Homestead, Fla., and the Hotel Redland

It was a cooler-than-normal, sometimes rainy, Labor Day in Sterling, Va., today. The fall itself is not a season to be feared in Virginia, which is one of the reasons I live here and not in northern Maine. The fall can actually be quite beautiful. Unfortunately, fall gives way to winter. And for those of us who aren't fans of temperatures below 50 degrees, winter can be difficult to contend with. Inevitably, by Thanksgiving, my thoughts turn to my days in Florida. Those thoughts are a bit early this year and might be more age-related than climate related.

I lived in Homestead, Fla., for about five years in the early 1980s. Homestead is a small town south of Miami. A stone's throw from the Florida Keys. It was rough place to live at times. Crime and poverty took hold of the agricultural town and didn't let go until Hurricane Andrew flattened it. Then everything left. Eventually, long after I departed, Homestead rebuilt. Now it's the home of a NASCAR facility as well as a revitalized downtown district and other amenities on the edge of the Everglades. It's still no Miami or Coral Gables, and never will be, but it's on the mend and a lot cheaper to live in than the pricier neighborhoods 25 miles up the turnpike.

I will always remember the grittier Homestead, pre-Andrew, when I hung out at a local boarding house known as the Hotel Redland. The flop house was owned by a man named Ben Lonic. Ben also lived in the hotel with his wife. It was located across the street from the newspaper where I worked, the South Dade News-Leader. Ben could be spotted on his porch, sometimes pulling out an old sofa from the lobby that caught fire again from a cigarette. Or perhaps he'd be seen throwing a border out who hadn't paid their rent in weeks.

Ben was a fair-skinned, white-haired man in his early 50s, about the age I am now, with large tattooed forearms and a formidable belly. He loved boxing and managed some of the young fighters in town, mostly minorities, who were hoping to get out of the nearby migrant camps through professional fighting. His most successful fighter was a kid named Johnny Torres. But even Johnny didn't make it very far in boxing. He got beat badly in his only televised bout.

I enjoyed writing about boxing because of the human stories behind the fighters and where they came from and wanted to go. A lot of hope and much despair, but always great images to try to describe. This was a very colorful sport that did not have the glitter of other professional sports. In a way, despite all the corruption and brutality, it was the purist of sports because it was not rooted in expensive camps and private lessons for rich kids.

Ben would hold court on the porch of his hotel for hours, talking about this fighter or that fighter who, in his mind, were a punch or two away from being champions. Ben fought with Homestead officials to keep a practice ring in his backyard. He fought government officials to open a gym down the street in an old abandoned building. He drove underprivileged kids into Hialeah and points farther north so they could compete. I don't remember the make or model of his car, but I remember it was in as bad a shape as the hotel.

Ben died in the hotel one morning. Heart attack. I ran over to see why the ambulance was there. His body was being removed. His face was blue. Rescuers had an oxygen mask on him, but I was sure Ben was dead.

I remember talking with Ben the previous day on the steps of his hotel. He was complaining a lot about what he thought was an ulcer from the stress he was feeling from fighting with town leaders on a routine basis. It was another hot, humid South Florida day. I was there with pen and pad in hand, looking for a story. But as was so often the case, we just started talking about life in general. I watched him touch the area near his breastbone a few times. Ben was not one to complain about pain. I saw his arm on fire once and he barely said a thing about it. But this was different.

Despite many bouts with crime, bugs the size of Buicks and even deaths of acquaintances, I remember my days in Florida fondly, sitting on porch of the Hotel Redland or roaming around the Coconut Grove or Key Biscayne. The Miami Zoo opened and I took my one-year-old daughter there to see the white tigers. I enjoyed going to Miami Dolphin games and eating stone crabs. I liked being a newspaper guy, even when the letters to the editor weren't so complimentary.

I am glad the hotel is still there, apparently renovated and designated as a historic site. While the newspaper died with Hurricane Andrew, Ben's hotel remains. Nice to see some things survive natural and man-made assaults, at least for a while. While age eventually catches up with everything and everyone, good memories have a way of living on a little longer.