ribbon-cutting on Saturday<\/a>\u00a0came after years of persistent advocacy, major setbacks and tense disagreements between the City of Miami and residents. But it\u2019s finally here, and built to the standard the neighborhood deserved, community leaders say.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s been a long road and it took a lot of patience, but the reward the community is going to reap is exciting,\u201d said Ruth Ewing, the president of the Elizabeth Virrick Park Committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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An undated photo of Verneka Sturrup Silva in her church vestments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Photo courtesy of Toni Simmons)<\/p>\n
Simmons will get a second chance to celebrate the pool, as well as her mother. The new pool is named for her mother \u2014 the Verneka Sturrup Silva Aquatic Facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother would be honored, but she would be humbled,\u201d Simmons said. \u201cI think my mother would have been really happy to have a place that people would come to and use and benefit from, more so than a street.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silva devoted her life to public service, advocating for the Grove and its residents while spending 40 years with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where she became the first Black female assistant principal for secondary administration in an integrated school system.<\/p>\n
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Assistant Principal Verneka Sturrup Silva with students at Coral Gables Senior High in an undated photo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Photo courtesy of Toni Simmons)<\/p>\n
Born in 1919 to Bahamian immigrant parents, Silva lived her entire life \u2013 save the last three years when she went to live with Simmons \u2013 in the same wooden home on Hibiscus Street.<\/p>\n
She grew up deeply embedded in the community and Christ Episcopal Church, where her father was senior warden, setting her on a path of spirituality. Simmons recalled how her mother would say \u201cThank God for life\u201d any chance she got.<\/p>\n
Silva became the first woman Episcopal lay minister to be named an honorary Canon of the Trinity Cathedral \u2013 and later in life followed in her father\u2019s footsteps to serve as senior warden of Christ Episcopal Church.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Known as a \u201cno-nonsense\u201d woman, Silva filled many roles in the neighborhood (too many to list here), including president of Coconut Grove Cares. \u201cShe was somebody who really had her boots on the ground,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cI always admired her a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout the 1950s and \u201960s Silva worked alongside Elizabeth Virrick and the Rev. Theodore R. Gibson to improve the neighborhood, which led in turn to the construction of the park and pool.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just fitting that the two of them (Silva and Virrick) who had worked so much together and dedicated their lives for the betterment of that same community now will be remembered together on the same site,\u201d Simmons said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Silva\u2019s work was not limited to the Grove, however. She founded and ran several organizations advocating for the betterment of women, particularly those of color, mental health and for sickle cell research.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t remember her ever just giving up. Even when she retired, she didn\u2019t stop,\u201d Simmons said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Silva is remembered as well by many today for the 20 years she spent as an assistant principal at Coral Gables High School.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her appointment in 1966 came at a challenging time. George Washington Carver High School had been desegregated and converted into a junior high school, sending several of its students to Coral Gables High School.<\/p>\n
Silva helped guide many of those students through the transition into an integrated school \u2013 including her daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was very inspirational because she was in that same situation,\u201d Simmons said. \u201cShe was an adult, but she still had to adjust. She still had people who may not have accepted her in the role she was in. She had to be there for the students, but also be there for herself.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Silva died in 2007 at the age of 87, Cooper said her funeral was one of the best attended she has ever seen in the neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe turnout for her funeral alone was an attestation of how people regarded her,\u201d she said. \u201cShe was a mentor and a godmother of sorts to quite a few people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Naming the new aquatic facility for Silva is a fitting tribute, Cooper and others say, because the pool\u2019s history reflects the neighborhood\u2019s own struggles for resources and recognition \u2013 from its opening in the early \u201960s to its recent redesign, which followed a hard-fought campaign by residents to ensure the city delivered what was promised.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a promise that was nearly broken.<\/p>\n
The pool\u2019s construction, which stretched across the terms of three different city commissioners, hit a major setback over a dispute about its depth.<\/p>\n
Throughout the design process, residents had asked for a pool capable of hosting competitive swimming and athletic events, including water polo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But when the concrete was poured in early 2023, the pool measured just 5 feet 3 inches at its deepest point \u2014 nearly a foot and a half short of what\u2019s required for competitive swim meets, and almost four feet shallower than the original pool.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when Davis, who learned to swim in the original pool, stepped in.<\/p>\n
Davis, who organizes youth sports programming in the neighborhood as president of the Coconut Grove Optimists Club, became a leading voice for change, asking the city to go back to the drawing board and start over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The appeal appeared to stall when former Miami District 2 Commissioner Sabina Covo told residents a re-do wasn\u2019t possible \u2013 a position that likely cost her votes in the next election, especially when her opponent promised to fight for residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After defeating Covo in a runoff election in November 2023, current District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo convinced the city to redesign the pool, at an additional cost of $3 million. At its deepest, the new pool has a depth of 7 feet 10 inches.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the community, this would have been another broken promise,\u201d Pardo told the Spotlight in 2024. \u201cWe took a bad situation and turned it into a celebration.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s opening means everything to Davis, whose children will now get to experience a pool like the one she knew. \u201cIt\u2019s just a big full-circle moment,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Ewing \u2013 the committee president who has overseen the entire construction process \u2013 the emotions are more layered, given the rapid gentrification of the West Grove and the displacement of the neighborhood\u2019s Black residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bittersweet knowing that the community has undergone such dramatic changes in its demographic,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost a lot of the Black community. Those families will not be able to reap the benefits of the pool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis wants to ensure those left in the community take full advantage of the new pool.<\/p>\n
While the new pool has been under construction, Davis has been running swim lessons at Ransom Everglades School. One of her swimmers \u2013 fifth-grader Kendrick Casimr \u2013 didn\u2019t know how to swim until starting with the Optimist Club.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now he wants to share his swimming skills with friends who have not had the same opportunity. He\u2019s excited that the pool \u201cis close, and that it\u2019s very big.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pool opened its doors on Saturday with junkanoo performances, food vendors, and swimming and water polo demonstrations by neighborhood children.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn May 2, anybody that thought the Grove was gone, they\u2019ll say, \u2018Oh, wait a minute, they\u2019re living. They\u2019re up,\u2019\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a warm, rainy day in June 1963, Clarice Cooper, Toni Simmons and a crowd of about 500…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[112689,7527,112688,502,112686,112690,225,227,226,112692,2457,123,112695,112691,3032,112693,112687,112694],"class_list":["post-260724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-black-history-miami-segregated-neighborhoods-parks","tag-coconut-grove","tag-coconut-grove-west-community-redevelopment-history","tag-community","tag-elizabeth-virrick-park-pool-reopening","tag-gentrification-impact-coconut-grove-residents-displacement","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-historic-west-grove-miami-civil-rights-era-development","tag-history","tag-miami","tag-miami-neighborhood-revitalization-parks-and-recreation-investment","tag-miami-public-pool-renovation-community-advocacy-success","tag-park","tag-role-of-local-leaders-in-miami-community-activism","tag-verneka-sturrup-silva-aquatic-facility-miami","tag-youth-swimming-programs-coconut-grove-optimist-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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