"I had to stay with the county to insure my retirement benefits," O'Neal explained. "Now that I'm 65, I wanted to cut my hours. So, I came back here and took it for a few days a week part time."

As a park service aide, O'Neal rents courts, collects money, sells merchandise and helps maintain the grounds and the tennis courts.

"Since I was here with the county for nine years, I got to know a lot of people," O'Neal said. "Many people play tennis here year after year. So, that's why I decided to come back."

O'Neal and wife Trudy reside just outside Pinecrest in Continental Gardens on 104 Street, West of So. Dixie highway. They have lived there for 18 years, almost from the day they arrived in Miami from New York.

"I was born and bred in Brooklyn," O'Neal said with pride. "And I was a Teamster in New York for 28 years. I drove trucks, worked in warehouses, that sort of thing."

O'Neal says he and his wife occasionally would come down from New York to visit their daughter and help work her booth at the Coconut Grove Art Festival. Then they would return to the snow and ice of a New York winter.

"It just didn't add up," he recalled with a smile, "so I took early retirement and we moved to Miami, too."

O'Neal belongs to the Loyal Order of Moose, West Dade Lodge No. 1825.

"I'm pretty active in it," he said. "I've been governor a couple of years and served as chair on a few things. It's a good organization."