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| Frankie Shannon Rolle |
Rolle was a 1946 physical education graduate of Florida A&M, and earned her master’s in guidance counseling and school administration at Indiana University, at a time when southern universities would not admit blacks into grad school.
According to a Miami Herald article, Rolle is credited with transforming Miami's Coconut Grove community into a real-life Cheers. The old TV sitcom’s theme song touted the fictional bar’s reputation for drawing people together, “where everybody knows your name.”
Rolle and her late husband, jazz musician Billy Rolle, also are responsible for bringing to life the Grove's famed Goombay Festival, along with a group of merchants from Grand Avenue and the Bahamas Tourist Office in the mid-1970s, the article said.
“She was like the matriarch of this community,” said Barbara Jordan, who served with Rolle on the board of the Helen B. Bentley Community Health Center in Coconut Grove.
“Whatever there was that needed to be done, Frankie would step in and do her share. She was like a mother to many people,” Jordan said. “You would be surprised at the number of people she helped with getting an education.”