Home to the young Lola Grace Hayes Dowling was a defunct airfield where her father test-grew fruit and foliage under the guidance of David Fairchild.

Chapman Field, off Old Cutler Road, was a military base for two years during World War I. The family lived there from 1923-1947.

In 1944, Lola -- Ponce de Leon High School class of 1937 -- married into another Miami-Dade County pioneer family and moved to one of several South Miami houses that her husband, John Perry Dowling Jr., built.

She died of natural causes in that house on Oct. 17 at age 90. She still had the same phone number she'd been given five decades ago.

Daughter Donna Gilbert said it remains ``scrawled in chalk on the back of an old mirror with the preface `Mohawk.' ''

A single mother for much of her two children's youth, Dowling cared for old people, enjoyed a risqué joke, spoke her mind, and late in life, joined the Mormon Church.

``My mother loved novelties,'' said son Stephen Dowling of Fort Lauderdale. ``One year she hung the Christmas tree upside down.''

Nine years ago, she dictated memories to her daughter, who compiled them into a booklet titled Growing Up on Chapman Field.

FAIRCHILD

Born in Spring Lake, Fla., Lola was 4 when the family moved to Chapman Field.

Her father, Clifford Hayes, worked for the famous ``plant explorer'' David Fairchild, who headed the USDA's Bureau of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction. Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden bears his name.

``Daddy worked in the plant house propagating the seeds that Dr. Fairchild and others would send,'' Lola Dowling recalled in her memoir. ``With his large, soil-stained hands, he tended to the little seedlings as gently as any mother would tend her baby.''

Lola, sisters Birdie, Maude and Milly, learned about the plants their father grew, and to the end of her life ``she recognized every plant she ever saw by their scientific names,'' Donna said.

In the 1920s, the area was ``wild and natural,'' according to Lola. ``One time we saw a bobcat looking in the screen to our house. . . .'' They kept a pet possum named Ray and made jelly from native sea grapes.

While their first dwelling on the base, a converted mess hall, had one coveted amenity -- indoor plumbing -- the Hayes family lived far from town, without a phone, radio or car.

Beset by insects in the pre-air conditioning era, the family painted the screens with motor oil to keep out sand flies.

HURRICANE OF '26

The killer hurricane of 1926 flooded the mess hall, where the family huddled under the dining table.

``Daddy finally had to drill holes in the floor to let the standing water drain out,'' Lola wrote.

The Hayes girls attended Larkins Public School -- now Sunset Elementary -- then the Perrine School. They swam at Tahiti Beach and fished off Chicken Key.

The army reactivated Chapman in the 1930s as a practice field and gunnery range.

Lola's mother, Omie, would salvage the linen strips used as ``tow targets'' behind planes, and have her daughters embroider around the bullet holes, then use them for dresser scarves.

Lola still had some of the scarves when she died.

At Ponce de Leon High, now a middle school, Lola worked on the school newspaper and belonged to the 4-H Club.

During WWII, she worked for Embry-Riddle flight school, which had leased much of Chapman Field from the U.S. Army. In the '40s, she also worked for the South Miami and Coconut Grove banks.

She married John Dowling, had Donna and Stephen, and divorced in 1956.

She remarried for several years in the 1970s, then divorced again.

RELIGION

A Southern Baptist through the 1950s, Lola Dowling attended Miami's Church of Religious Science in the '60s, tried out Rosicrucianism, then joined the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints in 1979.

``Missionaries came to the door,'' said Stephen. She ``enjoyed the closeness'' that the LDS community offered, but didn't abide by all its rules, especially the prohibition against hot drinks, he said.

``She hid bags of coffee under the bed because she didn't want the elders to see them when they came over,'' he said.

In 2000, Lola Dowling was given a key to the City of South Miami -- ``in recognition of her many years of solid citizenship and her contributions to the documentation of local history,'' Donna said.

A memorial service was held Sunday. Loved ones plan to l scatter Lola Dowling's ashes.

``She never said where,'' said Donna, ``but it goes without saying it will be in the vicinity of Chapman Field and Chicken Key.''