DUH!!! dumb me.  I knew that??? Not sure why I thought that was an
error.?? 8(

>Quoting from make(1):
>     If the first or first two characters of the command line are `@' and/or
>     `-', the command is treated specially.  A `@' causes the command not to
>     be echoed before it is executed.  A `-' causes any non-zero exit status
>     of the command line to be ignored.

I had to rm -fr $DESTDIR/* and things started working correctly.

Thanks,
Paul