MIAMI – Florida International University’s Maurice A. Ferre Institute for Civic Leadership is set to open in November of this year though it is a work in progress.
Located at Florida International University in Miami, the Institute reflects the legacy of Maurice Ferre, the visionary six-time mayor of Miami from 1973 to 1985.
Ferre’s daughter Meme gave us a tour.
“We have all the letters of all the presidents, all the senators, Hubert Humphrey, Ted Kennedy, (Gerald) Ford everyone,” she said.
On the day Maurice Ferre died on Sept. 19, 2019 at age 84, CBS Miami anchor Eliott Rodriquez remembered Ferre as “the man who is regarded as the father of modern Miami has passed away.”
Long-time community leaders say he should be remembered as the mayor who guided Miami through rough times but always promoted Miami as the economic and banking center for all of Latin America.
In an news story from the 1980’s, Ferre said, “I think Miami is an international city, banking community. Banks on Brickell Avenue. Those things are products of my Imagination.”
The handsome mayor operated with a sense of social justice and was remembered as a people person.
Meme Ferre, one of six children, noted: “He had a whole idea about how this was gonna go and where it should be.”
Ferre, a native of Puerto Rico, was born into a family of entrepreneurs and engineers. He held degrees in architectural engineering and business, and was a smooth politician with national and international connections.
“So he was like very, you know very multifaceted,” Meme Ferre said.
In 1980, he dealt with a number of crises: McDuffie riots, the Mariel Boat lift that saw the city overrun with Cuban refugees, the Cocaine Cowboys with the money they brought and the violence they generated. Yet he was always optimistic, positive, understanding.
“You might not have agreed with him because he wasn’t easy … you know but he listened and he was respectful and they always tell me they learned so much from him,” Meme Ferre was quick to say.
She is the driving force behind the Ferre Institute as a commitment that runs deep. Her connection to her father, family and community plays out in her untiring devotion to the project and she told us.
“He dedicated himself to our city, but he also dedicated himself to our to us and this has been a very emotional project for me. It’s a labor of love, she said.
The mission of the Maurice A. Ferre Institute for Civic leadership is to promote civic leadership and engagement, social justice through academic research and community programs.
“I think that we’re able to teach the future leaders with his example of integrity and compassion and empathy to be respectful of other people’s opinions and to be able to to have dialogue without having any type of disrespect for the other person is the way he would have liked everyone to remember him,” she said.
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