It is hard to believe that I have called Miami home for over 35 years. Actually I am just another transplanted Ohioan who landed in South Florida. Yet each time I cross over any of the causeways to Miami Beach, I tend to believe that this was all part of a master plan.

My great-grandfather, Joseph Rapisardo, Sr., was a farmer in Chester, New York, with my grandfather, Leo Nicotra. As the cold and nasty winters arrived every year making crop growing a challenge, they decided to move to sunny Florida in 1950.

As it happens with all the affections destined to last, my love for Miami was initially tentative, and needed time to mature. Since my childhood, living in Argentina, I associated South Florida with intrepid pirates raiding the Caribbean waters. Its name awakened the traveler in me, that wanderer that we children of immigrants carry in our hearts.

Just like so many other Cuban-Americans, we came to Miami to escape the ravages of the Communist regime that had taken over our island-nation. We were lucky enough to come on a regularly scheduled Pan Am flight.

Although I was born in Miami, I left when I was a couple months old and did not return until I was almost 7.

A mother and daughter arrived from Cuba in 1962 and were immediately sent to St. Louis, where they lived for four years before returning to Miami.

My parents, Harry and Mildred Grand, met each other on South Beach in 1946.

In 1937, when I was 9 months old, my parents, Thomas J. Lee Smith and Lila Smith, moved from Tampa to Homestead, so my dad could pursue a sales position with Kilgore Seed Company.

I was born in Miami in 1940 when Victoria Hospital still existed as a full-service hospital with a maternity ward and Miami was a sleepy Southern town.

My first encounter with Miami was in the 1940s after the war. We lived in Curacao, Netherlands West Indies, and traveled every year to New York City on vacation.

In 1904 my family moved to Miami in horse and buggies from Gillette on the west coast of Florida.

It will be 50 years this November since we took the Pan American Airways flight that would separate us from the life of the privileged in Cuba to that of political refugees. They served us tiny ham-and-cheese sandwiches with the iconic blue Pan Am logo that tasted to us of the future – America.

Journey along the streets in the Brownsville neighborhood and you’ll see solid homes and well-kept lawns, highlighting the pride of the people who live here — past and present.

My story begins when my father decided to move with his six children to Miami from Key West in 1948. His father told him that his four boys and two girls would have more opportunities in the “big city” of Miami so my mother packed us up and we all moved from our birthplace to Miami. Our house was built in Allapattah from beautiful Dade County pine wood. Even after my mother passed away, my father continued to live in that same house until he retired from the Florida Department of Agriculture.

I was born in Havana on July 4th, 1956, and came to Miami in January of 1962.

My journey to Florida began in Homestead — where I was born, in July of 1926.

My father, Dr. William T. Lanier, graduated from Georgia Medical School in 1912, when he was 22 and headed for South Florida to set up his practice.

Think Miami Beach. Think bronze-sculpted bodies, basking in the sun. Think gyms, personal trainers and plant-based diets.

In my mother’s house , now in house, there was a collage of pictures of when we were younger. One was a picture of our entire transplanted family picnicking at Tahiti Beach. After reading someone else’s memories, I started thinking of ours.