September 8, 1992

FOR REBOUNDING WEST PERRINE, STORM IS A DETOUR

PAMELA FERDINAND Herald Staff Writer

Poor, but promising. Devastated, but determined.

This is how the Rev. Walter Richardson describes his home: West Perrine.

"Nobody plans to leave," he says, minutes before Sunday's service at the Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church. "Where do you go? This is home when you've worked hard all your life."

West Perrine was a crime-infested neighborhood making a U- turn. It was a place on the cusp of change, coming together in the wake of the murder of community leader Lee Arthur Lawrence Sr.

Andrew could speed that process up -- or slow it down.

"We're trying to build things," said Dennis Moss, executive director of the Richmond Perrine Optimist Club. 'We're not interested in repair."

Richardson agreed: "We don't want to rebuild ghettos, to just patch up places that couldn't take rain showers, much less a hurricane 5."

The nearly 80-year-old community is receiving some high- powered attention.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Gov. Lawton Chiles have spoken words of hope at Sweet Home in recent days. Dade County Health Department doctors and nurses run a medical clinic out of the neighborhood's Enterprise Center. U.S. Army and Florida Power & Light trucks roam the streets. An American Red Cross van distributes plastic plates heaped with sausage and scrambled eggs.

It wasn't always like this.

West Perrine grew up as a supply depot for Henry Flagler's Key West-bound railroad. Its pioneers worked as railroad workers or migrant farmers harvesting tomatoes. With success, many moved north, often settling in Coral Gables or Coconut Grove.

For those who stayed, life could be sweet within its small borders. West Perrine covers just 16 city blocks, enclosed by U.S. 1 and Southwest 107th Avenue and by Southwest 168th and 184th Streets.

Daisy Gardner Lester, a 35-year-old career counselor at Southwood Middle School, grew up in the close-knit, predominantly black neighborhood.

"I don't remember anyone locking doors," she said. "Neighborhood picnics were common. Kids played baseball and football in the middle of the street. Dinner was wherever you were at.

"Your mother wasn't just your biological mother. If you got a spanking from a woman down the street, you definitely didn't tell your mother, or you'd get another one."

By the end of the '80s, West Perrine had grown to nearly 9,000 residents and its fabric had been altered. Most of its residents live in rented homes, say leaders, and many are single parents who receive government assistance. The community was also younger, tougher and meaner.

Dollar joints and nickel crack rocks had seeped onto the main thoroughfare, Homestead Avenue. Prostitutes solicited from the "Pink Apartments" of Southwest 104th Avenue. Drunks lingered by the side of Bell's Short Stop grocery store nearby.

A gang wearing blue paisley bandanas called itself the Ninja Turtles and terrorized families. Thieves swiped cars. People stayed indoors, watching television and listening to fights and gunshots outdoors, say residents. Lester's own father was killed in a West Perrine robbery.

Then, on March 20, 1989, drug dealers gunned down Lee Arthur Lawrence Sr., an anti-drug crusader, outside his grocery store on 104th Avenue. It was a turning point.

Nearly 20 churches banded together to form the West Perrine Christian Association. Neighbors started a crime watch group, and police created task forces and demolished crack houses. Habitat for Humanity built four homes, and the Community Development Corp. put its agenda into action: a medical center, a business "incubator" program and a $3 million affordable housing project.

"We saw drug dealers getting locked up," Moss said. "We began to take the initiative."

Now Andrew has left an uncertain legacy for this delicately poised community.

Houses are shattered and the roof was blown off a decimated R.R. Morton Elementary School. Red bricks tumbled off the side of Bell's. Many of the area's 28 churches are wiped out. Orange and blue jungle gyms at Ben Shevis Park lie buried under dead tree branches.

Lester lives in a camper outside her damaged home. Still, she's hoping for the best and, like most others, has no plans to leave.

Several streets away, 70-year-old Alejandro Rios eyes his tree-tumbled front yard. His square fingernails are filled with dirt, a white handkerchief around his neck dirty.

"It's too early, no one knows what will happen here," says Rios. "But I've been here for a long time, and I'll stay until I die."