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<\/a>By Seth H. Bramson<\/strong><\/p>\nOver the past two columns, readers of Mr. Berkwitt\u2019s website have learned of the first four of the five terrible events that made 1926 one of the two (along with 1896) most memorable, and to some extent, legendary years in Greater Miami\u2019s illustrious and glorious history. Just by surviving those events, which occurred in and during Miami\u2019s thirtieth year as a city, Homestead\u2019s 13th, and Miami Beach\u2019s eleventh year as an incorporated municipality (Miami Beach was incorporated as a town in 1915 and became a city in 1917)\u2014the region proved its mettle and was prepared thereafter for anything and everything that fate and the four winds could throw at it. But that, dear readers, did not make the recovery any easier.<\/p>\n
As we have noted, the four events leading up to the catastrophic final and most horrendously disastrous event\u2014the terrible hurricane of September 17th and 18th–were the capsizing of the Danish sailing schooner, Prinz Valdemar (at the time the largest vessel ever to enter Miami\u2019s port) at the entrance to the turning basin of the Miami harbor in January; the embargoing of itself by the Florida East Coast Railway; the subsequent negative nationwide publicity, and the default and abandonment of their land, buildings and property purchased by literally thousands of buyers throughout the country. Miami and Miami Beach might\u2014and probably could have and would\u2014have recovered from all of those setbacks had it not been for the fifth and final of the five terrible events which, in sum, proved to be the harbinger of the Great Depression that would envelop the country three years later.<\/p>\n
Although there were muted warnings several days ahead of the storm that \u201ca hurricane is coming\u201d few people knew what the significance of the warnings was, and as the radio broadcasts and newspapers (there were four daily papers in Miami at the time) did not seem to be expressing a great deal of concern (unlike today\u2019s hysterical, shrieking, hyperventilating talking weather-heads, or, as the late, great NEILGOD would refer to them, \u201cthe weather fairies\u201d) the warnings, which seemed mostly to be coming from ships at sea that had encountered the storm, were taken far too lightly. That lack of concern, that complete misunderstanding of, and disregard for, the power of the storm, would bring a hideously high death toll and immense property damage to all of Greater Miami.<\/p>\n
The storm would roar out of the Atlantic on the evening of September 17th and would, for hour after terrible hour, blast away at Miami Beach, Miami, Coral Gables, Fulford-by-the-Sea (where it destroyed the Fisher-Fulford Speedway, the famous all \u2013wood, steeply banked, used for only one race automobile race track at approximately today\u2019s Northeast 18th and 19th Avenues and 188th\u2014189th Streets, the site of the track now under the water of Sky Lake), the Shoreland Company\u2019s properties (today\u2019s Miami Shores) as well as a good bit more of then-Dade County as well as much of eastern Broward County.<\/p>\n
L. F. Reardon, a noted journalist of the time, would go on to write, illustrate and publish a hard cover book detailing the horrors of the storm. His own home, although not completely destroyed by the storm, was severely damaged. Reardon\u2019s book, one of several composed following that terrible natural disaster, vividly describes not only what he went through but what the area was like\u2014the sheer, utter devastation\u2014following the storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing it all down to brass tacks?\u201d Beyond awful: More than 600 people killed, hundreds of buildings destroyed, Coast Guard cutters and other large ships thrown up on land, sand piled to the third floor of the then-brand new Roney Plaza Hotel at 23rd Street and Collins Avenue, the Flagler System\u2019s Royal Palm Hotel on the banks of the Miami River so badly damaged that it would, except for about thirty days in the 1928 season, close for good following the storm.<\/p>\n
Even Hurricane Andrew, with all its horrors, was equaled or outdone by the vicious and never-to-be-forgotten Miami hurricane of September 17th and 18th, 1926.<\/p>\n
From a personal point-of-view, I think that what, today, distresses me the most is when the usual gaggle of front-running-phonies and know-nothings tell us to \u201cjust wait! We\u2019re gonna get \u2018the big one!\u2019\u201d they chortly almost gleefully. Of course, for those damn fools who are totally bereft or any knowledge of our area\u2019s history, and who, like those who are still trying to get listeners to believe in \u201cthe orange blossom myth\u201d or that \u201cthat was Al Capone\u2019s hideaway,\u201d of which he didn\u2019t have any, they neither know about nor care about what our history is, what is has entailed, and how we have suffered through, on so many different occasions, \u201cthe big one.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is at that point that I turn with a cynical look and say, \u201cyou really don\u2019t know what the hell you are talking about, do you,\u201d following which I am generally met with a blank or befuddled stare. And it is generally, at that point, that I inform them as to what the truth is and what the facts are regarding said \u201cbig one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps, gentlemen and ladies, we will look into not only \u201cthe big oneS\u201d but, and also, how many times we have been brutalized by them. Not pretty, but let\u2019s straighten out said front-running phonies who are, generally, always wrong and never in doubt. See you next week, and y\u2019all take care now, heah?!!<\/p>\n
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[AdSense-A] By Seth H. Bramson Over the past two columns, readers of Mr. Berkwitt\u2019s website have learned of the first four of the five terrible events that made 1926 one of the two (along with 1896) most memorable, and to some extent, legendary years in Greater Miami\u2019s illustrious and glorious history. Just by surviving those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17984],"tags":[19564],"class_list":["post-78044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment-news","tag-a-special-moment-in-time-the-five-terrible-events-of-1926-part-iii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78044"}],"version-history":[{"count":-3,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}