A Late In Life Burst Of Creativity—Part IV

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By Seth H. Bramson

As noted in our previous column, the Centennial of the arrival of the first train in Key West on January 22, 1912 was rapidly approaching and the Key West Art and Historical Society, not wanting a novel as the Flagler Museum had been hoodwinked into backing, but, rather, a real and true history of that incredible project, called on this writer, the Company Historian of the Florida East Coast Railway to write said book. That book—“The Greatest Railroad Story Ever Told: Henry Flagler and the Florida East Coast Railway’s Key West Extension” was and is the first and only complete history of that triumphant moment in America railroad building.

When Miami’s Channel Two elected to honor said event by producing their one-hour special titled “Flagler’s Train: The Florida East Coast Railway’s Oversea Railway” I was honored by not only providing the majority of the memorabilia used, but, and in addition, being the single most-frequent on-air personality. (Of course, truth be told, it was after the piece aired in December of 2012 and for several years thereafter that people came to me and said, “You know, Seth, it really is true. You really do have a face that’s made for RADIO!”)

Regretfully the guy who wrote the novel was the first on-air interviewee and he started with the nonsense—total, complete and absolute nonsense—that Mr. Flagler’s only goal in life was to build a railroad to Key West, that total falsehood, just like the Julia Tuttle orange blossom myth and the complete nonsense spouted by Miami’s walking fountain of MISinformation (along with so much more) that “that was Al Capone’s hideaway” being total hooey. Mr. Flagler decided to go to Key West ONLY after the surveys across the Everglades to Cape Sable, where he planned to build a great deep water terminal to serve the ships coming through the to-be-built Panama Canal, proved to be totally infeasible, after which that plan was abandoned in favor of the route to Key West, which was also surveyed by William J. Krome for whom Dade County’s Krome Avenue is named. But I digress.

The production was a “smash” and was picked up by educational stations nationwide. The book came out in time for the Centennial and the President of the FEC as well as several vice presidents joined us at the FEC Hotel Company-built Casa Marina in Key West (now, I think, a Waldorf resort) for the gala Centennial dinner and ball with me and Myrna being feted lavishly for our role in preserving the history of that incredible project through both the book and the television special. (Becomes easy to do, of course, when one had been collecting—at that time, six years ago—FEC memorabilia for 54 (now sixty) years!

Almost as soon as that book made its appearance it was on to more projects. In 2013, co-authored with Bob Jensen, the Centennial history of Homestead was published, also by The History Press. At the meeting with the Centennial Committee, Bob was asked about somebody else co-authoring the book and his frankness and honesty was refreshing. “You are all well aware that a book was written about the history of a bank here in Homestead, aren’t you?” The answer was a unanimous “yes” and then Bob went on to tell them that almost every copy of the book was recalled and burned and reminded the group that the reason that was done was because there were “113 grievous errors in the book” and the only person I would trust to co-author this book with me is Seth.” And that was it! (Fortunately, the great love of my life was sitting there, at the table, and heard the entire commentary)

The book detailing the marvelous history of Homestead was another terrific seller and much to the surprise of large numbers of people it revealed that, to no small extent, Homestead was founded by Jewish people who were there teaching kibbutzniks (those who wanted to return to Israel, then called “Palestine”) how to become farmers. In addition, in writing it, I learned that Homestead, incorporated in 1913, was only the second incorporated municipality in today’s Miami-Dade County, the first being Myamuh in 1896 and the third being Miami Beach in 1915, when it became a town, with cityhood following two years later.

While the Miami Beach debacle would then follow it was more than compensated for when our friend, Jerry Libbin, president of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, asked me to write the business history of Miami Beach to help the chamber to celebrate the first 100 years of business in that city.

Five more books would follow, which will bring us up to date, but in our next exciting submission we will bring you up to date not only on those but on the projects currently under development, including the history of Miami Beach High and the Miami Beach schools, which will not be a book about those in what started out as the high school’s hall of fame and is now little more than a hall of shame, laden with no few who are there not because of great (or even any real or notable) achievements but because their buds on that committee were or are “the popular kids” who liked them enough to ramrod them through a process which should always have been based solely on merit, not on popularity, but which has deteriorated to the point at which it is now, entry being based on how liked (or not) those being selected are or have been.

At any rate, looking forward to “seeing” you shortness, and, as always, and as we say in French, “zei gezundt,” stay and travel well and enjoy the week.

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