This is Cameron, who lives at the Bay Oaks Home for the aged in Miami. Recently, his favorite resident, Sofia Tank, died at 103. I met both of them a couple of years ago when I did a story about this wonderful, non-profit assisted-living facility that's more like a bed & breakfast. For whatever reason, Cameron became completely devoted to Sofia, and seldom left her side. I know he misses her. The picture was shot by Maggie Steber, former Miami Herald director of photography and a world-class freelancer who often shoots for National Geographic. Her mom once lived at Bay Oaks. Here's my obit on Sofia, an animal lover and a truly lovely person.
Sofia Tank, 103: 'Ambassador' of Decorators Row, dies at 103
Mar. 3--When Sofia Tank retired after 17 years as a secretary on "Decorators Row," her boss told The Miami Herald: "I swear, EVERYBODY loves Sofia! How she finds time to do all the little things she does for people, I'll never know."
The year was 1965. "The Row" was a few blocks along Miami's Northeast 40th Street. Under her rain-or-shine parasol, the peripatetic Tank was a familiar figure in the Row's showrooms, gathering materials so that her boss, designer Jack Cameron, wouldn't have to.
Tank, who would have turned 104 on Tuesday, died Feb. 8 at Miami's Bay Oaks Home for the Aged, where she'd been living since 2002. There too, everybody loved Sofia, said administrator Kathryn Reid Kassner.
"She was like the ambassador. She had such an incomparable personality: gracious, with a sense of humor. She was completely remarkable in all the favorable characteristics, and she was extra generous. In her will, she left for animals, for the blind."
Ever agreeable, grateful and smiling, "she was everyone's favorite," Kassner said. "The animals, the residents, the staff."
To the end, she was perfectly coiffed, her snow-white hair -- periodically dyed a flaming red-orange -- done up in a French twist.
Always by her side: another Cameron, one of several small dogs at the home, 435 NE 34th St., who seldom strayed far from her rocking chair on the sun porch or her bed when she was in it.
Sofia LaZarre Tank came to the United States from Romania when she was 7. A 1949 story in the Shorewood (Wisconsin) Herald, said that her father was a Bucharest musician who accompanied actress Sarah Bernhardt. The newspaper wrote about Tank when she left for Miami. She'd been secretary to the local police chief and an antiques collector.
Marian Duckworth is Tank's executor.
"She rented an apartment from my grandmother in downtown Miami," said Duckworth, wife of Miami Beach Fire Chief Jeff Duckworth.
Every day, Tank would collect scraps from a nearby restaurant "to feed all the strays in the neighborhood," Duckworth recalled.
She bought her first house -- 751 NE 88th St. -- when she was 77, said Duckworth, 46, "and got a mortgage!"
She told people she'd never been married, but Duckworth said she was, briefly, and had a stillborn child.
When she retired, Tank told The Miami Herald that she intended to perfect her French, read to and write letters for blind people, and take a world cruise. She said she carried a parasol to protect her hair, because "too much sun makes it impossible to manage."
The South Florida Designers and Decorators Guild marked her retirement with a surprise party at the DuPont Plaza. In a letter recapping the event, Tank wrote that when 'they started with 'This Is Your Life, Sofia,' you could have knocked me over with a feather."
In 1994, Tank composed a document titled "Disposal of House Contents." She wanted most of her belongings sold "so that charities can really benefit . . . God has been good to me and I want to share with others less fortunate." She requested cremation and no service.
"To me," she wrote, "there is no death, just a transition to another dimension, a new beginning, a new adventure after the body has outlived its usefulness."
Her ashes will be buried in an orchid garden at Bay Oaks.
