The Bramson Archive Gets Larger and Larger Part III
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By Seth H. Bramson
The collection kept growing, the material flowing in as I made a number of trips during the FEC strike up and down the east coast of Florida, visiting the company’s general offices in St. Augustine fairly regularly. Eventually the railroad’s executive vice president, R. W. Wyckoff, issued an order that I was the only “railroad buff” who was to be allowed on company property to photograph and collect. It was an honor and a blessing.
Meantime I was studying in a serious vein (remember Mad Magazine and the cover line “Humor in a Jugular Vein?!!”) and achieving the grades that I was capable of. Eventually, Lou Rogers, Fontainebleau Vice President, arranged for me to be interviewed by the Dean of the Hotel School himself, the incredible Robert A. Beck. It was intimidating, but apparently I didn’t do too badly, as the letter informing me that I had been accepted as a student at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration arrived on June 9, 1966. (At that time something like only 1 in 39 applicants to the world’s finest school of hospitality management was admitted).
I opened the envelope that day at our beloved family home at 8035 Cecil Street on Biscayne Point on Miami Beach and a guttural scream of joy erupted from my shaking with excitement body! First I called Mom (Dad died in 1961, having smoked himself to death at the age of 56, with Mom sadly following some years later at the age of 59) and then immediately called Joe Gregg, my professor at Dade County Junior College. He was overjoyed and immediately went to tell not only the Dean but then-President Peter Masiko (I think it was Masiko!) the news. It was, indeed, exciting news because I was the first D C J C student ever accepted at and admitted to Cornell University.
Going to work that evening at the Fontainebleau I shared the news with our employee family and they were all delighted and happy for me, as was my beloved brother Bennett, who, in the fall of that year, would start his last year at Nautilus Junior High School, going on the following year to a stellar, if not incredible career at Beach High, more of which later.
Between working at the Fontainebleau, advertising for and buying railroad memorabilia, trolleyana and Miami memorabilia as well as dating a good few beautiful and delightful young women whose families were staying at the hotel I had little time for anything other than those activities. Indeed, I dated some outstanding young women including Linda Vaughan, who was “Miss Sun/Fun USA,” Marsha Gildenberg, from Hazelton, PA, Charene Jacobson from the Chicago area and the striking (OK, they all were!) Meryl Miller, who was going to be a senior at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. In addition there were others including one particularly sweet and stunning girl from Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, Maira Brourman, who was staying at the Eden Roc.
However, and for better or for worse, one stood out from the rest, for it was she with whom the pheromones clicked most heavily and I shortly found myself madly in love with her, unlike any of the others who I liked but had never felt quite that way about. It was July of ’66, she was from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and she was sexy and smart and beautiful and…..well, suffice to say that I used to say that “she was a nice Italian girl from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn,” but as it turned out, she wasn’t so nice and I was very, very fortunate (for many reasons not necessary to elaborate on here) not to have wound up with her.
She married somebody else and I started seeing her about a year later, with my heart, not my mind, in control. That little dalliance went on for eight years, in New York, Dallas, Atlanta and in Miami again until I went back to New York to run the New York Gaslight Club. However, an incredible event which would change my life for the better—and gloriously happier—occurred one week and one day after Thanksgiving of 1973 when Butch Stallings introduced me to the woman who I have now been married to for almost 42 years.
I chased her for three years until she caught me and I am her third and last husband while she is my first and only wife. (I would never go through this again: the woman ruined my social life! Kidding, just kidding!) At any rate, the STILL stunningly beautiful (truly and seriously—most people who know her refer to her as beautiful and elegant) Myrna Bramson married me almost 42 years ago, while she was waiting for the right guy to come along. Forty-two years later, she’s still waiting, but I keep telling her that, if she hangs in long enough, she will learn to love me, and of that, and Bennett at Beach High and my working in Miami and New York and back in Miami and having our first book published in December, 1984 (we have now written and had published a total of 31 books, all South Florida local and Florida transportation history including the biography of our former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice as well as Beach High and UM graduate, the great and revered Gerald Kogan) and I am now America’s single most-published Florida history book author.
We will have more on, of and about all of that next time. Until then we want you all to be—and stay—well, and to paraphrase a great and famous line from possibly the greatest movie ever made (OK, at least top five!), “Brad—and dear readers—I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!” See you shortness!
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