You hear about this sort of thing every so often. Many times, it's a plucky widow who refuses to sell the house where she has lived since before TV, but this time the hero who won't move out is 63, and I no longer consider that even remotely old at all.
Down in Coral Gables, Florida (right away, you know something's funky here) lives a man named Orlando Capote, and when I say he lives there, he lives very well in a nice house his father bought in 1989. His dad was an immigrant who escaped Castro's Cuba in the 1960s and worked two jobs to afford to buy a nice house in Coral Gables.
I would love to see what his neighborhood looked like twenty years ago, but now. a big deal development called Plaza Coral Gables - one of those "upscale 242-room hotel, shop, and restaurant-behemoths" - is engirdling Capote's house. The developers want the land so they can turn it into more hotel, shopping, and chowing-down space. As you can see in the photo, Mr Capote owns a nice chunk of land, and his 1,300 square foot house sits happily on it, containing the memories of his life that he is not willing to turn over to greedy developers.
And it's not like he's about to be worn down by blandishments from these men and women with their tailored clothing and slick way of speaking and their $600 million development. They have offered as much as a million clams, and he walks away every time.
“This was my father’s dream house,” he told the local news down there. “It took 20 years for him to find it. This house is like a hard drive. As I look around and live in it and move through it, I relive a lot of memories that I could not find in another house. This house is my soul. So what good is it to sell your soul for all the money in the world?”
Consider also that he has had to live with the din and dust and commotion of all the construction around him, and he remains resolute. Some people sit on stacks of money and wave a few bucks at others, expecting them to give up their hearts and souls for a few lousy dollars.
What these developers will never realize is that principles and standards are not for sale.
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