It was 20 years ago today that Hurricane Andrew – with winds topping 200 miles per hour — roared through southern Dade County, below Miami, and destroyed everything in its path. The monster storm killed 44 people in South Florida, damaged or destroyed 126,000 homes, left 177,000 people homeless and did $27 billion in damage.
I used to live there and I went back as soon as the storm hit to help my friends and report on the destruction for this newspaper.
I remember working my way around the debris along S.W. 134th Avenue in Naranja, a blue collar neighborhood just north of Homestead, and seeing Joe Lester standing next to what was left of his modest, three-bedroom home.
The roof was gone, the windows were shattered and most of the inner walls were buckled. A car out front was wrecked beyond repair. Furniture was splintered, clothes were strewn all over and the carpet, some of which had already been rolled up, was water logged and stinking.
A Vietnam vet, Joe lived there with his teenage kids, Eric, David, Derrick and Pam, who he raised by himself while also working as a school janitor and running a small weekend lawn care service.
He said his wife, Juanita, had died eight years earlier from kidney failure and so I’d know what she looked like, he slogged through water and debris to find a damp, already crumbling photo of her with Derrick and David that he’d set in a sagging kitchen cupboard which was about to fall off the wall.
An insurance snafu had left Joe with just over $20,000 coverage on his home.
“We’ll get through this somehow … but right now I don’t know how,” Joe had said quietly.
I wrote about the Lester family – and a lot of other folks down there – and something quite unexpected happened. Many people from the Miami Valley reached out to those whose stories I had told.
Nothing, though, was quite as dramatic – or has paid such long-term dividends – as what the students of Centerville High School did back in the fall of 1992.
For 37 years now – going back to 1985 – Centerville and rival Fairmont have had what they call a Spirit Chain competition preceding their annual football game. Rather than pulling bad-blood pranks on each other, the two student bodies try to do some good deeds, each trying to outraise the other for a charitable cause they choose.
Over the years – and the efforts now have grown to include much of the community — they have helped everything from the Ronald McDonald House to Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill/Easter Seals.
In 1992, Centerville reached out to the Lester family.
It was arranged so Joe and then-14-year-old Derrrick, a budding football lineman himself, would be flown into Dayton and then be guests of the Elks during the game.
“We had no idea what we were getting into,” Derrick said Thursday afternoon by phone. “Actually that was my first plane ride. And when we got there, they made us feel like we were stars, like we were real TV celebrities or something.
“Before the game people came up and shook my hand and took photos with us and kids asked for autographs. They had my dad and me do an interview on the radio. It was crazy.”
And Derrick – wearing a Centerville T-shirt, a gold bandana tied around his head and bubbling over with personality, charm and some wide-eyed innocence – was an overwhelming hit as he and his dad cheered the Elks enthusiastically from the sidelines.
At halftime he and his dad were brought onto the field. They thought they were just going to be cheered. They were, but they also got a check for $9,501.57 and they were stunned.
Money well spent
Two decades later, it’s evident Centerville’s money went to good use.
Derrick – now a 34-year-old Dade County school teacher and the founder of the Hard Knocks Foundation, which helps kids in need – said he has never forgotten what happened that night at Centerville.
He’s not just talking about the financial help they got, but the indelible lesson he learned: “It was people helping other people they don’t even know just so their lives get better. My mom died when I was 7, but she used to do that. She’d take the money for the water bill or the light bill and end up giving it to somebody who was hungry.”
After he returned home from Ohio, Derrick became a high school football and wrestling star at South Dade High in Homestead, then went on to a community college in California and finally Cal State-Northridge.
Already as a college student, he spent parts of his summers running grass roots youth camps for kids in need at nearby parks. A few years ago he launched the Hard Knocks Foundation, which specializes in taking talented but usually low-income and often unconnected high school football talents to college summer camps and 7-on-7 competitions around the nation.
“A lot of our kids don’t have the money like kids whose parents have great jobs and can send them to camps,” Derrick said. “We go out and raise money – we knock on doors, we sell donuts, we have car washes, we’re going to have a golf tournament – so we can showcase our kids around the country.
“There are scholarships to be had, but you need the exposure. This past summer we went to about 20 schools, places like LSU, all the Florida schools, Georgia, Ole Miss, Memphis, Louisville, Marshall, a couple of smaller black colleges like Bethune Cookman and Florida A&M.
“In the past we took Amari Cooper to Alabama,” Derrick said. “Nick Saban didn’t know who he was, but the kid performed so well he got a scholarship and he’s likely to start there as a freshman receiver this season.
“This summer we stopped at Ole Miss with a kid from South Dade and I tell you he showed out there. He’ll be getting a full ride. That’s like a $30,000-a-year scholarship for four years.”
He said another of his Hard Knocks kids just made the Miami Dolphins roster and Jelanni Berassa led Youngtown State with eight touchdown catches last year.
“I know Urban Meyer and I’m hoping, now that he’s at Ohio State, we can be showcasing our kids up there next year,too, “ Derrick said. “The thing is we want our kids to get a chance and hopefully once they do they’ll remember this and help somebody coming behind them.”
To help nurture that thought he has his Hard Knocks players put on a clinic at a Dade County park for underprivileged kids each summer.
“What I’m doing now I think some of it goes back to what happened at Centerville,” he said. “Folks there helped us get going again and after that I was able to go on and do some things for myself and now for other people. They showed me something I’ve never forgotten.
“That’s why today I just gotta say thanks.”
About the Author