The Miami Years

Marinita in Miami with Ivan, Alex and Jackie 1964

Getting There

On October 31st, 1963, Halloween Day, although we didn’t know what that was, yet, my entire family boarded a VARIG Airlines Jet plane to Miami. This was the largest plane I had flown in as of then and it was a direct flight to Miami from the D.R. I still remember that my mother bought me an outfit at Casa Virginia and my first pair of heels, turquoise snake skin. We all dressed up. It was the first of those planes that I was flying in and was totally mesmerized. It was just the beginning. I remember arriving at the Miami airport. It wasn’t the mega place it is now, but it was already impressive to me. You still descended the plane via stairs. And I could feel that it wasn’t as hot as Santo Domingo. It was already the end of October and it was a bit dryer. I don’t remember who picked us up at the airport. I have no memory of this. Wish my brother Pico was still alive so I could pick his brain. Alex and Ivan were too young, and Ivan is now gone too. Jackie was a few months old.

We went directly to the consulate. It was, and still is located on Brickell Avenue. In those days, the only side of Brickell that had been developed in that block. Across the street it was all wilderness all the way to the beach.

The consulate was a two-story building that was apparently built with the apartment upstairs because, back in the day, Trujillo’s kids would stay there and raise hell. Apparently, the story goes that Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor stayed there with Ramfis and Radhamés Trujillo. Or so the story went. Because of the nature of the use of the apartment, the bedrooms were quite large and each one had a private bathroom and a walk-in closet. The main suite, my parent’s room was enormous and even had a small balcony. Probably where Ramphis stayed. In any case, I got my own room. Jackie was so little that she was in a crib in my parent’s suite.

We were there for a few days before we were enrolled in the only school we could go to in the area because it was so late in the season. This was a public school about 5 blocks away from the consulate. Southside Elementary School. We could walk there and back. I was already going into 7th grade in the DR, but, because I started school 2 years earlier than I could in the USA they put me back in 6th grade. Not only that, but the Public Middle school was a apparently a bigger disaster than this one was and someone told my parents to not even think about it. Whatever the case, I went to Southside.

It didn’t take me long to figure out this was a lesser learning center than what I had been accustomed my whole life. Sagrado Corazon de Maria in Santo Domingo had been my school since kindergarten, except for a few months in a horrible Catholic school in Puerto Rico. But even the Catholic School was a million times better than this. Sagrado was a special school, as far as I was concerned, with a mix of Montessori thrown in, small classes and excellent teachers. Southside, on the other hand,  was way less desirable. There were  30 kids in my class and I was the only one that wasn’t Cuban. The whole purpose of us going to Miami was so we would learn English and get exposed to American education. I think my mother had this vision of the high society girl school she went to in NY and thought that is what we were going for. This wasn’t it. It was full of Cubanitos and they wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Even the teacher hardly spoke English, she was also Cuban. But, there was nothing anyone could do. Then I got my books. My mother always told the story of me getting home with the books crying asking her why I was sent to a school for retarded kids. That the books were like for second grade. She tried to explain that this was that school, that there was nothing they could do and to just do the best I could while I was there.

I don’t know how I got through it. Our Physical Education class was hillbilly clogging dances. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was going to at least learn how to play volley ball or something American like that. Nope. At least, I remember making friend with this boy and participating in some talent dance competition on stage. I don’t remember if we won anything, but, at least, that was different.

At least the school cafeteria was great. Apparently, they got the food from the US Navy and I was introduced to things that I have loved ever since: macaroni and cheese, potato salads, macaroni salad, coleslaw and American milk. I had never liked milk and this one was actually good. I started eating like a normal kid for the first time in my life. I loved Miami food. And, most important, I was introduced to cheese cakes, chocolate cakes, and all sorts of things that were just right up my alley.

Then Pico and I started walking up Brickell up to Flagler street. Figured out that a few blocks towards Flagler there was a bridge that opened when boats had to go through there. Down below we got to see our first manatees. We ran home to tell our parents and my father explained what they were and that we had them in the D.R. too, but you didn’t see them every day. So, Pico and I started going out there to see them as much as possible. Then we figured out that, just a couple more blocks there was a Howard Johnson’s with the best ice cream we had ever tasted (other than the pistachio ice cream in downtown Santo Domingo). Then we saw that there were all these movie theaters around that area. One almost next door to the Howard Johnson. This was a very interesting theater because it was all decorated inside like a Roman empire theater, all gold and it had balconies. That was my favorite movie theater out of all the ones downtown because it was an experience to be there. I imagine I would consider it extremely tacky now, but I had never seen anything like that then. We got to see movies like the Beatle’s Help, the First James Bonds, and such downtown. We would either catch Howard Johnson’s before or after.

They Killed Kennedy

A month later all hell broke loose when they killed John F. Kennedy. I believe I was in school and they sent us home. November 22, 1963, a couple of days before my birthday. (I don’t remember my birthday being celebrated. We didn’t know anyone anyway, yet, so I don’t think there would have been a party anyhow. I think my mother might have baked me a cake.) I had never been through anything like that. We all loved Kennedy. I remember how traumatic this was for me. Then, you have all the news and they arrest Lee Harvey Oswald, then next thing we know Ruby kills Oswald. It was just too much. Remember that TV was still in it’s infancy and there was nothing in those days to prepare you for things like these. Watching videos of Jackie Kennedy with blood on her dress and Ruby killing Oswald over and over again. Then watching Johnson take oath as the president. What was really different for me coming from the D.R. was that there wasn’t a takeover. We didn’t have to flee. It was all done by the book and the government kept on going. No revolutions, nothing.

Around this time, I discovered records. I don’t know if it was for this birthday, but Mr. Vadas brought me a battery/electric record player. The coolest thing on earth. I don’t know how he knew this was the most special birthday gift he could give a 13 year old girl in 1963. The body was blue and when you opened it, because it became like a little suitcase, inside it was off white. It had a space on the lid where you could store a few 45s and the little record adapters you would have to snap in the center to be able to play them. It was just awesome. He also brought with it Dave Brubeck’s Take Five LP. So, he introduced me to one of the all time Jazz records. (Lots of years later I got to meet Dave Brubeck because he was a Buzbee family friend.) I don’t know if the record player was already stereo or if it was still analog. Who, cared. I had music. I immediately started collecting both 45s and LPs. First one I believe was The Beach Boys. Second, The Beatles. And so on. I know I had piles of 45s and LPs in no time.

I got $5. Allowance every week from my mother. And a dollar every day for school lunch. In those days a hot dog at school and a coke were only 20 cents. So, unless I ate a few of those, I always had money left over by the end of the week on top of my allowance. (At this time, I actually. started eating like a teenager. It wasn’t unusual for me to get 4 hotdogs and a drink and then get an ice cream.) I either bought music or clothes, or both. I remember going to Burdines and finding the most beautiful yellow Italian, hand knit sweater and getting it for $5. I had that thing for years. I also bought my first pair of Tom McCan penny loafer shoes and put a penny in each slot. That was just the coolest and they were so comfortable in those days.

Across the street from the consulate was a huge land area that seemed like it had been the gardens of a very large estate. There were beat up roads and you could see where there had been hedges and beautiful trees that don’t just grow anywhere in Miami unless they are cared for. I understood that, when Pico and I would go in there to explore. That was the way to get to the beach and shells. We didn’t know that these had been the ruins of the Brickell family mansion and gardens. In another two or three years most of it would start disappearing and being replaced by high rise buildings and housing developments. In the mean time, Pico and I played there and picked up sea urchins and the most amazing seashells.

Learning About Segregation

The motel next door to the consulate was owned by a racist old man. He had signs that they did not cater to black people. This was around the same time that Lyndon B. Johnson was working on the Civil Rights Act. I didn’t understand any of this going on. Coming from the D.R. all my friends were sort of white, which meant, they might have a grandparent or someone in their family that wasn’t totally white. My parents had never really talked about this and I didn’t know that some of my cousins would be considered black in Miami and wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the motel next door. When the whole Civil Rights Act was passed is when I started to understand about races and racism. The guy next door closed the motel because he wasn’t going to allow blacks to stay there, law or no law. He couldn’t care less. My mother had to sit down and explain the whole thing to me. And how my uncle’s wife, my aunt that I adored, couldn’t stay there because she would be considered black in the States. I didn’t think that was fair at all. How could the color of your skin dictate how you were treated? It was almost traumatic to me. That was another one of those great lessons that made me into the liberal I am.

Another thing that happened was that us kids were playing int the back of the consulate and an old lady went by and heard us speaking Spanish. She turned around and called us F-n Cubans, to go home and to speak English. I couldn’t believe it. Well, Ivan and Alex were not going to stay quiet. They called her all sorts of things from old bag to worse, and told her she was stupid because we weren’t Cuban. That we were Dominicans and we didn’t like winkled old bags.

At some point I figured out the bus system in Miami. I was allowed to go out on my own there, not in the D.R. ever, but Miami was OK. So, I started exploring the city. I would get on a bus for 25 cents and go as far as it went. Then get another one and head back. I figured out that there was a place called Miracle Mile. One of the buses I took turned around at the bus station there. I later got to explore it to it’s fullest going to school in that area, but I will get to that.

Miracle Mile was starting to be the most amazing shopping area in Miami at the time. Eventually, it became a hippy center in the later 60s. There were countless boutiques, art shops, galleries, book stores, collectibles, book stores, and a brand new huge Sears. In just a few years most were head shops and cool hippy or Indian stores. I couldn’t get enough.

The Santo Domingo Summer Vacation

Back a little bit, the summer of 1964, my parents thought it was a good idea for me to go to Santo Domingo and spend the summer vacation. By then, my grandfather Papá Fello and his wife were back in the D.R. and had wanted me to come down because my cousin Angie was also coming down from NY and everyone thought that would be a great idea. And it was. Angie and I spent a glorious summer vacation together. Angie had come down to stay with us the summer before we left the D.R. and we had had a blast. So, I was sent to Santo Domingo to my grandfather’s house. He owned a condo just a few blocks from the Jaragua Hotel and he got Angie and me a membership to the pool for the summer. That was a real treat. Then there was the casino at the Jaragua Hotel. I don’t know why they let us in, but they did and we played the slot machines. Made a whole bunch of quarters. In the middle of all this, Mamá Caona, my grandfather’s sister who raised my mother and was extremely Catholic, found out I had not done my first communion, yet, at 13. What? So, she signed me up with padre Rubio to take catechism lessons and prepared for my first and last communion. I say that with all the love. It was her thing. Not mine. I went along because I adored her, but, that just wasn’t my path in life. In any case, I am glad I got to meet Padre Rubio. Later on in life Jackie got to know him really well when he was part of the school that she went to to get a degree in History. I took the classes and at some point did my first and last communion. Then my grandfather and Mama Caona had a little party at the condo for me with my cousins whom I had not seen in a long time. It was all very foreign to me. But, I played along. By then I had very little in common with most of my family because I was mentally, now a Gringa. It took me a long time to be able to go back enough to be both: Dominican and a Gringa when we moved back to the D.R.

At some point, Angie went back home and it was then decided that it was time to get my tonsils out. In those days, I don’t know how it was decided that you got to a certain age and they took them out. So, mine had to come out. Well, things didn’t go too well. The operation went through and apparently, they couldn’t wake me up for hours after. When I finally woke up, I started convulsing and puking blood. Buckets full. So, I had to be rushed back into the operating room and “fixed”. When I woke up again, I couldn’t talk. In fact, I couldn’t talk for at least a couple of weeks. I was in the hospital for a few days because they wanted to make sure that I was going to be OK. Mamá Caona, I believe, was with me most of the time. Imagine, Ysabelita’s girl!! She was praying for me the whole time, apparently. Then, I went back to my grandad’s house where I spent the next couple of weeks recovering so I could fly home to Miami. That’s all I remember about this. It was pretty scary.

I don’t know that anyone communicated how bad this was to my parents and I was the first one to tell them when I got home. Ooops! I imagine they knew that my mom would have gotten on a plane that day to come to the DR and see what was going on.

Deerborne School

I got home just in time to find out my mother had found a new school for me, Deerborne School and I was starting in just a couple of weeks. It was a more high end, private school, and I needed new clothes for it. Yay! So, we went shopping. The school was the most amazing thing that could happen to me in all the time we were in Miami. The principal was a really wonderful man who happened to be gay and his partner was one of my mother’s best childhood friends from San Pedro. He found out she was desperately trying to get me in a good school and together, they made it happen.

By then Pico had been enrolled in Staunton Military School in West Virginia. I don’t know what my parents were thinking! Well, it is what you did with your boys. Like my uncle, Pico had to do it. Then it was my cousin’s turn. They all had to go through it. It never went well for poor Pico but, that is another story. He never got over the separation of that time and the military system. It was just not who he was and suffered from depression and retreated from society. Basically, he had PTSD. I imagine you add all the crap we went through as kids and there was no avoiding any of that.

Back to Deerborne. This was a life changing experience for me. The education, culture, and lifestyle changes this school provided for me where above and beyond anything I thought was possible until then. The classrooms were tapped at 15 kids. We all sat in a semi-circle around the teacher so no one was blocked from eye contact. The books were amazing. The teachers out of the world and then there was Mrs. Lincoln, the art teacher, who taught me how to paint with oils and how to buy art supplies at the REX art store nearby. I still remember painting a butterfly that was completely realistic and I had done it all by myself. Yay. For P.E. class I could choose to go to a private club and learn to play tennis. And I did. I had private tennis lessons and got pretty good at something I had never had access to before in my life. (When we went back to the DR. I won the tournament at the Naco club for my division that year.) The other thing I could do, and did, was archery at a different private club with private tutors that made me into a pretty descent archer. Who would have thought this little kid from SD would be doing these kinds of things. Specially after all the redneck stuff at Southside? I also did other things like racing, and won a few third place awards. Who would have thunk it!

So, needless to say, I thrived! At the end of the first year I was a member of the Honor Society. I had gotten several awards for the best grades in my class. I stayed at that level the whole time I was in Deerborne. I also got an Art Honor Award. That meant even more to me.

At some point my cousin Marinita came from the D.R. to stay with us for a while so she could learn English. She was given Pico’s room since he had left for the academy. She was with us for a few months. She was very quiet, but it was nice getting to know her. We had never been very close to tio Marino’s kids so it was special. My father had given her his guitar when she was a kid, so she could learn to play and she got pretty good. (This was always a sore subject in our house. My mother couldn’t believe he had given it away, since he had kids that might just want to learn also. As it turned out, both Ivan and I learned to play the guitar and had to buy new ones to do so.)

I forgot to mention that Julia, my sister’s nanny had gone to Miami with us. It was very different having a maid in the Consulate. I found out that Julia didn’t know how to read and write. So, I decided to teach her how. It is one of the most proud moments of my life when Julia started reading the Dominican newspaper. She and my mother later read it together every morning and discussed what was going on. Unfortunately, Julia didn’t stay very long in Miami. She had a really hard time being there and away from her kids. Who could blame her?

The Miami House in Palmetto

Around summer of 1964, my parents had decided that they were going to stay in Miami and decided to buy a house. This house was supper cool and on the outskirts of the city, at the time. I believe that area was called Palmetto Heights. At some point, we moved there. The house was amazing. Across the street from of a small lake. It had 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, a pool with a fence around it to protect the kids, a large garage with a guest bathroom/pool room, a huge kitchen with a huge window that faced the pool and a bar that went from the kitchen to the pool. The living room was huge and the whole house had granite floors. My mother started buying the furniture for the house at Modernage Furniture Store, the mega of modernist furniture store in Miami at the time. We had designer originals for everything. Anyone could have done a photo shoot for any decorating magazine in any room in the house. Jackie still has some of that furniture since my mother kept them until she passed away. Some, my brothers destroyed way back when they were teenagers in Arroyo Hondo. The next couple of months were magical, except for my issue with the school. Of course I could no longer attend Dearborne because it was too far away. So, I was enrolled in the public school for the area: Cutler Ridge Middle School. And I went from my piece of heaven to another public school that was below anything I could think of where we had to do PE by going in a gym and doing exercises instead of a private club to play tennis. We had to change into a uniform for this and after the class we had to go in the bathrooms and take showers, naked! I was 14, weighed about 90 pounds. Had not even gotten a period, yet. Had no boobs and didn’t have a hair on my body. Had never seen even my cousin Angie naked before. And here I was with about 30 naked girls in the bathroom. Very traumatic. As much as I loved our house and the area where we lived, I hated this school even more than I hated Southside.

We Move Back to the Consulate

But, right after Halloween, my father had an announcement: he had enough of driving to the Consulate. That he wasn’t American and he just couldn’t do it any longer. Getting stuck in traffic just wasn’t his thing. Never mind that we had decorated the whole house with new furniture, and that all of us were happy living there and loved our pool. And that the Halloween there was the most memorable of my life. My brothers and I filled huge shopping bags full of candy and toys. Didn’t matter! A couple of weeks later we were back at the consulate, our house had been rented out, and at least, I was back at Deerborne and they were very happy to have their artist / honor student back. I was happy to never go back to that Cutler Ridge School, but really missed the house and the neighborhood for a very long time.

Deerborne was even better. They had started taking kids on these day trips. One of them was Botticelli traveling exhibit. I thought it was at the Lowe Museum, but can’t find anything about it. It is possible that they were reproductions just for teaching? I don’t know. But, I was exposed to Botticelli and my life was never the same after that. Another life changing moment for me. I don’t remember how many pieces were there. I haven’t been able to find much about it. But, I must have stood in front of the Primavera painting for hours. Another incredible expedition was to the Miami Weather Bureau. There we were shown the first computers I ever saw in my life. Huge machines filling out an enormous room. They did something for us to take with us. They asked us our birth date and they let the computer put together a page of everything that was happening on that date in space and big weather occurrences. I still have mine somewhere.

The Civil War of 1965 Breaks Out

These don’t seem like big things, but, for a kid from S.D., it was huge. By Spring, I was still an honor student and everything was going great. My father decided to quit the consulate and take us all back to the D.R. We were finishing the school year and he was going to head out ahead of us in a few days. Our furniture and most of our belongings had already been shipped to the Santo Domingo. And then, the Civil War exploded. The Camaño group tried to take over the Dominican government and turn it into a communist regime. The government under Donald Reid Cabral was probably one of the most corrupt ever and something had to be done about it. But, this was extreme and with communist ideas since these guys had been trained by Castro in Cuba. My dad was still at the consulate. Wessing y Wessing was already fighting them and trying to control the situation, when the USA decided this was a good place to start another Vietnam. So, they sent 22,000 marines to the DR to take it over and shipped Wessing out. They sent him to the consulate in Miami. He was with us for a couple of days and then decided he wasn’t staying there. That wasn’t his thing. I don’t remember if he went to NY after. The U.S. took control of all the major resources in the D.R. The Dominican Republic has amazing resources: copper, silver, aluminum, iron ore, and a huge gold mine. That was the whole point of the USA taking over. With time, President Balaguer had to start defining each one of these as a national heritage site and taking them away from the American companies that had them. At least that was a good thing.

The consulate with my father became the center point for the news and the communications with the D.R. throughout the beginning of the revolution until the D.R. sent another consul. My father had stayed on even though he wasn’t even getting a paycheck anymore because we were leaving, since there needed someone there. The Miami police was surrounding the consulate building because someone tried to kidnap one of the people sent to replace my father. It was just a mess. This went on for a few weeks until they named Luis Mauricio Bogaert’s father as the new consul. I think he had the same name. My parents found a little apartment almost next door to the consulate and we spent the rest of the war there.

My mother wrote about how an incredible place this was because, all of a sudden, there were all these people she had known most of her life living there also waiting out the war. The Mallas: Don Jaimito and Doña Hilda Frakenberg, with their kids Jimmy, and all the girls Anie, Vickie, sister (I can’t remember her name. She married doña Nancy’s son and later he killed her and himself. A huge tragedy.) My mother was best friends with don Jaimito Malla’s sister and Chuchu’s mom since they were babies. They used to get them together in San Pedro because they both were blonde and had green eyes.) Doña Hilda’s brother and their son Freddy, I think he had a sister also, William Berry (Wimpy) y Flerida Yabra and their children, (they were later in Carol Morgan with us.) The Antun and their family, and a few more people that we later learned were also Dominican.

We were in the apartments until June of 1966, I believe. That’s when we went back to the D.R., moved to the house in Cayetano Rodriguez, then started at Carol Morgan School. That’s another story.