Tasting Again … Thanks to the Miracle Fruit
A small red berry called the Miracle Fruit is earning its name by
helping chemo patients and others who have lost their sense of taste.
In Memoriam: Rosemary Eliker, Active at Fruit and Spice Park and South Dade Garden Club
Rosemary Burk Eliker, who became the first volunteer of South Dade’s Fruit and Spice Park 70 years ago when she helped her mother plant some of the park’s first fruit trees, has died in Rockledge, where she was under care after a stroke. She was 93.
A lifetime member of the South Dade Garden Club, Eliker and her late sister, Phyllis Johnson, were fixtures of the park, founded by her mother, Mary Heinlein, in 1944. Until illness slowed them down, the siblings ate lunch nearly every day at the Mango Cafe and helped out at the Garden Club booths during events.
“They both volunteered faithfully until they both got sick,” recalls longtime park employee Iva Hegg. “They were always dressed immaculately, hair done,” she says.
Few know firsthand about the early days of Fruit and Spice Park and the Redland like Rosemary and Phyllis. Their grandparents, Orville and Addie May Calkins, came from Kansas in 1910 as homesteaders, living in a chicken coop while their house was built in the wilderness. “My grandmother was one of the first white women the native Americans had ever seen,” Eliker said in an interview in 2014. “She traded for venison.” Her grandfather was a musician who played with Caesar LaMonaca’s orchestra at the Royal Palm Hotel. Eliker’s mother, Mary, helped the family grow tomatoes and peanuts.
Photo 1: Eliker’s grandparents lived in the South Florida wilderness in 1910
Photo 2: Rosemary, second from left, and Mary Heinlein, far right, in front of a fruit display
As Mary grew older, she learned to make flower and fruit arrangements for county fairs. Later, she and her second husband Herman Heinlein operated a nursery on Coconut Palm Drive west of Redland Road. Eliker’s mother worked with Preston B. Bird, who was running for county commissioner and wanted to start a county park. The first director of the parks and recreation department, A.D. Barnes, “had an idea for a park that would show what you could grow in your own backyard – how big the trees got, what the flowers looked like,” she said. Bird won the election, and arranged to buy land for Fruit and Spice Park. They turned to noted landscape architect William Lyman Phillips, designer of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and McKee Botanic Gardens, to draw up the plans. Mary Heinlein was named park superintendent in 1944.
As a girl, Eliker remembered the work that went into creating Redland Fruit and Spice Park: “They cleared off the land and had to dynamite holes for plantings.” Her parents donated tropical fruit trees from their nursery, including a jaboticaba – still there – and a candle tree. Eliker and her sisters were enlisted as volunteer tour guides.
Photo 1: Old guides to Fruit and Spice Park
Photo 2: Mary Heinlein
Heinlein was also president of the nearly 100-year-old South Dade Garden Club, the oldest garden club in Miami-Dade. “The club first met at people’s homes, then moved to the park,” said Eliker, who also served as president. “One of our functions is to supply things the park needs.” They also raise money for scholarships for students of agriculture, horticulture or environmental studies.
Until suffering a stroke a few years ago, Eliker was found at the Mango Café, happy to share an anecdote or explain the old family pictures on the café walls. Sometimes, she baked the banana nut and mango breads that appeared on the menu. Rosemary’s Lobster Roll ($11.50) remains on the menu in her honor.
Tasting Again … Thanks to the Miracle Fruit
A small red berry called the Miracle Fruit is earning its name by helping chemo patients and others who have lost...
Communities Near You
Related Stories & Recipes