had made out of cardboard. I was there for almost four months. In Guantánamo, they were creating better conditions, so that they could send us back.

Finally, I was able to come here to the United States. I arrived on Aug. 31, 1995.

It then became about a new struggle for a new life. I had to adjust to a new language and a new system of living. In Guantánamo, there was a program that taught us about these adjustments. I still work with this program to help other refugees.

My first job here was at a Pollo Tropical; I lasted there two days. Then I got a job at a pharmacy.

I went from a place where nobody was allowed to aspire and where everything was decided for you and given to you, to working at a place with so many products by all of these different companies. I wasn’t used to having so many options.

That was my first dose of the reality of living in the United States. Here, they don’t teach you, they push you to learn. You have to go look for work instead of waiting to be told what to do.

In Miami, I feel at home. I love the Cuban atmosphere, the people and the culture.

Twenty years later, I miss my close family and Havana, where I grew up. But my life here gives me independence. If I had gotten here when I was younger, I would’ve probably flourished more. But I can’t complain. I have everything I need for my life here.

What I want to celebrate 20 years after I fled, is not the fact that I left on a raft but that I now know that every country has the ability to be free. I hope that, in the future, every person realizes their potential in whatever country they’re in. So that they don’t feel the need to leave their lives and the people they love to find freedom.

I don’t want there to ever be a need again for what we did and what we went through. For me, that has been the biggest lesson from the past 20 years. I’m grateful to this country for giving me that lesson.

It will be fifty years this November since we took the Pan American flight that would separate us from the life of the privileged in Cuba to that of political refugees.

They served us tiny ham-and-cheese sandwiches with the iconic blue PanAm logo that tasted to us of the future – America.

We moved in with my aunt and uncle and their children into a three-bedroom house on the corner of 82 Avenue and 17 Street, a neighborhood known as Westchester. The community was predominantly Jewish with a handful of Cuban professionals, actors and writers. Walking distance was Everglades Elementary, a lovely school, but not if you didn’t speak the language.

I knew a few words in English – the colors, numbers and so on – but not enough to survive the third grade. I was made to feel alien, which I was. I looked forward to my afternoons in the warmth of the kitchen of Mrs. Meyers’s house, down the street. She would give me a quarter after school for babysitting and she allowed me to lick the cake batter off of her beaters. She was so nice to me and I acted as if I enjoyed her batter, but I didn’t because I was suffering from anorexia nervosa and couldn’t keep anything down.

No one really knew how bad things were for me at Everglades until my mother was informed that because of my problem with the language, I was being held back in second grade. Thank God that practice has since been abolished.

I also cherish the memories of the holiday traditions that were established early by my parents in an effort to bring normalcy to our lives. We would all pack into the Ford Falcon and head to Jordan Marsh department store downtown (where the OMNI eventually would be built) to see the beautiful animated Christmas displays and head upstairs to the toy department where we would get our traditional picture with Santa.

The holiday tradition would culminate with the New Year’s Eve parade down Flagler. Sometime around noon we would set up the fold-out chairs in the parking lot across from Walgreens and, with sandwiches and hot cocoa, we would see the likes of Paul Anka, Bobby Darrin, the stars of TV shows such as “Flipper” and the terrific high school bands. Everything in the “Magic City” was bright and shiny.

Spring of 1964 would bring The Beatles to Miami Beach, the Mustang, and Coral Park High School to Westchester. “Wow, Mom, that’s where the big kids go,” I said, but all these things were in the future.

Spring also brought the celebration of Easter. Services at noon would be in Spanish at St. Brendan’s on 87th Avenue, with me in my two-piece pink outfit and straw hat from the Zayre department store, also on 87th. Lunch would follow at the Pizza drive-in on Bird and 87th followed by a jelly-bean-decorated coconut cake from Publix on Coral Way.

I did not go to Coral Park High after all. I graduated from Southwest High off of 87th Avenue and 47th Street in 1973, and by the time of my ten-year-reunion, both my parents had died of cancer at the age of 47, and I was divorcing. I had nothing to share.

The OMNI by then had replaced the magical windows of Jordan Marsh. As luck would have it, while getting certified in teaching, my internship landed me back at Everglades Elementary, in the exact second grade with the same teacher who had held me back as a seven year old because I did not understand the language.

I eventually did end up at Coral Park, but as a teacher and, amazingly, the little seven year old who had been held back was now honored by her peers and elected 1999 Teacher of the Year.

The “Magic City” will never recapture the luster of the sixties through the eyes of a seven year old. I miss the blimp on Watson Island, the train rides at McArthur Dairy on Mother’s Day, flying kites on Father’s Day at Robert King High, the colorful Christmas windows at Jordan March, and most of all neighbors like Mrs. Meyers.

On Sundays when I was little, my dad and I would take the tandem bike and ride from our home in North Miami to the beach. Most of the time, my legs were just along for the ride and rested lightly on the rotating pedals, allowing my dad to do the hardest pedaling. With the 19-mile round trip, I preferred to save my energy for galloping through the waves. I started tap dancing when I was four, and it was always more fun to shuffle and lindy through the waves. The flapping of my feet struck the water, and resonated with even more satisfying sound than the beat of metal taps on a wooden dance floor. It was always a celebration, dancing.

While my dad and his dad were football players at my age, I was never interested in sports. There was, and still is, something magical that happens when I step out onto a stage. The feeling is a strange cross between everlastingness and fleetingness. And somewhere in between the -ness, I have always remained caught. For me – much more than the acknowledgement that dance is a language and that dance is a representation of everyday experiences – dance is much like life: some days it feels like forever, and then there comes a day when there are no more days. In this way, dance is also a measure of time. And this love for dance has helped me through many difficult times, including the loss of my mom when I was 9.

One of the best memories I have of my mom is standing on the tops of her feet as she danced around the living room. I remember the feeling of shifting from one foot to the other, the continuity of her movements and my role as her abiding partner, neither controlling nor directing the dance but a part of it nonetheless. After she passed away, I would stand in the middle of the living room, close my eyes and try to recreate our waltz. It was never the same.

My mom started me in dancing. Once a week, we’d all get in the car together and drop her off at an adult tap class in North Miami. My dad and I would then continue on to Donavan’s Bar & Grill on Northwest 7th Avenue. Donavan’s had billiards and French fries, and we’d hang out there for the hour or so of her class. Eventually, I grew curious about my mom’s tap class and began to stay and watch. This led to being enrolled in dance class myself and it was strange at first – not the same as leaping through ocean waves or whirling into dizziness at home, but I soon caught on.

I am very close with my dad, and for a few years after my mom died, he too became closer with his. Around this time, my dad signed me up for a football summer camp. I tried football, but I prayed for rain every day we had practice. Most of the other boys at Bunche Park already understood football and played it in their own backyards, much how I practiced dance in mine. I remember doing sprints – that was the one thing for which I was passable. I could run without tripping on my own two feet. Aside from one kid I befriended with a perpetually runny nose, who could also burp on command, the entire experience was pointless. I have a faint memory of my dad bringing Grandpa Lou to one of the practices (when I had been unsuccessful with my rain invocation), and as terrible as I was, my grandpa seemed far more pleased with my mediocre football than my love for dance.

A few years later, my grandpa passed away. And for another year or so after that, his ashes and wristwatch waited on the mantle. After watching the movie Around the Bend with Christopher Walken and Michael Caine, my dad and I awoke from our moratorium. We walked outside and stood on the dock behind our house to cast his ashes into the dark lake, leading into a canal of brackish water that weaves through many of the neighborhoods in Biscayne Gardens. After minutes of silence, my dad turned to me and said, “Give us a little soft shoe, son.” So there I stood holding my grandfather’s ashes in a cardboard box and tapping out “Tea for Two.” I felt highly inappropriate doing this, believing this ceremony required a more solemn reflection.

After making sure all of Grandpa Lou was out of the box and into the lake, I noticed for the first time just how cathartic dancing is for me. The tapping out of the rhythms brought me back to my best memories of my mom, and suddenly this was not so much about solemnity as it was of celebration. Celebrating life that can be over as quickly as a dance. And it is in this precious fragility I now find my place as a dance artist and choreographer.

Much like my earliest experiences with dance, I am very interested in creating dance for non-traditional and unexpected locations. We have plenty throughout Miami – secret places we drive past everyday without ever knowing of them. I was recently awarded a Knight Arts Challenge grant for a project called Grass Stains that will help commission and mentor other artists interested in creating work that highlights Miami’s hidden spaces. As I continue to change as an artist, my early memories of growing up in North Miami inform my art making and remind me of those in-between moments, of everlastingness and fleetingness, the dances that have ended and those whose music hasn’t yet begun.

One of Jean McNamee’s first memories as a child in Hollywood was of her mother, Elise La Monaca, putting her and her brother in the family’s icebox.

Her father, Caesar La Monaca, calmly assured his wife that everything would be alright, but Elise was afraid the roof would come off the house or that the rising flood water would overtake them.

Caesar peered out of their East Hollywood home on Sept. 18, 1926. In the shadows of the stormy morning he saw images he would recount for the rest of his life: Large objects floated haphazardly through his neighborhood. Cars were being pushed by powerful winds and waves through the streets, as if being driven by frenetic children on a bumper car floor.

The Great Hurricane of 1926 killed many people on its path of destruction. What La Monaca couldn’t have realized that day was that the winds of that storm would change the direction of his career and his life. It would end up pushing him towards Miami, where he would become the city’s authentic “Music Man.”

La Monaca was born in 1886 to a shopkeeper father, Vito, in San Severo, near the heel of what is the Italian boot. His mother, Giovanna, raised six children.

He was born Cesare, which he Anglicized to Caesar in America. He followed his older brother, Giuseppe, who later changed his name to Joseph, into the Banda Bianca, an Italian community band in which new band members were apprentices, studying music theory as well as instrumental techniques until they were good enough to play with the group.

After Joseph earned a flute-playing job in Ellery’s Royal Italian Band, a touring group in the United States, he found a spot for Caesar as a horn player.

The La Monaca brothers immigrated and traveled America’s booming heartland, playing concerts, festivals, fairs and any event that would hire them.

As America entered World War I, La Monaca was drafted. His expertise in music was discovered and he was made the enlisted bandleader of the Camp Kearney band, in California, while serving in the 82nd Infantry Division. During those years he transitioned from musician to bandleader.

The war wound down before he was deployed and La Monaca moved back to the Northeast, where he worked on Broadway and in vaudeville. In New York, he met a beautiful young Italian immigrant, Elise D’Addona. She was 15 years his junior but Caesar proposed on their first date and they were soon married. The La Monacas soon had two children, Caesar Vito and Jean.

Joseph La Monaca moved to Philadelphia, where he began a prestigious career as flautist and composer with the Philadelphia Symphony.

Ceasar La Monaca brought his band to Florida in 1923. With six new houses starting construction daily, developer J.W. Young’s Hollywood was exploding with residents and they needed entertaining as much as the tourists in Young’s hotel. Young hired La Monaca full-time. By 1926, Hollywood had a bandshell, an outdoor stage at the casino, and countless other venues for live music. La Monaca even formed a marching band to participate in Hollywood’s first Fourth of July parade.

Soon after the Great Hurricane, Hollywood’s economy floundered and La Monaca had to look for work elsewhere. He joined the American Legion as musical director for Harvey W. Seeds American Legion Post #29 drum corps. The corps already held a national championship. La Monaca would lead them to three more national championships and countless state championships as well as international accolades over the following 25 years.

La Monaca soon won the job producing seasonal concerts at Miami’s Bayfront Park. His free concerts became a social staple, with thousands in attendance at almost every show. He attracted guest soloists like the famed Mana-Zucca and local John Basso. He introduced thousands of music fans to classical songs he arranged from memory. His bands also played popular songs and even some of his own compositions. La Monaca wrote several songs about Miami.

He was always teaching music and bringing good musicians together. He incorporated members of the 265th Coast Artillery band of the Florida National Guard band, where he was the bandmaster, and students from the University of Miami, into his shows.

During the Great Depression, La Monaca, through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), was able to get unemployed musicians to teach music to his drum corps.

It is impossible to count the thousands of young men and women La Monaca trained over the years. He and Miami Sheriff Thomas Kelly, a fellow Legionnaire, launched the Miami Boys Drum and Bugle Corps for younger boys. Even after they retired from the marching field, they helped guide the development of the Miami Vanguard and Legion of Brass drum corps. La Monaca taught Boy Scout drum corps in Miami and Hollywood. He organized the predecessor to the Greater Miami Youth Symphony.

Daughter Jean McNamee recollects one Orange Bowl parade in which her father marched the route five times. As soon as he would get to the finish line, a police escort would take him back to join another of his marching bands or drum corps.

From 1926 to his death in 1980, La Monaca’s bands were everywhere in Miami: His band opened the horse track at Tropical Park in 1931 and played there and at Hialeah race track regularly. In 1933 his band was at Bayfront Park during the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin Roosevelt.

During World War II, La Monaca was too old to serve. He was forced to retire from the military. He joined the all-volunteer Florida State Guard and helped the sales of war bonds.

He worked tirelessly in the industry that brought him joy and success. He was a musician, composer and a respected conductor. La Monaca, an Italian immigrant whose life began under adverse conditions, arranged his way to the American dream as Miami’s Music Man.