Not flashy or showy, the childhood home of Morays Jewelers’ new president Beau Hequin is a timeless piece of Americana.
Morays Jewelers’ Beau Hequin in front of the Alfred I. DuPont Building in downtown, where his family’s fine-jewelry business is located.
There are pockets of Miami that are less about glitz and glamour and more about family values and a sense of community. For Morays Jewelers President Beau Hequin, a seventh-generation purveyor of fine jewelry and timepieces, his childhood home was just that kind of place.
Born and raised in an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County that rests between Kendall and Pinecrest, Hequin—like many from that area—will tell you he grew up “by The Falls.” With the well-known open-air shopping mall as its centerpiece, Hequin’s neighborhood is more everyday Americana than the luxury lifestyle he sells at Morays in the Alfred I. DuPont Building downtown, yet the area’s beautiful homes, neighborhood dining experiences, and parks packed with young kids playing sports mirror the family tradition of Hequin’s business.
His earliest childhood memory, though, was of it all almost falling apart. “Hurricane Andrew hit when I was really young,” Hequin says of the 1992 storm that devastated the area. “That was a pretty scary one. Our whole family was hiding in my mom’s closet, and when we came out, our whole house was pretty much gone. There was no ceiling, nothing. We moved into a hotel and rebuilt our house.”
Hequin’s family rebuilt, and so did the rest of the neighborhood—“Everyone had to help each other,” he recalls—and the result was a community that was stronger, prouder, and more beautiful than before. “It wasn’t long before we were back to trick-or-treating around the lake,” says Hequin, who as a child was known to don a Star Wars, vampire, or zombie costume for Halloween. “I’d go around with my younger sister, and everybody knew who we were. It was a very safe, tight-knit community.”
The Falls’ open-air shopping mall that is the centerpiece of Hequin’s childhood neighborhood.
As a kid, Hequin went wakeboarding on E Lake (where the family home was located) with his father’s ski boat, played pickup games at Tropical Park, and frequented Samurai, the hibachi restaurant that locals will brag is better than Benihana, with a pink sauce that is one of a kind. “That was my favorite place to go when I was a kid,” Hequin says. “I used to go there every year on my birthday.”
In the neighborhood, you could also grab a burger at Fuddruckers, frozen yogurt at the now-defunct Flamingo’s Frozen Yogurt, or a steak at one of Hequin’s favorites, Fleming A Taste of Denmark. “They had a really great rack of lamb,” he says of the now-closed neighborhood joint.
And The Falls mall in the center of town holds a spot in Hequin’s heart as well. “I went on my first date to The Falls movie theater,” he says. “I remember being really nervous.”
A sports enthusiast, Hequin spent his childhood watching many of Miami’s pro teams with his grandparents, but at home he had hoop dreams of his own. “I played Beth Am basketball (the largest temple-based league in the country) when I was in middle school,” says Hequin, who attended Alexander Montessori for elementary school and moved to Gulliver Academy and Gulliver Prep to round out his middle and high school years. “A lot of kids who went to Gulliver also played in that league. It was competitive.”
During his high school years, Hequin often played golf at Deering Bay Country Club.
The area was home to kids’ play places like Mark Twain's Riverboat Playhouse and fun spots like Hot Wheels (now Super Wheels) Skating Center and Bird Bowl, but as Hequin entered his high school years and moved across US-1 to Deering Bay, he was more interested in playing golf at the Deering Bay Country Club and lacrosse for his high school team.
“There were only maybe three schools that were good at lacrosse when I was playing,” he says of the sport that was then more popular in the Northeast. “When we used to play teams from up north, we’d get our butts kicked. But in the past 10 years, it’s grown significantly in Florida.”
The rest of Hequin’s free time was spent with his family, learning the business, which was founded in Austria in the early 1900s, from the ground up. Beau has been a staple in the store “since as young as I could crawl,” he says, and has held every job in the place—from sweeping floors to sales to now running the whole business. As a boy, his parents took him around the world to trade shows, where he was wowed by the giant displays of diamonds, jewels, and watches. It was his late mother, Sandy, who had the foresight to move the business into the heart of downtown, providing heirloom pieces to an expanding population of luxury shoppers. “It was just so impressive, especially as a young kid,” he says. “It really grew my interest. Now, when it comes to watches, I see them as little works of art.”
Many would agree that his childhood neighborhood is a work of art as well. It’s just a little less IWC Schaffhausen and a little more Norman Rockwell. Morays Jewelers, 50 NE Second Ave., Miami, 305-374-0739