Tag: Written

I grew up in Miami Shores beginning in the mid-1940s, a beautiful place to live where you can still view Biscayne Bay today, as you could then. I went to Miami Shores Elementary School and have fond memories of the teachers and my friends, some lifelong friends. I remember our teachers who were special, such as my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Gonzales, and the Easter Parade for our class. My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Dees, played classical music for us during rest time after lunch. We sometimes drew pictures to interpret the music.

I took ballet, tap, and toe dance lessons in a home studio where many young people took lessons. We had our dance recitals on the stage of the Shores Theater. We went to the movies there every Saturday morning.

I learned to swim at the Miami Shores Country Club. There was an Olympic-size pool with a high-dive and low-dive boards. It took great courage just to jump off the high dive! Miami Shores did have one real Olympic swimmer, Shirley Stobs. Her swimming specialty was the butterfly stroke. The pool has since been removed to expand parking and a water park has been built on the north side of the main clubhouse.

It wasn’t necessary to swim when I had a water adventure around the third or fourth grade. My friend had a grandmother who lived in a house on Biscayne Bay, just south of Miami Shores. They had a small boat dock. Toni and I tried a little fishing off the dock. After a while, I got a nibble on my line that kept getting stronger and stronger. I pulled and wound and finally landed the fish on the dock. It was a baby sand shark! It was thrown back into the water.

Brockway Memorial Library opened in Miami Shores in 1949, made possible through funds donated by industrialist George A. Brockway. I often felt like I had read my way through all the books in the children’s section and can remember checking out stacks of books during the summer months. A couple of years ago the library requested donations of Miami Shores historical items so I donated my Miami Shores Troop 39 Girl Scout badge sash with earned badges. Troop 39 members started with the Brownies in the first grade, continuing with the Girl Scouts into junior high school. In scouting our troop visited places in Miami such as Greynolds Park, Camp Mahachee, Parrot Jungle and Matheson Hammock. Our last farewell to Troop 39 was a weekend hotel stay on Miami Beach.

We had our meetings after school at the Miami Shores Community Church, the longest established church in the community and near the school. Many of us rode our bicycles to and from school. I rode my bicycle to school starting in the first grade. Miami Shores Elementary was a little over a mile from my house. I continued to ride my bicycle to Horace Mann Junior High School in the first year or two.

In 1948 I participated in a pet and doll show at the Miami Shores Community House. I didn’t win any prizes but someone took a photo that was published in a newspaper. It was spotted by Mrs. Carnegie Cline who later taught me modeling and drama. She was also involved with the Miami Daily News Youth Roundup of Dade County. I got to know the youth editor of the paper and was involved with many of the Roundup activities. I had the opportunity to model in fashion shows at the Burdine’s Tea Room and The Surf Club, ride floats in the Orange Bowl parades and meet famous people like Olympic champion Pete Desjardins at the Deauville, movie star Preston Foster and some of “the little people” who starred in The Wizard of Oz.

The Cuban revolution was taking place while I was at Miami Edison Senior High School. I remember hearing the news announcement on the radio that “Batista has left the island of Cuba.”

After graduating, I went off to college, and then moved to Atlanta, Georgia, but made visits home for brief periods. In recent years I’ve been to Miami for extended periods. When I referred to the Miami News building in downtown Miami, no one knew what I was talking about. It wasn’t until I went to an Art Basel 2012 exhibit in the Freedom Tower that I learned the Miami News building had become the Freedom Tower. Miami-Dade College unveiled the adjacent Pedro Pan sculpture to mark the 50th anniversary of Operation Peter Pan, which resulted in over 14,000 unaccompanied children sent from Cuba to the United States.

I’ve enjoyed subsequent visits to the tower for special exhibits. I learned that a year after this Spanish renaissance revival tower was built it was damaged during Miami’s1926 killer hurricane and was rebuilt twice. It was donated to Miami Dade College in 2005 by a local developer. It’s a tribute that Miami has saved this U.S. National Historic Landmark that stands tall as a reflection of the city’s history while new development grows around it by leaps and bounds.

Suddenly there is fire in the treetops along the turnpike. The sidewalk is carpeted with orange petals and the Poinciana preens itself above the jacaranda’s demure lavender feathers and the frangipani’s pink and yellow pastels. The calendar doesn’t tell us it is time for our yearly Poinciana Walk, but the world does. While we go for the sake of the trees, the homes in the Gables that they guard and grace have become characters in a never-ending story.

On one of our earliest peeking-through-the-Rangoon Creeper days in the French Village, we stumbled onto the storybook house at the southwest end of the block of chateaus. Double garage doors and peeling white paint abutted the perfectly restored wall and manicured yard we had been admiring. A diminutive arch with a black iron gate opened out diagonally to the corner of the street from a postage-stamp herb garden. Above and below, casement windows hinged inward, screens offering only the filmiest filter. The wavy glass panels of the butler’s pantry cabinets were clearly discernible from where we stood outside. Farther down the walk, a vase of fresh flowers bloomed in the window, and next to it a gray top-knotted head was turned toward the flickering screen across the room. We were mystified and mesmerized by the house, a vestige of the neighborhood’s 1920s legacy. We ached to get inside.

Then, one afternoon, we rounded the corner to hear the sounds of pans scraping through the kitchen’s casement window. Pungent garlic and onions sizzled on an unseen stove top, and plates clattered on an imagined table. Two shadowy figures floated in the lampless kitchen, one seated and one busy in the evening light lingering along the freckled street, while a gray head watched at her post, as always, next to the flowers in the living room window.

Months later, as we paced back and forth along the length of the house, by now the object of fantasy and imagination, two wiry little ladies appeared in the open door and looked out at their stalkers. The tiniest one, with delicate bird fingers, pushed open the wrought iron, screen-covered door and smiled at us. Her face was encircled with a white cottony halo and the parchment skin on her face creased into smile lines from her eyes to her chin. The woman behind her seemed younger, more serious and stern, or just responsible and justifiably wary. “Hello ladies,” The snowy one spoke. “Are you enjoying your walk?”

We were nearly speechless. For all our wishing, we weren’t prepared for this sprite to actually speak to us.

“Oh, yes. This is our favorite street. Yours is our favorite house.”

“We think it is pretty special, this house. That’s why we have stayed here all these years. Of course, the Realtors won’t give us any peace. They come by here nearly every day.”

“You aren’t going to sell it are you?” Our simultaneous question belied fears of contractors and realtors circling like vultures.

A little giggle slipped into the pixie’s voice. “Would you sell paradise?”

The taller woman reached out for the handle of the iron door and began drawing it toward her and closing the little doll lady inside. “Enjoy your walk.” She gave a tiny wave, her open palm nearly as papery as her face. A walk in paradise.

Today, perhaps because we had already walked on many streets, we drove to Cotorro Avenue, turning in from the northern end of the French Village block. Maybe if we had been on foot, the awareness would have come gradually. Instead, we were shocked to find the Garlic Sisters’ house standing naked on the sidewalk. The grizzled hedge, ripped from the ground, exposed ancient pipes and spigots that had quenched its thirst for perhaps as many years as we were old. The Florida honeysuckle vine that circled and wound and draped luxuriously over the garden wall was now twisted dry and gnarled in the side yard under piles of debris, boards and nails and chunks of plaster.

Tears blurred our vision, but we scarcely hesitated to duck through the arch and tiptoe gingerly around the rubble that had once been a garden, to French doors, standing open in the back. We stepped through onto original tile floors, terra cotta cool, and looked up to a black, wrought iron chandelier dangling above. Straight ahead, the wood paneled front door, directed a turn into the living room where a TV antenna wire dangled onto the floor.

Off the front hall, a door stood open to the kitchen where black and white tiles checkered the floor. In the empty butler’s pantry, wooden drain boards, grooved and stained, sloped down to an old porcelain sink with iron faucet and knobs still intact. On the drain board stood a vase of flowers, once fresh cut carnations, daisies, and spider pompoms, now drooping with curled and wilted petals. Not the stuff of potpourri, but of memories.

A simple ribbon circled the vase, its color indistinguishable. A florist card stuck out from a stiff plastic stem. The envelope was addressed to Virginia O’Dowd, 1032 Cotorro Avenue, Coral Gables, Florida. Dreading to see what the message would say, fearing a get well wish or sincerest sympathy, my hands shook as I turned over the card. The typed letters read: Happy Birthday, with Love.

Outside, a child’s riding toy rumbled by, a stroller wheel complained and young women’s voices drifted up through the pantry casement. Neighbors. Maybe they would think we had no right to be there, to find the flowers, to sniff for garlic, to walk over dining room tiles the sisters’ feet had crossed and re-crossed until they wore a pattern in the stone, to listen for the echo of a little birdlike chirp. “Enjoy.” So we left the French door just as we had found it, passed through the garden wall, and whispered an apology to Virginia for not somehow leaving her flowers in the open window.

A child of the Florida sun, I lived in soft T-shirts and sandals. But here I was, walking with my mother to Van E. Blanton Elementary School, attired in a plaid dress and stiff Oxford shoes. September 1959 was a more innocent time; the terms “crack,” “pusher,” “grass,” or “weed,” surely would have conjured images of children playing on steaming sidewalks where brown summer grass and wildflowers pushed hopefully upward.

At registration, we were told by the principal that first graders’ hours were 8:30 to 12:00 noon for the first three months, and after that the school day ended at 2:00. She added that 6-year-olds should walk unaccompanied to school, as it built self-reliance. First graders were served a carton of Home Milk decorated to look like a house and picket fence, and home-baked cookies in the school “cafetorium” for $1.00 every two weeks.

Walking to school in second grade, I discovered dozens of buttons which read “John F. Kennedy.” Who was he? My teacher explained he was running for president on a platform of equal opportunities in housing, school and jobs for all. A wonderful idea, and it was exciting to follow my first election on TV!

In fourth grade, we had many new classmates from “Operation Peter Pan,” in which Cuban children settled in the United States, often not knowing if they would ever see their families again. I vividly remember the first two arrivals. One, “Angela,” was very shy. She wore the same outfit every day and only responded quietly if Spanish-speaking adults talked first, but she always worked hard on her studies.

Then there was “Maria.” We girls would marvel at her vast supply of rustling silk dresses and gold jewelry. She bubbled over with fluent English that her “Abuela” (Grandma) had gone on a shopping spree at Jordan Marsh in anticipation of her arrival, adding, “Abuela is taking me to New York and has arranged for me to have ham on the plane,” smacking her lips. I was insanely jealous!

There was a game we played every Friday called “7-up.” Seven students would randomly tap seven blindfolded students, then we’d guess which person tapped us by asking seven questions about hobbies and interests. Maria tapped me. I guessed correctly with one question about an upcoming trip. The normally happy, bubbly child burst into cries: “Cheater! You looked to see who tapped you.” I sobbed, “I did not, I recognized the swishing silky sound of your dress.” My teacher mediated: “I want you two to talk privately with each other and smooth things over.” We calmly conferred; Maria acknowledged, “I believe you didn’t cheat; my dress DOES swish.” I responded “Why do you keep bragging about clothes and jewelry and trips? You’re making the kids jealous.” She replied, “I’m envious of you all. You have lived here your whole life and I had to leave my home and might never see my relatives again.” I lovingly hugged and reassured her: “This is your new home and I’ll be your new best friend.” Our teacher then had us sit side by side for the rest of the year. We exchanged gifts of crayons and bubble bath. Maria exclaimed, “Together, we can color and draw beautiful pictures of the beaches in Miami and Cuba.”

In October 1962, we had to confront possible mortality. President Kennedy announced Cuban missiles were pointed towards the United States. A tense standoff lasted three weeks. There were simulated air-raids and we would dive under desks for cover; thankfully it was soon over. My teacher told us that, ironically, the brief crisis actually helped thaw some of the relations between nations, apparently for a mutual desire to preserve mankind. Meanwhile, I wrote poems about annihilation which I submitted unsuccessfully to the Blanton Bugle: “Mother is baking an apple pie, soon we all will die.”

November 22, 1963 dawned as an exciting day for me; I had no idea the day would end so tragically. All summer, I had practiced for a jump-rope competition, with Maria timing. Practice paid off, I won the prize jump rope! But sadly, just as school ended, someone shouted, “President Kennedy is dead. He was shot.” We all froze! Teachers admonished, “Go straight home. This is a national tragedy.” School was closed the following Monday. For one month, school flags were flown at half-staff with black ribbons. President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would carry on President Kennedy’s legacy with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We all learned a lesson that could never be taught in a classroom: that one’s life can be tragically cut short, but grief and sadness can be channeled into helping their memory live on, by carrying on their good works.

Our school years at Blanton were finally coming to an end. Sixth graders were treated to a barbecue and swimming at Morningside Park and pool, equipped with a high-dive. I was afraid to dive but it was now or never! Slicing through cold, clear blue water, my young life passed before me. I had learned so much: reading, writing, math, elections, death and friendship. How you can make things happen; words can make an enormous impact. Crayons and paper can be transformed into beautiful pictures. Gasping when reaching the water’s surface, I heard my teacher exclaim: “Karin, hurry up. It’s time to go. But first, let’s have a rousing rendition of our school song.”

As onlookers gaped, we sang, “We’re loyal to our school, it’s here we learn and live, knowledge strength and beauty too, these to us we give, our teachers show the way to make our dreams come true, Van E. Blanton, Van E. Blanton, we all stand for you.”

Our first family visit to the Miami Public Library (as it was called then) was back in 1958. I was 5 years old, my sister Victoria was 8, and my brother Matthew was 10. We visited a crowded shopping destination, “Little River.”

After going to Woolworth’s, Arno Shoes, Beauty Fair and Larry’s Restaurant, my mother Mildred “Fritzie” Stahl spotted the Little River Library and exclaimed, “I’ve been meaning to get a library card. Let’s go there!” My sister Vickie picked out Lad: A Dog, I got Blueberries for Sal and my father Edmund checked out a large, illustrated Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and read it to us that same night, which my brother especially enjoyed.

Fritzie loved the library so much she quit working at Burdines in 1959 to work at Little River Library full-time. Although her official position was “Clerk Typist I,” with her educational background at American University, and with my father’sbackground as a member of the Art Students League, they embarked on professional endeavors there.

My mother participated in the children’s summer reading club, which my sister and I eagerly joined. Here’s how it worked: during the summer of 1963, a bulletin board was placed at each library branch entrance. For each child, a colorful fishing pole was placed on the board, identifying the reader. Whenever a child finished a book, a fish was added, showing which book the child had “caught” (read).

My sister’s fishing pole was heavily sagging with such “catches,” including Herman Wouk, Ernest Hemingway and Margaret Mitchell. My pole was heavily laden with Beverly Cleary and Mark Twain selections. At the end of the summer, 15 children from the Little River library boarded a Coast Cities Coaches bus downtown to receive a certificate of achievement. A total of 725 children, each of whom had read a minimum of eight books, attended from libraries throughout the county.

My parents also presented many puppet shows at the library. One memorable show was Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. My father designed cloth puppets and painted scenery, and my mother wrote a script based on the book. After the show was over, my mother was delighted because several children asked, “Where can I get a copy of Treasure Island?” A “classic,” which might otherwise be just sitting on the shelf was being noticed!

I remember one librarian who worked with my mother in Little River, Miss Grace Rayfuse. Fritzie knew the library so well she would just look up a book if children asked for one, but Miss Rayfuse suggested, “Always say, ‘let’s look in our card catalogue,’ if it is a child asking for a book.” That became a catch-phrase in the library.

It has now been more than a half-century since our family’s first visit to the Little River library. My brother, mother and father died many years ago. My sister and I still live about three miles away from the library (we are currently zoned to use the North Miami library). We still love books. Our living room resembles a library itself with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled to capacity.

I decided to take a sentimental trip back to the Little River library recently. The exterior looks much the same with its slanted pillars and double-glass doors. Inside, it was much different. Children had replaced pencil and notebook paper with laptop computers. Instead of “[our] card catalogue,” children now expertly skim a computer mouse to search for books.

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be nearly as many books available as when I visited the library in the 1950s and 1960s. The entire shelf near the checkout desk was gone. In its place was a display of videos, compact discs and DVDs. Everything seems so different. And yet the library director informed me the county still offers the summer reading club. Despite all the new technology, there are still thousands of books available for checkout. I checked and yes, Treasure Island is still available.

I was born in 1946 in Greenwich, Conn. Every winter we would take the train to Miami and stay at the Gulfstream Hotel in Miami Beach.

One could look down the beach and not see another hotel nearby. There were a lot of “snowbirds” (although that term had not been coined yet) who stayed there, among them some of the rich and famous, as well as the infamous.

I had my picture taken with J. Edgar Hoover when I was 4. Sorry to say I lost the newspaper clipping of that photo in my many moves. I had no idea who this pudgy man was or why the photographer was making a fuss over us. There were other children around my age. There was Sherman Billingsley, whose father owned the famous Stork Club in New York. There were the Kresge children, Cary and Kitty. Their family owned Kresge’s 5 & 10 cent stores. The name may not sound familiar now but the K in Kmart stands for Kresge.

My family eventually bought a home in Miami Beach and we moved there full time when I was 6. Growing up in Miami Beach in the 1950s and ’60s was wonderful. I don’t think we realized then what a paradise we lived in. There was the dog track at the end of South Beach. The Art Deco hotels were filled with vacationers from New York and New Jersey. There were the Orthodox Jewish diamond dealers who would come in the long heavy black coats, even in the heat. There were the retired people in their orthopedic shoes schlepping their lounge chairs. Frank Sinatra was singing in the Poodle Room of the Fontainebleau, and once I passed Sammy Davis Jr. on Arthur Godfrey Road. He was this tiny man with two enormous bodyguards.

I went to St. Patrick’s School and then to Carrollton in Coconut Grove. Many of our classmates had fled from Cuba. They taught us the meaning of freedom and added spice to our city. I remember driving to school during the Cuban Missile Crisis, never realizing that we were in such danger. We were just excited to see all the cute sailors and soldiers all over Miami.

I have returned to Miami Beach a few times over the past years. It is not the place I grew up. The small motels vibrate with the beat of Latin music and “the beautiful people” come from all over to lie on the beach. If it weren’t for Joe’s Stone Crabs, I would think I was in the wrong place. I am glad this amazing city has been revitalized. In the 1970s, the hotels showed their age. The shops on Lincoln Road were all closing and parts of it looked like a ghost town.

The people who walk the beach and sidewalks now don’t know what the Stork Club was or that there were such things as 5 & 10 cent stores way before the dollar stores came into vogue. The young ones won’t know who Hoover was, nor will they have heard of Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr., except through old black-and-white photos or a song they hear in an elevator. I don’t know if 41st Street is still called Arthur Godfrey Road or if people remember that Jackie Gleason did his TV variety show from the Miami Beach Convention Hall.

I do know that I was blessed to have grown up in paradise. I hope those who reside there know how lucky they are and make wonderful memories that will come back to them when they are old and living in New Jersey.

My father, David R. Balogh, is a Miami Beach legend. Most Beach people knew him and many, many shopped at his Balogh jewelry store.

Today, wherever I go, whether Miami, New York City or even Sun Valley, Idaho, I meet people who proudly show off their long-ago-purchased Balogh treasure.

My dad’s story is in many ways typical of the tales of those designated by Tom Brokaw as “the greatest generation,” those men and women who helped us defeat Nazism in World War II and then returned home to create the most prosperous and free nation, not even fathomed by our founding fathers.

I do believe, however, that my dad has some very distinguishing qualities, especially his unusual embodiment of both an ambitious drive coupled with romantic warmth and charm. He was the Navy vet who sent home every paycheck to his loyal wife Sallie. And when he returned from the war, they drove their old station wagon from New York City to subtropical, undeveloped Miami Beach to begin their family life with infant daughter Joan. What drove him to Miami, in addition to his run-down jalopy, was his conviction that Miami Beach was nirvana with its consistently sunny weather, the ocean and the palm trees. This was the venue to start a business and a life.

My parents rented a very small store on Arthur Godfrey Road, as they certainly could not afford Lincoln Road. They began a “mom and pop” antique business. My dad’s optimism led to his conviction that his customers would invest in and celebrate a new, good life with lovely items both to wear and to adorn their homes. He believed both in Miami Beach and in America. He was spot on about his customers, Miami Beach and America.

In addition to his foresight and optimism, he had skills. He had an uncanny business savvy, sensing where and how to buy, and he had a charismatic ability to sell. He loved beauty and believed in investing in real, tangible items. This mom and pop business grew just as he had envisioned; it was enlightening to witness the business morph from a two-person, seven-day-a-week operation into an internationally renowned jewelry store. He opened stores in Coral Gables, Hallandale, the Diplomat Hotel and much later on Madison Avenue in New York City. But the basis of his business and his heart remained in Miami Beach.

As my father’s business grew, so did Arthur Godfrey Road. It was symbiosis; David Balogh and Arthur Godfrey Road fed off each other and grew together. He purchased real estate on the street and involved himself in leadership roles, such as establishing the parking facilities to help all the small businesses and restaurants in the area. He was active in the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce and many local and national philanthropies, such as Mount Sinai Hospital, juvenile diabetes and the University of Miami. He became imbedded in the fabric of Miami Beach life. My dad retired at age 92, but he still puts on his suit and tie every day and enjoys riding around looking at his properties.

My dad’s dedication and focus went considerably beyond his jewelry and real estate businesses. He was an accomplished musician — a pianist and flutist. He actually met my mom in Astoria, New York, through his music; he was her piano teacher. He played first flute in the Miami Beach Symphony and I remember feeling special to be called up on stage to conduct when the symphony came to my North Beach elementary school. He was so proud that he was able to play under the maestro Arturo Toscanini. My dad’s special motto, still displayed in his closet shelf, is “you never fail until you stop trying,” and this definitely permeated the inner structure of his businesses and his family. Fortunately, I was able to incorporate some of my parents’ strong work ethic and very ambitious, yet measured, approach to life.

I grew up in a very close family and was indoctrinated with family-first values. As with his business life, my dad also fulfilled his familial goals. My younger brother, Bobby, a “chip off the old block,” has built his life in the Miami area. After Yale undergraduate school and then law school, Bobby has taken our father’s real estate interests beyond even David’s expectations. He and his wife, Cara, have molded two talented children, Andrew and Alex, both Yale undergraduates.

I am a practicing psychoanalyst in New York. My husband, Marty, guided by my father, opened his own jewelry business in New York almost four decades ago. We have two wonderful and accomplished daughters. Cara is a Ph.D. and professor of American literature, while her sister, Anna, another “chip off the old block,” is in the real estate business. Clearly, all this was the result of the example he set, the drive he had and the quality and quantity of time he and my mom spent with us.

The Greek hero Achilles was given the choice by his goddess mother Thetis to live either the adventurous, but short life or the long, undistinguished one. My dad, now 94, my hero, never had to make this choice. He has lived both.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What more could you ask for?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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