How a Miami power couple’s Gifts and ‘Profound Impact’ Have Led to a Top Civic Honor

By Howard Cohen for the MIAMI HERALD

Philanthropists Trish and Dan Bell have spread millions of dollars in gifts across cultural arts and religious institutions, Miami’s underserved, educational and medical organizations. Their generosity has now earned them a gift. The Bells will be honored with the 2024 Sand in My Shoes Award, a top civic recognition from the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. The couple will be celebrated at Jungle Island on Oct. 30. The Chamber’s Sand in My Shoes Award, first given to businessman Lester Freeman in 1981, and recently to South Florida tech entrepreneur Manuel “Manny” Medina and former Miami Herald publishers David Lawrence Jr. and Alberto Ibargüen, is one of Miami’s most distinguished accolades for public service in the metro Miami-Dade area. The 800-seat event honoring the Bells is sold out. “It is indeed an honor,” Dan Bell said. “It’s something we’re proud of. It’s also something we never thought of because I left the business community. We’ve been involved with the Chamber practically ever since we’ve been in Miami, but I left the business community about 20 something years ago. So I didn’t really expect this would come our way. But it’s it’s certainly a nice recognition.” Trish Bell concurs. “Like Dan said, we were just very, very surprised, over the moon, happy about this. I’d never expected it. But the first thing I asked myself after we had met with Alfred [Sanchez, the Chamber’s president] at lunch that day, when he told us about the recognition, ‘How can we use this to highlight some of the things we do in Miami and some of the people that we reach out to in Miami?’ So it’s a great honor and it’s also a great opportunity to focus on some of the things in Miami that we think are important,” she said. Interfaith harmony. Community service. Mentorship.

RELIGIOUS HARMONY

For the Coral Gables couple, the honor, which will be bestowed in a room filled with some of Miami’s most influential business, political and civic leaders, arrives at a joyous moment in their many decades together. But it’s also one marked by painful reminders that their life’s work and message of uplift and shared responsibility must continue.

About five years ago, the Bells, fellows of the FIU Foundation and driven by a shared history of promoting religious harmony, contributed $14 million toward the funding of a multi-faith, 17,000-square-foot “Trish and Dan Bell Chapel.” Construction began in April 2023. That passion project and gift to the community moves toward completion sometime in the fall of 2025, they say. The freestanding chapel will include seating for 250 people on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus of Florida International University in West Miami-Dade, the couple said in a telephone interview with the Miami Herald. “It’s a symbol of what we’re trying to do — bringing people together,” Trish Bell said. “My first thought when we came up with the idea of the chapel was, ‘I wish we’d have had it when the bridge tragedy happened at FIU,’ “ Dan Bell said. In March 2018, a pedestrian bridge under construction collapsed onto the road below, killing six people. “The second big time I thought about it was on Oct. 7, a year ago. I said, ‘My goodness, I wish the chapel were in place now,’ ” he said.

On that date, a year ago, Hamas militants stormed into Israel, slaughtering 1,200 people, seizing another 240 as hostages and sparking a war in Gaza. that has escalated after Iran sent dozens of missiles at Israel. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023. KNOW MORE: The 2024 ‘Sand in My Shoes Award’ winners helped foster religious understanding in Miami The date of the couple’s Sand in My Shoes honor was originally scheduled for Oct. 9, but was postponed due to Hurricane Milton. The original date was not selected to serve as a marker, the Chamber and the Bells said. “The proximity of the anniversary date would have come to me, of course,” Dan Bell said. “It’s one of the biggest tragedies in my lifetime. The Korean War happened in my lifetime. And Vietnam. But this one really is, in my judgment, a much bigger tragedy because there’s so much hatred involved in this that has come to the surface. It was always there but it’s now unavoidably there. So we’re extremely saddened by the fact that it’s happened and that it seems to be getting, frankly, worse. “I don’t personally know anything we can do, but given any opportunity to speak on, or support, the subject of interfaith harmony, is something we are all for. I think the very fact that it’s a multi-faith chapel will be like — and I’m hoping it becomes — an icon of multi-faith harmony,” he said.

“Trish and Dan Bell have committed their time, talent, and treasure to FIU and have generously funded the construction of a multifaith chapel on our Modesto A. Maidique Campus,” said FIU President Kenneth A. Jessell. “Their lifelong dedication to improving the lives of those who live in our community extends to our university. The Bells care deeply about the spiritual well-being of our students. The Trish and Dan Bell Chapel will be a welcoming space that promotes mutual understanding, peace, tolerance, and spiritual strengthening, and we are grateful for their support.”

THE BELLS’ PHILANTHROPY

Among the recipients of the Bells’ gifts since the couple moved to Miami in 1977 from Michigan, where Dan Bell was an executive with Ford Motor Co., are the United Methodist Church, the Frost Museum of Science, and Baptist and Jackson hospitals. They also work with Chapman Partnership, a Miami organization that assists the homeless, and Branches, a mentoring organization that supports underserved children and their families. “That brings us great joy, too, because we have lots of friends and these nonprofit organizations are also doing good things in Miami,” Trish Bell said. “They also have sand in their shoes.”

The 2021 Sand in My Shoes recipient, David Lawrence Jr., called the couple “two of the finest people I know. Absolute great examples for all of us, and they’ve been exactly that for many decades.” After the couple moved to Miami, Dan Bell co-founded Kos Pharmaceuticals, served as its CEO and chairman, and sold it to Abbott Labs in a $3.7 billion transaction in December 2006. Trish Bell is an active chair emeritus of the Board of Trustees of Chapman Partnership and serves on the Foundation Board for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. The Bells, along with gifts from local Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups and individuals, also contributed to funding for a reporter to provide regular news coverage at the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald on religion and communities of faith in South Florida.

COMMUNITY IMPACT

“Trish and Dan Bell’s dedication to philanthropy has had a profound impact on our community, inspiring others to give back, and making a lasting difference in the lives of those in need,” Alfred Sanchez, president and CEO of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. “Their generosity and compassion serve as shining examples for us all, and we are thrilled to recognize their contributions with this prestigious award.” In addition to Lawrence and Freeman, previous honorees include Penny Shaffer, Antonio “Tony” Argiz and Gloria and Emilio Estefan. If the Bells have a message to those in the Jungle Island room when they will receive their honors, it’s this: “We spent the last nearly 40 years in community service and philanthropy, and so our primary message would be if everybody in that room would just take a step forward and give a little bit more of their time, talent and resources to the community, the community would be immensely better off,” Dan Bell said. “And who knows how much joy they would get from doing that.”

A LOVE STORY

The couple first met as teens at the former Alfred I. duPont High School in Jacksonville where they both were born. Dan was a bit older. “I first met Trish when she was 13. Fell in love with her instantly and have been that way ever since,” he said.

“Everything began as a friendship,” Trish said. Their first date was a church social. A mutual friend passed along Dan’s desire that Trish would attend with him. “Dan was blackmailing him to get to get a date with me,” Trish said, chuckling. Their parents knew each other and became close friends. “l fell in love with his mom and dad, too,” she said. “They were some of my best friends throughout my entire life. We had that background parental, family thing in common and we both went to church. We both tried to be good students. We were both active in extracurricular activities. He had one brother, I had one sister. So we got to know each other’s brother and sister.” Trish says she dated a few other people. “He claims he did not,” she said. Dan went off to college while Trish was still in high school. They kept in touch and the relationship grew, Trish said. “The fact we went back and forth and always returned to our relationship made it even stronger. You never think, ‘Oh, the grass is greener on the other side. I knew that the grass was greener right where I had it with Dan Bell,” Trish Bell said. The couple have two sons and two grandchildren.

“I remember the very first day I saw her and it is as crystal clear in my mind as events that just happened,” Dan Bell said. “Everybody has their own stories but for me, it was a spark. I knew from the first time I met her that it was there and there was something special here. And in all the years we’ve been married — which is a lot but not enough — it’s never diminished. I firmly believe that God put the two of us together and I think he did a great job.”

This story was first published in the Miami Herald