Caplin, Harvey (Jun 22, 1929 – ) by Angie Wheatley

Harvey Caplin

By Angie Wheatley

December 27, 2004

I was just talking with Grandpa Harvey Caplin, and he shared
some memories that I thought I should write down. 

His parents lived in Miami when his older
brother was born.  They then moved to New York City where
Grandpa Harvey was born.  Later, after
his father's (Morris Caplin) business went bankrupt, they moved back to Miami.  They lived half a block from the coast on the
second floor of a brick apartment building. 
One day in (I believe) 1926, the ocean seemed different.  Harvey's
mother (Pauline Makstein Caplin) walked out on the porch, looked around, then
told her children they would not go to school that day.  It felt like it did right before the
hurricane hit and ripped their roof off in Miami. 

Later that day, without warning, a
40 foot title wave hit shore and swept all the way over to Staten
Island.  During the summer,
the beach houses are full, but luckily, they were now fairly empty.  Harvey
remembers watching a woman run from the shore with a baby in each arm; the wave
chased her, right at her heels.  A man
from Harvey's
apartment building grabbed her and dragged her inside the building to
safety. 

The wave hit just as school
released, so many children had to swim home from school.  The streets were completely flooded.  Harvey's
father (Morris Caplin) drove home from work on the boardwalk that was opened up
for traffic. 

Harvey doesn't remember any death report, but
there was no record of all the fishermen out at sea that day.  There was no warning, and the wave hit
unexpectedly.  Luckily, he and his family
were safe in their second floor apartment.

During the Great Depression, Morris
Caplin did very well financially.  He had
a knack for earning money; however, gambling led to his downfall.  Morris didn't want to own his own
business.  He always tried to work for
someone else, but they couldn't stand to pay him because he earned so much
money.  They didn't quite understand that
if their employee was making a lot of money, they were, too.

During the Depression, Morris owned
a very successful Interior Design business. 
He continued to do well through the Depression because his clients were
millionaires.  Eventually, he opened
other stores to for his friends to run. 
He wanted to help them out during these difficult times; however, they
didn't run the stores well, and Morris ended up going out of business
bankrupt.  Grandpa Harvey remembers
standing out in the street with his aunt and all of their furniture.  He asked his aunt why they were out in the
street.  Apparently, they were evicted
because they couldn't pay the rent.
 

They moved back to Miami during the war (1939).  At this time, the air force took over Miami Beach for
training.  Consequently, they ordered
black outs.  Morris found this to be a
tremendous business opportunity.  Using
his interior design background, he began supplying and installing black out
curtains.  He traveled by train to New York to buy yards
and yards of black cloth from his old business acquaintances.  He handed them $10,000 to $20,000 cash under
the table to pay for the cloth.  He had
to do it this way since there was such demand for cloth.  Harvey
remembers big crates filled with material arriving at their home.  He also remembers helping his father hang the
curtains.

During the war, all the big, ritzy
sea side hotels sat vacant in Miami.  (Grandpa said they closed up in the summer
anyway because it was so hot and they didn't have air conditioning.)  After the war, Harvey tried to convince his father to buy a
coastal hotel because they were selling for $40,000.  But he said, "What would I do with a big,
fancy hotel?"

There were other times Harvey tried to get his
father to invest in land or back his investments, but he never saw the wisdom
in it.  When Harvey and Betty were first
married, they bought a bit of coastal property between Cape Canaveral and Washington lake for $100
per acre.  Morris wouldn't invest.  Later, Harvey
sold the land to his brother, Leonard, for $1000 per acre.  Leonard built a trailer park and made a large
amount of money off of that. 

Harvey
also tried to get his dad to buy or give him a down payment for land on Washington lake, but he
wouldn't.  Eventually, they placed a big
barge in the middle of the lake and channeled it so each home they built was
waterfront. The owners made millions.