What did a big hotel do for a Miami Beach kid? A look back at a life-changing place

It’s Saturday morning. That means I’m at Mom and Dad’s store at the Carillon Hotel in Miami Beach.

I say hello to the other shopkeepers: George in the beauty salon, Jonathan and Nat in the shoe shop, Adam in the men’s shop, Leslie in the sundry store, Eleanor and Kay in the purse shop.

Once a month, Jimmy the barber gives me a bowl cut. For a prize, my parents let me pick a Three Musketeers bar from the candy shelf of the Union News cigar shop run by Morris.

Now it’s time for lunch in the Sugar & Spice coffee shop, where waitresses Lupe, Verna, Betty, Elizabeth or Nina take my order: either a hamburger or grilled cheese with fries, a Coke, and a piece of chocolate layer cake. The adults order date-nut bread with cream cheese.

I head outside to the pool bar to shake maracas to the music of Pat the organist. He plays “Moon over Miami.” Then Pat launches into other oldies on his hulking Hammond, and a woman named Rose Rose (yes, that was her first and last name) dances in a black one-piece swimsuit to the best of Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. Pat returns to the hotel at night with his wife, Doris, where they play the Burgundy Room lounge.

My parents put some newly arrived clothes on me and escort me out to the poolside cabanas where I model and direct all the fawning grandmas to their shop inside. “This outfit can be yours at Little Cherubs.”

Then, back in play clothes, I saunter off to the Rumpus Room, near the kiddie pool, with counselors Janet and Nancy, play knock hockey and listen to Stevie Wonder and George Harrison on the jukebox. I learn to swim in the big saltwater pool with my teacher, Mel the lifeguard. I continue on to the seaside shuffleboard courts for a game or two.

The only time I get to stay in one of the hotel rooms is when our North Beach apartment flooded from a neighbor’s busted water heater. I admire the ocean view from a high floor.

My parents ran Little Cherubs Fine Clothes for Children at the Carillon from 1965 to 1977, extending their business at other area hotels until 2004.

Shirley and Donald Kleinman, known around the hotel as Shirl and Don, sold fancy and casual outfits, dresses, swimsuits and toys to tourists, local grandmas buying for their out-of-town grandchildren, even a celebrity or two on vacation or in town for a show.

They did this for 39 years at the Carillon, Americana and Doral Beach hotels.

It wasn’t an easy life. Not a lot of money. And seven-day weeks. But they loved what they did.

They were not quite ready to retire in 2004. But by that time, the shopping world was changing, the Miami Beach visitors were getting younger and didn’t have kids, the grandmas were moving on.

Mom and Dad prided themselves on customer service, schmoozing with the regulars, mailing merchandise, even doing personal deliveries around town. One of the big malls once wooed my folks, but they decided it wasn’t the right move. They continued what they were doing in the hotel for another decade.

They didn’t have a website. They didn’t advertise. But they did send professional models (Sue Ellen, Dawn, Lorraine) out to the pool area and their shop was written up in the trade fashion magazines. They built a loyal customer base through word of mouth and color-coordinated display windows. At the beginning, they even stayed open into the night as people crowded the lobby waiting for the hotel shows.

All this paid off. Customers came back for years.

While my parents worked hard, I spent every weekend roaming the Carillon’s shopping arcade, greeting people and wandering the grounds. And, of course, doing all the fun stuff that a top Miami Beach hotel offered in the 1960s and ‘70s.

The Carillon Hotel was my second home.