Before the boardwalk crowds and summer-day bustle came to define South Beach, its story was written by immigrants who carried little more than trade skills and a stubborn resolve to build the American dream with family at its center.
For Anne Navarria, 73, a resident of the Shore Acres section of South Beach, that history is not a distant chapter but a living inheritance, etched in the lives of her grandparents, Anna Macchia and Luigi Cassano.