MR. MARINA
8/29/2007 11:59:49 AM by Lisa Knapp
Showcasing his love of marinas in everything he does, Tony Zamora is always on the lookout for that next great business venture — on and off land.
Photo by Lisa Knapp
Now a successful, healthy attorney in Miami, Tony Zamora was sickly as a child in Cuba. The doctor recommended going to the beach to “keep cool” as his cure for a liver ailment. “My family belonged to a social club that was on the water and I was taken there almost every day for a cooling dip in the ocean,” says Zamora. “Very quickly, the dip turned into a swim and then into a dive. I became a very good competitive swimmer and a good diver. I started boating as part of my diving in my teen years.”
Zamora has a passion for being near the water and he loves marinas. They are his hobby and sideline business. Tony has looked at marinas from Croatia to Cuba. His first marina operation was Virginia Key Marina in Miami. He and his son specialize in drystacks. They currently operate Riverfront Marina in Fort Lauderdale and are part of the Lima Group that operates Grove Harbour Marina in Miami.“I’m always looking at marinas and marina developments because that’s what I like,” he says. “Some work out, some don’t. If I have an opportunity to see a marina while I am traveling, I will. Doing business internationally, you have to have 15 things going. One may come out right.”
Zamora served as an officer in the U.S. Navy for two years and witnessed the early development of the SEAL teams in 1963 before returning to his studies. He attended the University of Florida to study Latin American history and politics before obtaining his master’s in international studies from the University of Miami. He later returned to the University of Florida for a law degree.
It must have been easy for Zamora to study politics and history as he is a bonafide expert in Latin American history and has been very involved in the last 50 years in Cuban politics. “I was at the University of Miami when Batista left in 1958 and was somewhat involved in the anti-Batista revolution that Castro led,” he says. “After Batista left, I worked in the Cuban government for a while because the University of Havana was closed. Then I ended up fighting the revolutionary government created by Castro and was later in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. I landed with other Cuban exiles and was captured when the invasion failed. I was in a Cuban jail for 20 months with more than 1,000 other Cubans. It was a very short, three-day war, but it was a war. I was fighting communism and the Soviet Union; it was all part of the Cold War.”
Zamora was released when he was 21 years old and returned to the U.S. where he joined the Navy. Through his experiences, he’s learned to analyze his environment carefully, as things are not always as they seem. “You have to dig down to see what is really there because things are more complicated than we think,” he says. “As a member of the invasion force, I never expected to be defeated because of the help of the U.S. For the Cubans, they won because they had high morale. But it is much more complicated than that. I could write a book about it — and probably will.”