Chandra Haniff: A grandma who cooked ‘like she was feeding an entire army’
This story is part of an ongoing Miami Herald series chronicling the lives of South Florida COVID-19 victims.
Chandra Haniff was known as a feisty woman who welcomed everyone into her home with love and a plate of food.
Haniff was born in Couva, Trinidad, on Feb. 5, 1951, the fourth of nine siblings. She was 69 years old when she died April 21 due to complications from COVID-19.
“My mother was fiery, mischievous,” said her daughter, Nicole Tomlin. “She definitely had a very big heart and touched a lot of lives.”
Haniff moved to New York when she was 18 years old. There she married Nazul Haniff and three years later, they moved to Florida. Together they had two children: Nicole Tomlin and Nazul Brad Haniff.
The couple separated years later, but that did not slow her down, said Tomlin.
She worked two jobs while attending Miami Dade College’s nursing program. After graduating, she worked at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach for 25 years.
Haniff was very close to her siblings and cousins. She and her family frequently visited them in Trinidad, Canada and Orlando. She often took care of her nieces and nephews.
She also had a strong bond with her granddaughters: Taylor E. Arroyo, Jessica M. Vazquez and Natasha M. Tomlin.
“She went to everything the girls did; everything,” said Tomlin. “She was super-involved with Natasha. When she retired, she took care of her and went to all their piano recitals. She was an amazing lady.”
Haniff loved going to church and to the movies, cooking, and traveling. After retiring in June 2014, she began volunteering at The Bridge Church in Miramar, taking care of children. She also babysat a boy from the time he was 3 months to 4 years old.
She took pride in the home she owned for 43 years, where her children grew up and her granddaughters were born and raised.
Taylor Arroyo, 25, will remember her grandmother as her best friend, a strong-willed woman who instilled in her a love for cooking.
“She was the kind of friend everybody deserved to have,” she said. “You would tell her, ‘Ma, somebody’s coming’ and she would go in the kitchen and cook — like she was feeding an entire army — for one person.”
Haniff was a 12-year breast cancer survivor, undergoing radiation treatment for six months in 2008.
She started to feel unwell in mid-March of this year. Her family didn’t rush to take her to the hospital because they thought it was a cold, but her condition only worsened.
During the week of March 23, Tomlin called a doctor, who signed a prescription and advised her not to go to the hospital. The doctor was concerned about the virus.
The prescription helped for a few days, but when she felt unwell again, Tomlin took her mother to Mount Sinai. Because of the pandemic, Tomlin was only allowed to visit her once, on April 17.
Tomlin took her phone so Haniff’s granddaughters could see her. For Tomlin, that visit represented her mother’s moment to say goodbye to her family.
Haniff will be remembered dearly by her children, grandchildren, son-in-law Clifton O. Tomlin, siblings and cousins, nephews and nieces, and her close friend Candy Garcia.
“It didn’t matter who you were, where you came from or how you got there,” said Arroyo. “When you came into that house, she was your grandmother.”
Alejandra Marquez Janse, a Florida International University journalism student, wrote this story for the Miami Herald.
