We’ve been friends for 80 years — the beauty of a lifelong friendship
This morning as I wiped the sleep from my eyes and thanked the Lord for another day, I remembered that it is May 1 —the birthday of one of my dearest and oldest friends — Nellie Dorsett Green.
As I mused about our friendship — remembering how we met and our good times together — I thought about how precious true friendship is. In my 86 years here on this Earth, God has blessed me to meet many people, some of whom have turned out to be my closest friends. And I am forever grateful.
But let me tell you about my friend Nellie. On Wednesday, she turned 90. This means we have been friends for 80 years!
I met Nellie in April 1944. I don’t remember the exact date, but I remember waking up in our new home in a city with the strange name of Miami. Our address was 135 NW Ninth St.
I was 6 and eager to meet my new neighbors. One of them, Doris Rogers Dorsett, was Nellie’s mom. She and my mom had become fast friends.
One of the best things about meeting Ms. Doll (as we called her) is that not only did she have eight children, which meant a lot of playmates for me and my brother Adam, she was a beautician. She was a graduate of Sunlight Beauty School and worked out out of her kitchen. This meant “candy curl” hairdos at Easter and Christmas for Nellie and me, and many of the other little girls in the neighborhood.
When we met, Nellie was the only girl in her family. And while her brother Floyd and I were the same age and in the same grade, Nellie became my best girlfriend.
She was a great storyteller, and I marveled at her stories about traveling to Nassau in the Bahamas in a boat. In my little-girl mind, I imagined her alone in a big dingy, rowing across the great Atlantic. I could see the big waves beating against the boat. Yet Nellie, in my imagination, rowed on until she reached dry land and Nassau. She was my hero!
I told the story to Nellie not too long ago and we both laughed at my imagination. While it was a funny story, it made perfectly good sense to me, a little country girl who had never seen the ocean until we arrived in Miami, not to mention a cruise ship.
Nellie and I became close friends. We had met just a few weeks before her 10th birthday and she was so excited about having a double-digit birthday. She and some of the other girls in the neighborhood, which included Cupid Dean Davis and the late Vivian Dixon and the late Shirley Baker, loved to talk about “big girl” stuff, often locking me out of the conversation because I was “too little.”
Today, Nellie stands barely 5 feet tall, to my 5 feet, 6 inches. I like to tease her by saying, “Who’s the little girl now?” and we both break out laughing.
Nellie married and had six children, two sons and four daughters. I married several years later and had two sons.
We didn’t get together as often when our children were growing up — life simply got in the way. But we were there for each other at the important times — family weddings, the funerals of my husband, her grandparents, and later the funerals of her father, my mother, and her mother. I was honored when Nellie asked me to sing at Ms. Doll’s going home service. I sang “How Great Thou Art.”
In a few days, Nellie’s family will gather to celebrate Nellie’s milestone birthday. Her brother Floyd “Jake” and his wife Florentine will fly in from New York . They will join Nellie’s brother Nathaniel “Nate,” who lives in Miami, and her sister Virginia Payne, also coming in from New York.
Nellie’s five children — Brenda Pinkney, Patricia Hardemon, Shelia Garrison, Charles Green and Bernice Gardner —will also be there. (Nellie’s oldest son, Allen, died in 1982). There also will be grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
We are anticipating a great celebration. And Nellie and I will have our own celebration of 80 years of friendship.
Merrick House event
The community is invited to a presentation of “100 Voices: Yesterday Stories of Coral Gables” at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at the Coral Gables Merrick House, 907 Coral Way.
Carolina Vester, the city’s community recreation deputy director, will share her knowledge of the Venetian Pool & Casino, which was once a rock pit that Denman Fink, the artistic adviser to Gables founder George Merrick, turned into a swimming lake.
The pool was the first stop for prospective buyers on Merrick’s tour buses as he welcomed visitors to the “Miami Riviera.”
Today, the Venetian Pool is the only pool listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Vester started her career with the city as a lifeguard at the pool. Tickets are $5 per person.
