Biography of Manuel Gomez, Homestead, Dade County, Florida File contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Wendy Campbell (wendycampbell@charter.net) USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or publication by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ******************************************************************************* A Pioneer Family, "At 91, His Memories Haven't Faded", By Clara Jones A man gets to be 91-years-old and the years take their toll. Good health is not what it used to be and the mind works slower. For one man the memories have remained sharply edged against the inroads of time. Manuel Gomez is such a man and although his physical needs must be taken care of in a nursing home, Homestead Manor, he needs help to recall the days when he was an electrician and told the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, how to use the instrument. It was 1917 and Gomez was working for a man who had established a telephone exchange in Coconut Grove and W. J. Matheson sent Gomez to install a telephone in the residence of Dr. David Fairchild. Gomez had the telephone and was giving instructions on its use to a white-bearded man who was watching from a newby(nearby) chair. "The old fellow", said Gomez, "chuckled and listened." Mrs. Fairchild entered the room and explained to Gomez that he was talking to the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who also happened to be her father. "It was," recalled Gomez, "life's most embarrassing moment." His trade as an electrician brought Gomez into contact with history. In World War I, when he was working in the Key West Navy yard he installed a telephone for Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric light. Edison had an office in the old post office building adjoining the Navy yard and was doing research work in connection with the war effort. "Perhaps on depth bombs," surmises Gomez. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the San Francisco World Fair in 1939 from his Key West base, he did it with the help of microphones in an automobile to which telephone wires had been strung by Gomez, who was with the Coast Guard at the time. Back in 1910, he laid the first piece of underground telephone cable in Miami. It ran from the Seybold building to Whaler's drug store across 12th Street which is now Flagler Street and where the telephone exchange owned by Whaler and a man named Fuzzell, was located. When Gomez strung the first telephone line to the homestead of George Merrick's father which later became the site of Coral Gables, he cut his own telephone poles out of the pine trees. Gomez and his wife came to Homestead in 1945, when he retired after 26 years of service with the U.S. Coast Guard. They lived on NW First Avenue and Fifth Street and had seven children. A daughter, Mrs. Mabel Simmons is a telephone company employee in Homestead. Mrs. Williams' daughter and several in-laws, all work for the Bell System. Gomez was born in Key West. His father Manuel Gomez, Sr., was born in a community named Cutler, the site of Old Cutler Road. In 1857 his grandfather, Antone Gomez was one of the early Spanish settlers of Key West. In later years, he became a founder of the Cutler community. Homestead's Manuel Gomez has newspaper accounts of the kidnapping of his father as a boy by an Indian and his rescue by a Seminole chief with whom the Cutler Gomez family traded. For punishment the chief cut the leg tendons of the kidnapper making him a cripple for life. Later in the century when relations with the Seminoles became strained, Manuel Gomez, Sr., moved his family to Key West. "My father," says daughter Mabel Simmons, "used his bicycle for his telephone work in Key West and when he retired liked to watch Homestead's telephone crews at work." "Hell, I installed more telephones using my bicycle than you fellows can with your truck," he'd tell them. Also in the newspaper article is a picture of Manuel Gomez and daughter Mabel during the interview.