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Norma Niurka Acevedo was an entertainment reporter, theater critic, and actress. She was born in Havana, Cuba on November 15, 1942, and arrived in Miami in the early 1960s with her parents and sister, Marta. Largely inspired by her aunt, the Cuban actress Miriam Acevedo, Niurka was interested in acting from a young age and in the late 1960’s she went to Madrid, Spain to study acting at the Royal School of Dramatic Art. Norma Niurka and her aunt Miriam Acevedo of Man de La Mancha fame, co-wrote the literary work El Charco De Sangre.

In 1966, she began her career as an actress when she starred in a production of Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie (Mundo de cristal), alongside actors Salvador Ugarte, Nismi Nazar, and Alfonso Cremata, directed by Miguel Ponce, and performed at the Koubek Center of Miami Dade College. Later, she went to Puerto Rico, appearing in telenovelas such as “La Criada Malcriada.” She worked alongside well-known Puerto Rican actors such as Johanna Rosaly. In San Juan Puerto Rico, she became involved in experimental theater. She continued her involvement in experimental theater in New York in the 1970’s with The Living Theater as well as acting with the prestigious La Mama Experimental Theater, doing street theater in the Bronx area. Upon her return to Miami in the late 1970’s, Niurka founded the Latin American Center for Theatrical Information and Experimentation. The group performed locally as well as traveling abroad to perform in festivals. Niurka wrote poetry and a poem titled “Al paso del viento” about her time in the world of experimental theater, specifically her time with La Mama Experimental Theater, was published in 1970 in an anthology Poesía en exodo, which was edited by Ana Rosa Núñez. Niurka also published her poetry in early exile publications and at literary events, such as the one she organized with her friend Mauricio Fernández in December of 1966 for the Latin American Fraternal Association in Miami. In 1970, she published a collection of her poems titled “Mordiendo el tiempo.”

In 1977, she began her career as a prolific culture writer, stage critic, and entertainment reporter, becoming one of the founding writers for the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald, where she had her column "Entreactos" ("Between Acts",) which first appeared on January 12, 1977. Niurka also wrote a monthly column called “Entre tu y yo” for the entertainment magazine, People en Español. She interviewed many stars like Sara Montiel, Salma Hayek, Enrique Iglesias, Andrea Bocelli, Óscar de la Renta, José Feliciano, and many more. In the 1980’s and the era of the Mariel Boatlift, Niurka hosted literary readings in Coconut Grove for newly arrived Cuban writers, actors, musicians, and artists to mingle with Cubans who had arrived in the first wave of the 1960’s.

In the 1990’s she hosted a series of video recorded interviews and meetings at her house in Schenley Park, in the southeast part of Miami, which was called “El patio de mi casa.” The series provided a gathering place for Cuban, Spanish and Latin American artists who arrived in or were passing through Miami and was an important addition to the cultural development of Miami. In the 1990’s, Niurka also interviewed artists and prominent cultural figures for the television series “Qué pasa Miami” for the TV network Gems which ran from 1994–2000. It was a Weekly Variety show covering music, television, film and culture primarily filmed in Miami and aimed at Spanish-speaking women and their families. Through her platform of People en Español, Niurka brought the names of Latino/a artists and musicians like Julio Iglesias and Gloria Estefan into the mainstream. Niurka was awarded the Premio Humanitario y de Artes Alegoría Bolivariana by the art collector and great admirer of Simón Bolívar, Simón Daro Dawidowicz, in Miami Beach. She was the first Cuban to receive the award, which had been given out since 1970, an initiative founded by Dawidowicz. Niurka died on December 25, 2009.

Ermina Luisa Odoardo Jähkel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on June 8th, 1923 to Rogelio Odoardo and Helen Jähkel. In 1930, she and her family moved to Cuba from Argentina as her father was from Cuba and his parents lived there. She began her art education early at the San Alejandro school of fine arts. She earned her Bachelor Degree in Letters and Sciences in 1940 and then a degree in architecture in 1945, both from the University of Havana. Her thesis architecture project was the development of the Gonzalo de Quesada Park in the city of Camagüey.

She and her husband Ricardo Eguilior y Perea worked together at their architecture firm, Ermina Odoardo Ricardo Eguilior Arquitectos, in Santiago de Cuba. Odoardo is known for being the first woman to practice architecture in Santiago. She was registered by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Oriente in 1948. During this time, their architectural style was mainly Rationalist, creating more than 50 buildings. Additionally, in the mid-1950’s, they were central to the urbanization and expansion of the Vista Alegre neighborhood in Santiago de Cuba, which remains to this day one of the most attractive areas of the city. Her firm constructed a condominium building there, shifting the overall aesthetic of the area. Some of the houses she created were on Calle 12 no. 206, at Avenida Manduley no. 301, at Calle 3 no. 202, at Anacaona no. 152, in the Merrimac division are the homes of Calle del Mirador, from Brooks Avenue and Rosell Street. Odoardo’s works could also be found in the Historic Center and in the districts of Development, Terrazas, Veguita de Gala and Santa Bárbara. She designed the house where she lived in Vista Alegre at Calle 19 esquina a Avenida Cebreco. In 1951, she won third prize for the Municipal Palace project. They built the Vista Alegre Tennis Club in 1953.

Odoardo and Eguilior greatly contributed to the development of modern Cuban architecture that was both modern and appropriate to the tropical climate. In 1958, their work was featured in the magazine, Arquitectura de La Habana. Her most notable projects built in Santiago de Cuba are the Bacardi Rum Company, Vista Alegre Tennis Club, Ferreiro Supermarket, Mestre and Espinoza drugstore, League Against Cancer Hospital, Office Building for Texaco, Texaco Refinery Laboratory Building, Texaco Employee Recreation Building, Pool on Siboney beach, Pool at Club Ciudamar, Merrimac Cast Planning, and the Planning of the Vista Alegre District Expansion.

Odoardo and her family left Santiago de Cuba and moved to Miami, Florida in 1960. In 1972, Odoardo and Eguilior’s firm designed the Bacardi International Limited Building in Bermuda, heavily influenced by Mies van der Rohe. Living in Miami, Odoardo also pursued painting and joined a local arts group. She passed away in 2018.

Guillermo Meneses (15 December 1911 - 29 December 1978) was a Venezuelan writer, playwright, and journalist. He graduated from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, majoring in Political Sciences, and worked as a state attorney and judge. However, he became nationally renowned primarily for his fictional writing and its screen versions. His short story “La Balandra Isabel Llegó Esta Tarde,” was adapted for the cinema and for TV under the direction of Carlos Hugo Christensen. He was the recipient of a number of prizes, including the Premio de Teatro de Caracas (1943) for the play El Marido de Nieves Márquez, the Premio Arístides Rojas (1952) for the novel El Falso Cuaderno de Narciso Espejo, and the Venezuelan National Prize for Literature (1967) for his whole body of work.

In addition to literature, politics played a significant role in Meneses’ trajectory. At the age of 17, he joined a student-led movement later known as the “Generación del 28,” in opposition to the military government of Juan Vicente Gomez (1931-1935). As a consequence, he was arrested along with other members of the group. His activist vein also manifested in his writings for the periodicals Élite, Sábado (de Colombia), El Nacional, and El Universal, and in his own magazine, Cubagua (1938).

Guillermo Meneses married the journalist Sofía Ímber in 1944, and they had four children: Sara, Adriana, Daniela, and Pedro. They left Venezuela to live in Bogota following the coup d'etat against president Isaias Medina in 1945, and the family soon moved to France in 1949, when Guillermo assumed a diplomatic position after being nominated by president Rómulo Gallegos. In the following years, during the regime of General Marcos Perez Jimenez, Meneses continued diplomatic service as secretary of the Venezuelan embassy in Paris and Brussels. There, Sofía and Guillermo became close to thinkers and artists, such as Picasso, Andre Malraux, and William Faulkner, in addition to Venezuelan expatriate intellectuals. As soon as General Jimenez’s regime came to an end, Meneses had his diplomatic post terminated, and the family returned to Venezuela. With a keen desire to share his ideas to a wider national audience, Meneses and Sofía created CAL (acronym for Criticism, Art, Literature) magazine in collaboration with the designer Nedo MF. The publication provided a platform for experimentation, combining the arts and thought in a Venezuelan context.

He eventually passed away at 67 years old in Caracas, Venezuela.

–Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da Silva
Graduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2024

Sources: https://www.voanews.com/a/venezuelan-art-promoter-journalist-sofia-imber-dies/3733068.html https://www.artnexus.com/en/news/5d5c2594c70855f6b9ef74b5/sofia-imber https://www.venezuelatuya.com/biografias/guillermo_meneses.htm#
Gil, Diego Arroyo. La senora Imber: Genio y Figura. Editorial Planeta Venezoelana, 2016.

John Underwood (1934-2023) was a well-known sports writer based out of Miami, Florida. He began writing for The Miami News while he was in high school and later went on to graduate from University of Miami in 1956 with a Bachelor's degree in English. Afterwards, he would write for The Herald and Sports Illustrated, the latter of where he achieved the most renown. He continued writing for Sports Illustrated up until his resignation in 1985 to pursue freelancing full time. He also collaborated with famed baseball player Ted Williams to write three books, My Turn at Bat: The Story of My Life, The Science of Hitting, and Fishing "The Big Three," as well as collaborated with Arthur and Peyton Manning to write Manning.