Ocean City Days

Mack & Mancos to Manco & Mancos

2011-12-21T00:42:00.000-08:00

The Arab revolution had spread, the leader of Korea had died and the economy tanked, but the big story story of the year broke on Twitter, carried over the Ocean City Patch, was primed for a big feature in the Inky, was scooped by the Press and picked up by the TV news - the venerable Mack & Manco Pizza of Ocean City, New Jersey boardwalk fame was changing their name - to Manco & Manco.

It could be the story of the year, and everyone wanted to know why? Why mess with something that's Sooo good, and Sooo successful and Sooo well known?

Not even the Inky could answer that one, other than the fact the break up of the two major boardwalk families was amiable, and they just decided to go their own ways.

To really understand you have to go back to the beginning. Before it was even called pizza. Back to Trenton, where Anthony Macrone, the Godfather of the family, began selling Trenton Tomato Pies at his restaurant near the Trenton State Fairgrounds in the early 1950s.

Even though they may look the same to the observer, a Trenton Tomato Pie is different than a pizza in that it is made with a thin and crispy dough crust with the cheeze layered first and the tomato sauce added on top, and after baking at high temperature for ten to twelve minutes, is best eaten fresh and hot.

The first Trenton Tomato Pie has been traced back to 1910 when they were first served at Joe's in the Italian neighborhood of Chambersburg, and made popular by Papas and DeLorenzos and other places run by Italians from the Naples area of Italy.

Although a staple in Trenton, the Tomato Pie didn't make its debute at the Jersey Shore until the early 1950s when a store opened in Seaside, and a new market for the product opened up.

Then one day in 1952 Mr. Anthony Macrone and his son Dominick aka "Duke," took a drive down Route 9, visited Wildwood and decided that the boardwalk at that seasonal resort might be a good place to open a restaurant featuring their Tomato Pies. It rained the first Memorial Day weekend the first Mack's opened and they only sold eight pies.

Although they did include some other items on the menu, a local judge who was a steady customer recommended they cut back on everything but the Tomato Pie, and it really took off. Although others tried to duplicate their product and business, and dozens of other pizza parlors have opened on the boardwalk, Mack's had loyal customers who kept coming back and they expanded, eventually having four shops on the Wildwood boardwalk.

Mr. Anthony Macrone's cousin, Vincent Manco, was interested in getting into the business, so in 1956 they opened the first Mack & Mancos on the Ocean City boardwalk at 8th Street, leasing the storefront from Mr. Charles Schilling, whose wife Helen (nee Shriver), of Shriver's candy fame, also owned the boardwalk movie theaters and two blocks of retail stores they leased out to other businesses.

Before long they also opened a second Mack & Manco Pizza shop between 9th and 10th Streets.

When Mr. Manco passed away, Mr. Mack brought his son Vincent Mack to Ocean City from Wildwood, and kept the business going along with Mr. Manco's son Frank and his wife Kay. Mr. Manco's wife Mary was also a part of the business.

That's when I worked for them, from 1968-1980, every summer through high school and college and a few years thereafter, learning good business sense from Mr. Mack, a very smart and honorable man.

While Duke and the rest of the family ran the stores in Wildwood, Mr. Mack and his son Vince and Kay and Frank Manco ran the two Ocean City stores for many years that stretched into decades. Eventually Mr. Mack got old and when he passed away, they kept everything running the same, except Duke would come in every once in awhile to check on things.

Duke had bigger ambitions though, and as the numbers of Atlantic City casinos increased, he decided to open a business on the Atlantic City boardwalk, but it wasn't just a pizza shop, it was also a bar and restaurant - Duke Mack's. It became one of the most popular places in Atlantic City for many years.

Eventually Vince Mack left Ocean City and moved to Atlantic City where he worked making pizza for awhile and then retired, enjoying life as a man about the boardwalk before he too passed away.

Duke Mack & his wife and Frank & Kay Manco. (Photo: Ralph Grassi)

Duke Mack & Vincent Mack back when a slice of pizza was 20 cents. (photo: Ralph Grassi)

Duke Mack - took Mack's Pizza in Wildwood to Atlantic City (Photo: Ralph Grassi)

By the time the third and fourth generation of Macks were working the Wildwood boardwalk shops, Ocean City's business expanded to a third boardwalk location at 12th street, and a few years later they opened a take-out business at a Somers Point shopping center.

With all of the Macks out of the Ocean City business, a new generation of Mancos took over the day to day operations of all of the stores, while a new generation of Macks took over the Wildwood boardwalk shops. So it just made sense to severe their business ties, especially their moniker.

In addition, the expanding Mack family of Wildwood branched out and under their original Macarone name, opened a seasonal shop in Stone Harbor. Another Wildwood Mack, Joey, opened Mack's Boardwalk Pizza ship in South Philly.

Back in Seaside, where the first Trenton Tomato Pie store was opened at the shore, the Maruca family that owned that shop decided to franchise out their name and business, and now have a half dozen franchises going in South Jersey, mainly away from the shore.

So the bottom line, the attrition of original partners, the take-over of the business by a new generation and desire to define their ownership and territory led to change in the name of Ocean City's Mack & Manco to Manco & Manco.

Here's the articles including Ocean City Packet and Inky.

Divvying Up the Pie: Mack Splits from Manco
The famous Ocean City pizzeria becomes Manco & Manco.
By Cindy Nevitt
Email the author
December 17, 2011

After 55 years, Ocean City's most iconic pizzeria has a new recipe: no Mack and more Manco. Posters with the new Manco & Manco name started appearing in the year-round Mack & Manco store at 920 Boardwalk in late October, and phone calls to the store have been answered, "Manco and Manco." An electronic sign on the facade of the Somers Point store now reads "Manco & Manco Pizza Too."

Chuck Bangle, Mack & Manco co-owner and son-in-law of owners Frank and Kay Manco, has declined to comment to Ocean City Patch on the name change since the new name started to appear. On Friday, he said he would first share information on the change only for a Sunday feature in a "major newspaper," which he declined to name. (Update on Sunday, Dec. 18: Inquirer reports on name change.)

"Mack and Manco's is now Manco & Manco Pizza!" has been posted on the pizzeria's website with various launch dates given for MancosPizza.com.

While ownership declined to speak about the name change, others talked freely about the switch.

The planned name change—and unconfirmed dissolution of the Mack and Manco partnership—has been a badly kept secret since summer with customers and neighboring merchants openly discussing the news.

There are few things in Ocean City as legendary as Mack & Manco. Although the Boardwalk is home to 18 pizzerias, the lines are always longest in front of Mack & Manco's three stores. Mack & Manco assembles its pies differently than most, spreading a layer of shredded cheese atop the thin crust before topping with a swirl of tomato sauce.

Name recognition is key in business. For someone starting out, a name that provides instant recognition is extremely valuable. For someone in business more than half a century, changing names—in most situations—would be unthinkable.

"Because we're talking about Mack and Manco, I don't think it's going to affect their business, not one iota," said Doug Wing, owner of Ready's Coffee Shop on Eighth Street. "I don't think it'll hurt them, a name change as little as that. The new name is very close to the old name."

Five years ago, Wing became the fourth owner of Ready's in its 48-year history. A name change for his restaurant, he said, would be a mistake. "If I changed the name here," he said, illustrating his point by turning his thumb in a downward direction, "it would be death."

Mack & Manco's storied history began in 1956, when founders Anthony Mack and Vincent Manco came to Ocean City from Trenton and opened the original Mack & Manco at 920 Boardwalk. A few years later, they added the store at 758 Boardwalk. Mack's sons Dominic, Vince and Joseph expanded their business to the Wildwood and Atlantic City boardwalks, while Manco's son Frank remained in Ocean City. Frank, with his wife Kay, opened the third store at 12th and the Boardwalk in the 1980s.

PRESS OF ATLANTIC CITY
Saturday, December 17, 2011
By ROB SPAHR Staff Writer |
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/mack-manco-pizza-changing-its-name/article_caa032be-28ca-11e1-9039-001871e3ce6c.html

OCEAN CITY — The façade outside of Mack & Manco Pizza on the Boardwalk was unchanged Saturday. But from the shop’s website and the way its staff answered the phone, the well-known pizzeria is apparently about to undergo a major change.

“Manco & Manco, pick up or delivery?” the voice answered.

And the neon sign above the pizzeria’s Somers Point location confirmed that “Mack” had been replaced with another “Manco.”

“There’s no Mack? What happened to Mack? We want to know where Mack went!” said a shocked Dottie Drake, 60, of Seaville, before taking her young granddaughters into the store at 920 Boardwalk. “That’s their favorite pizza place.”

But when reached by phone Saturday, Chuck Bangle — Mack & Manco co-owner and son-in-law of owners Frank and Kay Manco — said that he would not comment until after 10 a.m. on Monday morning.

In 1956, Frank Manco's late father, Vincent Manco, and the late Anthony Mack came from Trenton to open the first Mack & Manco Pizza store on the Boardwalk in Ocean City.

The pair opened a second Ocean City location a few years later, and a third location was opened on the Boardwalk in the late 1980's. The Mack family also operated other pizzerias, including Mack's Pizza in Wildwood, over the years.

And the shop’s website offered little additional explanation, because it had been replaced with a white screen and green text reading “Coming Soon” and a link to an under-construction website for Manco & Manco Pizza.

“Mack and Manco’s is now Manco & Manco Pizza!” the one-page website read before continuing lower on the page. “Mack and Manco’s menu may have changed over the years, but one thing has never changed at Manco & Manco’s — their dedication to providing their customers with the freshest, hottest, crispiest and tastiest pizza possible. An Ocean City tradition you can always count on.”

Meanwhile Manco & Manco Pizza started new Facebook and Twitter accounts on Nov. 7.

“I’m shocked,” Linwood resident Angie Waters, 37, said while walking on the Boardwalk with her three children. “I’ve been coming here my whole life, but this is the first I’m hearing about it.”

“I like the old name better,” said Jackson Waters, 8. “But as long as the pizza still tastes the same, I’m OK with it.”

Ocean City Linda Musial takes her grandsons to the pizzeria about once a week and said she did not expect that tradition to change.

“They can change their name to whatever they want,” she said. “But I think people are still going to call it “Mack and Manco.’“

NBC TV - 40
Jersey Shore Pizza Institution Drops the 'Mack'
Known as Mack & Manco Pizza since 1956, the pizza shop now has a new name
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/the-scene/food-drink/Jersey-Shore-Pizza-Institution-Drops-the-Mack-135859243.html

Salt water taffy, beach tags, boardwalk fries and Mack & Manco Pizza. They’re all items synonymous with summers at the Jersey Shore, but one is about to change.

The famous pizza joint, opened by Trenton’s Vincent Manco and Anthony Mack on the Boardwalk in Ocean City back in 1956, is losing one of its namesakes. According to the shop’swebsite (which is now 80 percent complete) and based on the way they now answer the phone, it’s about to be known as “Manco & Manco Pizza.”

The name change will reportedly take effect at all of their locations beginning Jan. 1.
“Mack and Manco’s is now Manco & Manco Pizza!” reads the website. “Mack and Manco’s menu may have changed over the years, but one thing has never changed at Manco & Manco’s -- their dedication to providing their customers with the freshest, hottest, crispiest and tastiest pizza possible. An Ocean City tradition you can always count on.”

They started new social media accounts back on Nov. 7, though neither the Facebook nor Twitterfeeds have been active since then.

The Mack family, which owns pizza joints in Wildwood ended their 55-year partnership with the Manco family in June.

"It's just two separate entities that decided among themselves that one would take back their name and we would all go our separate ways. There's nothing else to say about it," co-owner Chuck Bangle told the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday.

"There's no animosity, it was a mutual and amicable decision," Bangle told NBC Philadelphia.

One of the owners of Mack's didn't go on camera but would say that it was just time for the families to go their separate ways.

And anyone worried that the pizza could lose its famous taste shouldn't fret.
"The product will be the same and I guarantee you everything will be the consistently the same as it's always been for the last 55 years," Manco & Manco manager Tony Polcini said.

INKY:
Ocean City pizza icon slices up its name

http://articles.philly.com/2011-12-18/news/30531374_1_pizza-parlor-boardwalk-pizza-heaven

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - They've been taking three simple ingredients - tomato sauce, cheese, and dough - and crafting them into edible memories for so long here that the name Mack & Manco is as iconic on this beach resort's boardwalk as its Ferris wheel and salt water taffy.

So inherent in local culture is this throwback pizza parlor - actually there are now three boardwalk locations and one across the bridge on the mainland in Somers Point - that followers of the crispy tomato pies will tell you they seek a "Mack & Manco's" rather than a simple slice of pizza when headed for the boardwalk.

So when the name "Mack" is officially dropped Jan. 1 from a moniker that has been around since 1956 and the place is called simply Manco & Manco, jaws are likely to drop.

The reasons for the impending change, after all these years, are shrouded in mystery, like the secret recipes for the pies.

"It's just two separate entities that decided among themselves that one would take back their name and we would all go our separate ways. There's nothing else to say about it," said Chuck Bangle, who says he co-owns the institution with his wife, Mary, and her parents, Frank and Kay Manco.

He declined to say whether the split was amicable, but took his lawyer's help in writing a brief news release announcing the change.

"We know that when people really start to notice the change, they are going to be worried," Bangle said. "But they shouldn't be, because nothing else is changing and our customers have no need to be concerned."

He insists that the restaurants will be retained by the same ownership and management and that all the recipes and procedures that have gone into turning a brief list of ingredients into a boardwalk food staple aren't going to change.

"We have customers who tell us that the moment they get to town, without even unpacking their bags, the first thing they do is come here for a slice," Bangle said. "And they've been doing it for generations. We would never mess with that recipe. It's like a bond we have with our customers."

After running a successful pizza operation in Trenton, Frank Manco's father, Vincent Manco, came to the resort 55 years ago to open his first boardwalk pizza parlor with his cousin Anthony Mackrone.

Mackrone, who eventually shortened his name and came to be known as "Tony Mack," had already been operating Mack's Pizza on the Wildwood boardwalk for several years when Mack & Manco formed.

It was a partnership made in pizza heaven, at least for a while.

Almost instantly crowds of vacationers were lining up to watch the "pie man" flip the dough into the air and buy hot, delicious slices for 15 cents.

Then, for reasons that seem to be lost in the mists of antiquity, the Macks and the Mancos went their separate ways, and the Manco family continued to operate the popular Ocean City locations using the Mack & Manco name.

The Macks expanded their operations to two spots in Wildwood, continuing to simply call theirs Mack's Pizza.

Ralph Grassi, 47, of Wildwood Crest, a local historian and longtime friend of the Mack family, said the name change was an "official separation of both parties."

"The Mack family basically wanted the Mack name to remain theirs and no longer be associated with the Manco name," said Grassi, a former Mack's Pizza employee who now works for the Borough of Wildwood Crest and said he was asked to speak on behalf of the Mack family.

Grassi would not comment on the details of any legal or financial settlement, but indicated that Mack's Pizza would remove any reference to Mack & Manco on its pizza boxes and employee uniforms in the agreement. He did say it was an "amicable and mutually agreed-upon decision."

Joanne Moloney, whose family now operates Mackrone Original Mack's Pizza in Stone Harbor, said that her family's enterprise was not involved in the Mack-vs.-Manco situation and that she had no comment on the matter.

Fearing that too much of the wrong type of publicity about the change could hurt his pizza parlor's storied reputation, Bangle, a no-nonsense kind of guy who handles his company's day-to-day operations, admits he has been trying to keep the name change sotto voce.

But by Jan. 1, nothing in the Ocean City and Somers Point locations of the business can bear the name "Mack," including signage, paper cups, pizza boxes, employee uniforms, advertising, or anything else associated with the enterprise.

Employees have already started answering the phone "Manco & Manco," and most of the exterior signs on the locations have been changed.

Among the things that won't change are the employees, the "true secret ingredient," Bangle says.

"These people are the heart and soul of what we do," said Bangle, who manages about 150 employees during the summer and about 30 during the winter. Many of the year-round workers are longtimers who've been with the company more than 20 years.

Tony Polcini, 41, who has worked for the Mancos for nearly 25 years and is now a manager, says he never thought of getting another job, because Bangle and the Mancos are "like family to me."

Nowadays, slices cost $2.25 (whole pies are $17), but a lot of things are still done the old-fashioned way.

They don't use pizza cutters to form those mud-flap-sized slices, only clam knives, which help the servers get a more accurate cut, said Tom Rossi, 31, of Seaville, who has worked at Manco's at its Ninth Street location for 17 years.

Rossi said the parlor had always had a strict hierarchy:

The pie man, seen from the boardwalk, takes center stage behind the counter to flip and twirl the dough into perfect, thin, 18-inch rounds.

The "sinker," usually a veteran crew member, sauces and cheeses the pie.

The "stretcher" has the all-important job of working the oven - a position taken very seriously at Manco's, where customers often look for a "bubble crust," the thinnest spots in the dough that have blossomed into crispy yet gooey crunching perfection.

And when customers place their orders, it is customary for the wait staff not to write any of it down.

"My mother-in-law, who's 72, will sometimes stand in the middle of the place when it's packed in the summer and shake her head and say, 'It's just pizza and soda. . . . They come back again and again just for pizza and soda,' " Bangle said. "A lot of people, including her, have tried to figure out why that is, what's the mystique of it all."

The decidedly low-tech scene at each Manco's boardwalk location - white walls, laminate-covered countertops, green vinyl-covered counter stools, simple wood tables and chairs - has been the site of plenty of engagements, weddings, and wakes over the years.

"I think the appeal of the place is that it never changes," said Toniann Christou, 55, of Newtown, Bucks County, who owns a summer home in Ocean City and has been a customer for 21 years.

"The pizza is always delicious, always the same," said Christou, on a trip for some boardwalk Christmas shopping. "You eat it all summer and dream about it all winter."

The Story of Pizza – Bill Kelly Ocean City SandPaper, 1994

In Trenton in 1956 pizza, as we know it, was known as "tomato pie", but when Anthony Mack and Vincent Manco came to Ocean City from Trenton that year they just called it pizza. Mack and Manco's opened their first pizza parlor at 918 Boardwalk in the summer of 1956. A few years later they opened another store at 7th Street and the Boardwalk.

Mr. Mack had three sons-Dominic, Vince and Joseph -and they expanded their business to the Wildwood and Atlantic City boardwalks. Vincent Manco's son Frank and his wife Kay continued to operate the original Ocean City locations, and opened a third store at 12th Street in the late '80's. Although it seems there is a pizza parlor on every corner in Ocean City today with new ones opening every season, Mack & Manco's is never afraid of the competition and attributes the endurance of Mack & Manco's to their consistency. "It's our consistency that makes the clock turn," says Kay Manco, "and our survival stems from our loyal customers who come back year after year." With Kay and Frank's daughter Mary, a third generation is continuing the business in the same tradition.

One of Mack and Manco's traditions is making the pizza fresh in front of the customers, with the pie maker putting on an entertaining show for the customers, twirling the pizza dough in the air to stretch it. "We have been very fortunate to have such good employees," Kay adds.

Mack and Manco's have expanded their menu since 1956 when plain pizza and soda were the only things on the menu. Besides the traditional thin and crispy cheese and tomato sauce pizza, we now provide a variety of new offerings, like Venetian pizza with whole sliced Jersey tomatoes and a number of other toppings such as broccoli and spinach along with the old favorites like pepperoni and sausage. Our menu may have changed over the years, but one thing has never changed at Mack and Manco's-their dedication to providing their customers with the freshest, hottest, crispiest and tastiest pizza possible. An Ocean City tradition you can always count on.

Ralph Grassi, local Wildwood historian wrote the history of Mack’s Pizza on the Wildwood Boadwalk, and wrote:

Please visit Ralph Grassi's site which includes the history of Macks Pizza in Wildwood and has posted a lot of old, neat photos, some of which I have used here. Thanks Ralph.

http://www.funchase.com/Images/Macks/MacksPizzaPg1.htm

The Mack Pie dates back nearly sixty years to a time when Anthony and Lena Macaroni operated a restaurant located near the old fairgrounds on Nottingham Way in Trenton, New Jersey. It was there that the Mack's Tomato Pie was born. Years later the family opened a pizza shop in Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore but it wasn't until 1953 that this famous pie hit the Wildwood Boardwalk.

One day in 1952 Anthony took his son Dominic (better known as Duke) on a road trip. They hopped in the car and headed out on a journey that eventually ended on a little barrier island at the southern tip of New Jersey called The Wildwoods. Anthony and his wife Lena had previously scouted the Wildwood location and fell in love with it, however to Duke it seemed to be at the end of the earth. Fortunately the family did choose the Wildwood Boardwalk for a new store and the following year Anthony and Lena along with their three sons Joseph, Vincent and Duke opened up shop at Wildwood Avenue on Memorial Day weekend - As always ( some say it is a tradition)it rained for three days and only 8 pies were sold, but things turned around quickly. The Wildwood business did so well that within a few years Anthony and his son Vincent opened a pizza shop on the Ocean City Boardwalk (N.J.) along with cousin Vince Manco and created the first Mack and Manco's.

Originally, the Mack's baked their pies in a conventional range, but later used industrial ovens such as Bakers Pride and Blodgett. In 1966 a new innovation in pizza cooking was introduced to the industry called the Roto-Flex Oven. This bakery oven features four rotating decks allowing more than 20 pies to be cooked at the same time and in 1971 Mack's decided to give them a try. This new process of baking pizza took some time to get used to, but with a little tweaking and the proper adjustments they got the ovens working perfectly. ( To sit at the counter and not only watch your pie being made, but to actually watch it rotate and cook through the glass oven doors has always been a real treat.) Eventually they purchased a total of eight ovens for the Seaside, Ocean City and Wildwood stores.

The Mack family has always had a unique style of making pizza and people took notice. Customers and other restaurant owners would watch with great curiosity as the cheese would be applied first (!)followed by the sauce. This was a rather unorthodox way of doing things in the pizza making trade.

Another unique innovation that Mack's created was the "Pump".(Anyone that has sat at Mack's counter knows about the pump.)Their delicious sauce is pumped through a clear hose that comes up through the floor from the basement and to the pizza bench.(What lays beneath in the underground "Pizza Lair"? Just another part of the mystique of Mack's Pizza.)

In the early years Mack's offered an 18 inch pie for $2.14. Before the idea of the pizza box came along Mack's wrapped the "pies to go" in white paper. (And how many remember when a slice was served on a napkin? - I sure do.) You could get a cut for 29 cents and for an extra 15 you could get an icy cold beverage to go with it. (I really like saying "icy cold beverage"...)

At that time Mack's served "Juicy Orange" which quickly became a favorite, but as the years passed another product would become associated with the pie - Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer.(Any diehard Mack's fan will tell you their drink of choice is Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer.) This combination has become a tradition at Mack's and for many years the soda was served directly from the tap of a big Birch Beer barrel out front of the store.

Now, in 2011, Tony Mack’s great grandchildren are following in their parents footsteps as they work their way through college tossing the original Mack’s Famous Pizza! Come and visit Mike, Laura, Nicole, Kevin, Stephen, Sarah and David as they continue their Mack’s Pizza legacy!

RIP -

MACK, VINCENT – of Atlantic City, died Wednesday at Ocean Point Health Center. Born in Trenton, he lived in Trenton-Yardley, PA area most of his life and resided in Atlantic City for the past 20 years. Mr. Mack worked for many years in Product Development for Mack’s Pizza in Seaside and Duke Mack’s in Atlantic City.

Son of the late Anthony and Lena Maruca Mack, he is survived by his brothers, Dominick “Duke” Mack and his companion Pat Byrne of Atlantic City, Joseph and his companion, Sharon Manes of Stone Harbor, several relatives form the Maruca family, nephews and nieces, Ronald Mack, darryl Mack and his wife Mary, Robert, Robyn, JoAnn and Donna Maloney, Maryanne Ziccardi and her husband, Michael; two great nephews, Nicholas Ziccardi and Eonin Mack; a great niece, Brittany Ziccardi; extended family, Frank and Kay Manco, Joseph Auletta and Neil Cirucci and many cousins.

DOMINICK "DUKE" MACK

MACK
DOMINICK "DUKE" passed away at his home surrounded by his family on Friday, September 18th. Duke was a unique individual; one of a kind, a lover of life and fun, but at the same time a serious businessman and a warm and loving person devoted to family and friends. After operating a restaurant in Trenton NJ on Nottingham Way (near the Trenton Fairgrounds), Duke, along with his father Anthony, took a drive to Wildwood NJ and that's where the first Mack's Pizza was born. They were the original founders of Mack's Pizza in Wildwood, NJ, as well as being the "Mack" in Mack and Manco's Pizza in Ocean City, NJ.

Duke's other businesses included a nightclub/restaurant named after him in AC, Duke Mack's, Hamilton Bowling Lanes in Hamilton Township, NJ and Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer.

Duke was a huge NY Yankee supporter and a fan of Joe DiMaggio "the greatest Yankee of them all." Duke had a great sense of humor and was a constant source of strength for his family and friends. Under his tough exterior, he had a heart of gold.

Predeceased by his brother, Vince Mack and his first wife, Charlotte; Duke is survived by his wife Pat, two sons and a daughter-in-law, Ronald Mack and Darryl and Mary Mack; grandchildren, Eoin and Laura; Pat's daughter, Maryanne, who Duke loved and thought of as his own, her husband Michael and grandchildren, Brittany and Nicky Ziccardi. Duke is also survived by his loving brother and sister-in-law, Joseph and Sharon Mack; and his sister Catherine Moloney.

Published in Philadelphia Inquirer & Philadelphia Daily News on September 21, 2009

Macks of Stone Harbor
http://www.mackspizzaofstoneharbor.com/MacksPizza/HISTORY.html

Pizza for the Mack family is a way of life. When Anthony Mackrone, “Tony Mack”, took his Trenton, New Jersey tomato pie to the Wildwood boardwalk in 1953, he took his wife Lena and four children, Duke, Joe, Kitty and Vincent with him. From Nottingham Way to Wildwood Avenue, Tony Mack moved a product from quiet success in Trenton to an overnight sensation on the Jersey Shore. In 1956, he provided an opportunity to his cousin, Frank Manco to join him in Ocean City and Mack-Manco Pizza was born.

Six grandchildren followed Tony into the business. The pictures displayed here depict just how those grandchildren learned to spin pizza at the same time they started to walk, entered the Wildwood Baby Parades in pizza themed floats, poured birch beers from the barrel off the front counter and stood by their "Uncle Joe Mack" as he taught them how to work the peel boards.

No wonder all six of them still love the business and love the product. Most put themselves through college working in Wildwood. For Bob Moloney, Tony’s second oldest grandson, the passion drove him to open another store in Stone Harbor New Jersey in 1987. After graduating from Trenton State College with his Master’s Degree in Education, he moved his career to Cape May Court House and in honor of the man who started it all, Bob named the new store “Mackrone’s Pizza…the original Mack’s Pizza” right in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. Now, in the quaint town of Stone Harbor, directly between his grandfather’s first businesses in Wildwood and Ocean City, Bob continues to toss that pizza to the enjoyment of the lines of customers who wait patiently for the school year to end so Bob can open his doors.

This Mack’s Pizza of Stone Harbor has developed specialty pizzas named after Wildwood Boardwalk landmarks and memories. From the “Tram Car” (a meat lover’s pizza) named for that annoying but ever present tram screaming “watch the tram car please” as the Mack kids tossed and sold that pizza over the front counter….to the “Golden Nugget” (white pizza with fresh tomatoes, mushrooms and extra cheese) named for the roller coaster ride that preceded the metal skyscraping nightmares that now line the boardwalk piers...to the “Wildwood” (a classic pepperoni, mushroom and extra cheese) named for the classic town itself.

The Mack Pie dates back nearly sixty years to a time when Anthony and Lena Macaroni operated a restaurant located near the old fairgrounds on Nottingham Way in Trenton, New Jersey. It was there that the Mack's Tomato Pie was born. Years later the family opened a pizza shop in Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore but it wasn't until 1953 that this famous pie hit the Wildwood Boardwalk.

Mrs. Helen Shriver Schilling & the Trashing of Old Ocean City

2011-11-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

Now the estate of Helen Shriver Schilling, after failing to abide by her estate planning regarding her movie theaters, want to build on the beach.

Helen Shriver, originally of Rydal, Pa. was the only child of Sarah and William Shriver, Jr., the son of William Shriver, Sr. who started a candy and ice cream business on the Ocean City, NJ boardwalk at 9th street in the early 1890s. Her father rebuilt their businesses in brick after the great fire of 1929 that destroyed much of the boardwalk and surrounding neighborhood.

She attened Hood College in Maryland and graduated in 1922. She married Charles Frank Schilling, a Philadelphia builder, and they enjoyed the outdoors, hunting and fishing. Although they sold the candy business in 1958 to the Hank and Virginia Glaser Family, it retained her family name.

For decades Mr. and Mrs. Schilling ran her family's Ocean City businesses, which grew to include the Strand, Moorlyn, Village Theaters, five parking lots and boardwalk storefronts that were leased out to various businesses including the Seaside Baths, Dels grill and Mack & Manco Pizza.

After the death of Mr. Schilling in Sept. 1980, she became a trustee of the Tabernacle in 1981 and donated money to Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point, where a wing is now named after her family. She also renovated her properties in 1988 to ensure they would continue unhindered into the future.

One thing that didn't last was Shriver's Pier, which stretched out over the 9th Street beach from the boardwalk and provided a pleasant place for people to sit in the shade. After young people and hippies began to conjugate there it was torn down and not rebuilt, as I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Schilling would have wanted.

I know because I knew Mr. and Mrs. Schilling from when I first started working at Mack & Manco's Pizza in the early 1970s, as they would come in and sit at the counter for lunch nearly every day. One day in the late 1990s, I was driving around and saw Mrs. Schilling outside her house on the point at the Bay in the Gardens. She invited me in for tea and we sat and talked for awhile and she clearly expressed her strong views towards preserving Old Ocean City as best she could.

When she died in December, 1998, her attorney Ronald Taht, Esq. handled her estate. Taht’s former partner Bob Bell handled the estate of her father and grandfather. The toll both that leads out of Ocean City to Longport has a plaque that notes it is officially named the Robert Bell Toll Booth.

When Mrs. Schilling died Taht was quoted as saying, “To me, it’s the end of an era. The Schillings and Shrivers were old Ocean city and we’ve lost so much of that. They were very fine people who loved this city very much.”

As anyone who knew Mrs. Schilling understood, the one thing she wanted was to keep her properties and businesses intact, especially the movie theaters, which she insisted, under no circumstances, were they to be sold to the Frank Family who owned a movie theater chain that stretched from Northfield to Cape May, as they had unfairly competed with the Shriver/Schilling theaters in Ocean City and had wanted to buy them for many years.

The Franks, who had one of the first drive in movie theaters, were also credited with creating the multi-plex theaters that included more than one screen in each theater so many movies could be shown at the same time.

Despite the distinct and pronounced desire of Mrs. Helen Shriver Schilling, her attorney Ron Taht, Esq. created a shell company that officially purchased the theaters, that were then sold to the Franks, circumventing her estate plans.

At one time the Strand Theater on the Boardwalk at 9th Street had a seating of 2,000, which was full to capacity for such hit movies as Jaws, and included a giant silk curtain of Neptune, the God of the sea.

One of the first things the Franks did once they had assumed ownership of the theaters, was to take that curtain down and trash it in the back parking lot of the theater. They literally ripped it up and threw it in the trash. I know this because I was there and witnessed a member of the Frank family doing it.

The next thing they did was to divide the 2,000 seat theater in a number of smaller theaters, which they also did to the Moorlyn and Village Theaters.

It took a while, but eventually the Franks decided they couldn't make enough money from running the movie theaters they had wrongfully and probably illegally purchased via Ron Taht, and wanted to convert them into apartments. They did this to the Moorlyn Theater, across the boardwalk from the Music Pier, where they destroyed a second story stage where W.C. Fields and other Vaudeville acts had once performed that should have been restored and maintained as a theater.

They also own the Cape May theater that they also want to destroy and convert into condos and apartments.

And now the estate of Helen Shriver Schilling wants to build homes on the beachfront property that she once owned and wanted preserved.

Well none of her other plans for her estate have been honored, her theaters sold to those she specifically requested then never be sold to, and then subsequently trashed, so why should any of her wishes be upheld by the city or the courts?

Old Ocean City, the one best remembered, is gone, and those who own it now are motivated by greed and not a sense of community or history, and as soon as they get what they want, they won't live in the New Ocean City, but they'll take the money and run.

The Neptune Curtain at the Old Strand Theater in Ocean City was trashed, as was the theater itself

From the Top at the Ocean City Music Pier

2011-11-18T17:24:00.000-08:00

PBS Radio's From the Top, hosted by Christopher O'Riley, will feature local musicians this week on a program that was recorded earlier this year with the Ocean City Pops orchestra at the Ocean City Music Pier. The nationally syndicated show that promotes young people playing classical music, can be heard on WRTI Temple University's station (Ocean City on WRTQ 91.3)

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wrti/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&sid=17&id=1875169&pid=208.

This program, which is broadcast on Saturday afternoon and again on Friday at 7 pm, can also be heard over the internet at their web site,http://www.fromthetop.org/radio/thisweek, and is archived so it can be heard later at any time.

The show includes the Ocean City Pops, under the direction of William Scheible, and solo performances by sixteen year old violinist Amy Semes, from Broomall, Pa., and trumpeter Jacob Hernandez, 18, from Philadelphia, as well as Scheible, who also plays trumpet.

Christopher O'Reily gives Ocean City a good plugs and Amy's 102 year old great uncle, who lives in Ocean City, recalls patronizing the Ocean City Music Pier as a child, and is a big fan of classical music and opera. They talked with him and got him to admit the secret of his longevity - a Scotch a day, and listening to opera.

Amy has two sisters who also play the violin, which was selected as the instrument of choice by her parents because it was easy to carry around. She tells the story about how once, when she got hurt, her sister had to substitute for her at a performance that she too had to play, so her sister tied her hair back for once performance and let it down for another, and people didn't know the difference.

Fernandez, a protege of S, acknowledges that his friends come to his performances, but don't particularly care for the classical music, some of which is a century old.

If you go to the web site, besides listening to the show, there's also a short videotape of the Polaris Quartet, from Dayton, Ohio, rehearsing before they go on, giving a vibrant and spontaneous performance on the boardwalk outside the music pier.

As noted on the From the Top web site:

Show 239 | Ocean City, New Jersey
Recorded: Wednesday, August 31, 2011

This week, From the Top is at the Music Pier in Ocean City, New Jersey, joined by the Ocean City Pops under the direction of William Scheible. You'll hear a 16-year-old violinist play Wieniawski with the orchestra and an 18-year-old pianist play Bach. Also, the junior division winners of this year's Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition join Christopher O'Riley to perform Dvořák and a teenage trumpeter teams up with Pops conductor William Scheible to play the music of Vivaldi.

Performers and repertoire:
Violinist Amy Semes,16, from Broomall, PA performs I.Allegro Moderato from Violin Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op 14 by Henryk Wieniawski

Trumpeter Jacob Hernandez, 18, from Philadelphia, PA and Ocean City Pops conductor and trumpeter William Scheible perform I. Allegro from Concerto for 2 Trumpets in C by Antonio Vivaldi

Polaris Quartet (violinist Jenny Lee, violin, 17 from Bloomington, IN; violinist Billy Fang, violin, 18 from Dayton, OH; violist Demi Fang, 15, from Dayton, OH; and cellist Josh Halpern, 17, from Dayton, OH) performs I. Allegro, ma non tanto from Piano Quintet in A major, Op.81 by Antonín Dvořák

Pianist Kevin Sun, 18, from Carmichael, CA Performs I.Overture from Overture in the French Style, BWV 831 by Johann Sebastian Bach

Cellist Austin Huntington, 17, from South Bend, IN Performs I. Andante – Allegro vivace from Sonata No. 4 in C major, Op. 102 by Ludwig Van Beethoven

Brian O'Keeney

2011-11-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

Brian's Facebook Photo.

He won't allow friends or writing on his wall.

Outside St. Francis Cabrini Church , Ocean City

2011-11-12T13:24:00.001-08:00

In front of the 22nd Street Restaurant 1966

2011-10-31T20:58:00.001-07:00

Gary Pancost and Bill Kelly with two waitresses in front of the 22nd Street Restaurant in Ocean City, circa 1966.

I think the 22nd Street Restaurant building is still standing as it became the home of the Ocean City Board of Realitors and still may be.

The restaurant was owned by a Mr. Petratus, also owned a diner in South Camden. A friend of my father, he hired me as a bus boy during one of the first summers we spent in Ocean City, after spending a few weeks every summer in Sea Isle City at the PAL House - the Camden Police Athletic League.

That first summer we stayed in a second floor apartment on Asbury Avenue about 18th Street that was later duplexed.

The Flanders - First Class Hotel on the Boardwalk

2011-10-25T23:56:00.001-07:00

Moorlyn Terrace

2011-10-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

These are the rooming houses on Ocean Avenue that were at the end of Moorlyn Terrace. The Ocean City Music Pier is on the boardwalk at Moorlyn Terrace, which is only two blocks long.

Kazmark's motel is to the left on the corner, across from the Post Office.

"Quicky," like my father, was a former Camden policeman who owned the house on the left with his wife. The two rooming houses on the right were connected together.

My house, 819 Wesley was just behind the these two houses.

All three were torn down in the early 1980s where a large condo unit was constructed off the ground, with the entire ground floor used for parking. (designed by my friend architect Jack Snyder).

The photo is taken from across the street and a little bit down Moorlyn Terrace where Browns guest house was located. It too consisted of two houses joined together by a porch.

Models of "Flying Saucer"

2011-10-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

Model of "Flying Saucer" by Mike. (More info to come on this)

Plastic Mold Model of "Flying Saucer"

The Flying Saucer off of Ocean City NJ

2011-10-13T01:27:00.001-07:00

Chris Montagne's "Flying Saucer"

2011-10-13T01:26:00.003-07:00

Passengers Pack into "Flying Saucer"

2011-10-13T01:26:00.001-07:00

"Flying Saucer" at the dock off 9th Street

2011-10-13T01:25:00.001-07:00

"Flying Saucer" Specs

2011-10-13T01:24:00.000-07:00

Chris Montagne converted the old WWII era PT Boat into an Ocean City NJ tourist ride.

Val Shively, Fred Prinz and James Dean

2011-09-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

Val Shively, who owns one of the biggest collections of Rock & Roll records on the planet, Fred Prinz of Ocean City, and friend.

Mack & Manco Pizza

2011-09-07T19:50:00.005-07:00

Sam McDowell of the Boardwalk Smuggler's Shop

2011-09-07T19:49:00.001-07:00

Chris Montagne - Chris' Restaurant OC NJ

2011-09-05T08:20:00.003-07:00

Chris Montagne was an Old Salt Italian fisherman from Sea Isle City who moved to Ocean City to open Chris Restaurant and run a fleet of fishing and touring boats. He married Dr. Marcia Smith and lived with her at their home at 821 Wesley Avenue from the 1930s until he died.

Chris' Restaurant, next to Hogates and the Ocean City - Somers Point Causeway Bridge, was a long time landmark and the first thing you saw when driving into Ocean City.

One of the boats Chris ran was the Flying Saucer, a converted World War II era PT boat that he took passengers for rides out the inlet and to the end of the island and back again, every day at 12 noon and 3 pm. When I worked at Mack & Manco's Pizza on the boardwalk you could count on Chris going by like clockwork. The boat rides lasted for many years, and you could be sure to get wet from the spray he kicked up - but that only made Chris laugh. The Flying Saucer rides only ended when Chris got pretty old and the boat sank at the dock one afternoon.

Chris was an alltime fascinating character. Even after he retired he continued to fish regularly. When I lived in Sea Isle City and drove down Ocean Drive I'd see him every morning emptying his minnow nets in the south end marshes. My brother Leo went fishing with him all the time, and took the picture at the top of Chris out on the bay in his boat with the big parrot Leo took care of for awhile.

When Chris retired, he sold the restaurant for a reported $1 million, but not to someone who would maintain the place as the living landmark that gave public access to the bay. Instead the city mistakenly allowed them to change the use of the property and convert it to condos, which made it private property and no public access. And the location, next to the noisy bridge and highway, was no conducive to living comfortably there, but somebody made a lot of money.

Chris Montagne - Chris' Restaurant Ocean City NJ

2011-09-05T08:20:00.001-07:00

Dr. Marcia V. Smith - Ocean City's first women physician

2011-09-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Dr. Marcia V. Smith 1898 – 1995

Dr. Smith and Chris (far right) at a event at the Ocean City Youth Center on 6th Street (no longer there). Can you identify any of the other people in this photo? If so contact me: billkelly3@gmail.com

A permanent granite marker was placed at the park between 5th and 6th streets in Ocean City that reads: “Marcia V. Smith, MD – Citizen – October 9, 1960.”

I don’t know if it is still there, but there’s a picture of it in Fred Miller’s book on Ocean City.

But Dr. Smith was more than just a citizen. She was the first women physician in Ocean City and widely recognized as a humanitarian, a patron of the arts and a good friend and neighbor.

Born in Petersburg in Upper Township, Cape May County, N.J. on May 28, 1898, Marcia Van Gilder was the daughter of a retired seaman turned businessman and member of the Upper Township Board of Education. He was said to be a strong believer in the freedom of choice and encouraged her to develop her abilities as far as she could go.

Marcia graduated from Tuckahoe High School in 1916, obtained a degree from Temple University and received her medical degree in 1922 from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (now part of the University of Pennsylvania). Returning to Ocean City she became a general practitioner and family doctor, a practice that she began in 1924 and continued until she retired on November 8, 1973. As the first women physician in Ocean City she specialized in delivering babies and caring for the sick.

She met her husband Chris Montagna while taking care of his mother. Born in Italy, the Sea Isle City fisherman relocated to Ocean City where he opened Chris’ Seafood restaurant on the bay at 9th street.

From when they were married in 1933, Dr. Smith and Chris lived in a large, cedar shingled house at 821 Wesley Avenue, where Dr. Smith worked out of an office on the first floor. (Dr. Townsend lived in the house next door at 823 Wesley).

No one was ever turned away from Dr. Smith’s door as she cared for everyone who came to her would regard to their ability to pay for her services. While Dr. Smith carried on her medical work, much of it for charity, her husband became a successful businessman as the owner and operator of Chris’ Restaurant, a lone-time landmark at the foot of the 9th street causeway bridge, where he also ran a line of fishing and touring boats.

Taking inspiration from Albert Schweitzer, the philosopher, musician and African missionary doctor – his bust sat on her desk, Dr. Smith supported many humanitarian activities and traveled widely throughout the world, making trips to Canada, Japan and China and maintaining correspondence with those she met until she died.

An early benefactor of Shore Memorial Hospital, she assisted those who conducted cancer research, initiated the first boardwalk art show (with Jim Penlyn) and was an early supporter of the fledgling state of Israel.

She was honored with a special “Marcia Smith Week” in October, 1960 when the park monument was dedicated and she was the guest of honor at a testimonial dinner at the Flanders Hotel where James G. McDonald, the first US Ambassador to Israel praised her for her humanitarian work here and abroad.

The monument, dedicated on October 9, 1960, weighs 400 pounds and was brought to American from Israel because of her early support of Israel and “the brotherhood of man.” She received the highest award presented to a non-Israelite. Then Mayor Nathaniel Smith said Dr. Smith, “has been quite an asset to the community and has always been willing to come to the aid of those needing her help without a minute’s hesitation.”

A newspaper editorialized: “All of us in Ocean City can take a large measure of pride in the exceptional achievements of Dr. Marcia V. Smith, who last week received the unusual distinction of having a week set aside in her horror by the Mayor. Dr. Smith deserved it.”

“First as a physician she has made herself available to take care of as many people who otherwise would have been without expert medical attention. This service she has performed quietly with no attempt to gain personal recognition.”

“Her work in the Bonds for Israel campaign is another example of the way she goes about helping causes in which she is interested. So unusual was her concern for the development of a friend country where the people are not even of her own faith that the Israeli government saw fit to honor her with a monument which last week was dedicated at the city park.”

“Finally, Saturday night she was the guest of honor at a “Marcia V. Smith Banquet” at the Flanders Hotel and received high tribute from many civic leaders for her work.”

When she retired from medical practice she said, “I have always found it wonderful to think my own thoughts and not care whether I am popular with other people. If a person cares too much what other people think, then they become slaves to what isn’t worthwhile.”

Since the death of her husband, Dr. Smith lived at the Luthern Home in Ocean View, where she died on March 23, 1995 at age of 96.

The 6th Street monument is a lasting testament to Dr. Marchia Smith, who was more than just a fellow citizen.

As her next door neighbor for many years (1967-1995), I got to know Dr. Smith and Chris really well.

The first time I met her was the first week we moved to 819 Wesley Avenue and my brother's dog got into a dog fight with Quickie's dog on the other side of the back alley. Quickie, like my father, was a former Camden policeman who had a rooming house next to Kazmark's motel across from the post office. We stayed at Quickie's guest house a few times, as well as Brown's Guest houses on Moorlyn Terrace before my family bought 819 Wesley, at my instigation.

When we first moved in Leo's dog ran out of the yard and across the alley and was fighting with Quickie's dog, and I got bit on my hand while pulling them apart. Quickie also got bit pretty bad, so we went over to Dr. Smith's office on the ground floor of her house and she took us in and bandaged us up. She was pretty old then but she kept her doctor's door open for quite awhile before she was forced to retire.

After Chris died and she had to move to a nursing home, they had a professional auction company come in and auction off all the contents of the house, and I still have some items that I either bought for a few dollars or got at the end that were just left over and nobody wanted - including a green reading chair, the bust of Albert Schweitzer, an antique wood Majong game she got in China, a stash of old photos and an album of newspaper clippings that mention her and her work from over the years.

Dry Ocean City Founded at Somers Point Tavern

2011-09-04T04:30:00.000-07:00

Dry Ocean City Founded at Somers Point Tavern

The Dolphin House - on Shore Road between New York and Brighton Avenues, was a hotel, tavern and restaurant where the Lake family met to name the main streets of Ocean City in February 1880.

Photo is from the collection of Bill Carr, who is said to be related to Braddock, the owner of the Dolphin House.

The Dolphin House

“Somers Point served as the port of entry for Great Egg Harbor for many years, with a custom's House located there from 1791 until 1912. In 1834, the town consisted of several farmhouses, a tavern and boarding house. By 1850 there were at least two hotels run by Richard L. Somers and Constantine Somers, [2] increased to three by 1872, with W. E. Braddock as the proprietor of the Dolphin House.”

Today there is a street behind Somers Mansion called Braddock Avenue and the island closest to Somers Point on the bay by Rainbow Channel is Braddock Island.

From History of Ocean City New Jersey by Harold Lee

“According to family legend, the patriarch of the family, the Honorable Simon Lake, agreed to place a $10.000 mortgage on his Pleasantville farm and orchard to provide working capital to start the undertaking….The two principal covenants were a hard and fast rule against the sale, manufacture or keeping for sale of alcoholic beverages, and a prohibition against commercialism on the Sabbath. These restrictions have passed down to all deeds currently held by property owners.”

“The first annual report of the founders sounded a clarion call to maintain the observance of Christian ideals on the island, as follows: ‘We cannot pander to vile appetites or propensities, or seek to advance our interests by any questionable proceedings…Let us not falter. A perfect Sabbath must be maintained…. To secure lasting prosperity and preeminent success this place must be run in the interests of our Holy Christianity.’”

“While these preliminary business matters were being organized, work also was proceeding to obtain title to beach properly. The title situation on the northerly part of the island was fairly clear, as all of the land from Oil Creek to Great Egg Harbor Inlet, with the exception of the Parker Miller property, was owned by members of the Somers family. This land was not for sale, but Simon Lake was able to persuade the family to part with their holdings. Title deeds to all of the Somers tract had passed to the Ocean City Association or its agents before the end of February, 1880….”

“When winter weather came the survey work was halted, but it was resumed in February of 1880. At that time the founding fathers came here with the surveyors and fixed a course for the four principal longitudinal streets. Their names were chosen on February 10 around a dinner table in the Dolphin House hotel at Somers Point. Mrs. Harriot Lake, wife of Simon Lake, named the most easterly as Wesley Avenue; Simon named Central Avenue; J.E. Lake named Asbury Avenue, and surveyor William Lake named West Avenue, appropriately, as it was the most westerly thoroughfare laid out at that time.”

Memories of the PAL House on the Sea Isle City Boardwalk

2011-09-02T06:09:00.000-07:00

Reminiscences of the PAL House on the Sea Isle City Boardwalk

The first Jersey Shore resort I remember is Sea Isle City in the Fifties and early Sixties when my family took week long vacations to the PAL House on the Sea Isle City boardwalk.

Of course there is no Sea Isle City boardwalk anymore – and no PAL House for that matter, as both were destroyed in the storm of 1964, though I remember my father saying that they moved the PAL House around the corner to a side-street and it may still stand today. The boardwalk however, was replaced with a concrete and blacktop promenade that also acts as a protective barrier against storms.

The Camden Police Athletic League (PAL) house was huge, though I was small at the time and it may have just seemed very large to a small boy.

You came in the front door off the boardwalk over a smaller boardwalk, and entered a large community room. While there were rooms upstairs, we stayed in a small room with two or three beds that was off to the side of the community room on the first floor. In the back of the large general area were a few large tables and a kitchen where there was always something cooking.

Above the front door there was a spy glass – similar to the ones pirates and ship captains used at sea that extended out and folded up.

Among the things that I remember doing include hanging out under the boardwalk with Charlie Kocher, a friend from Camden whose father, like mine was a policeman, and Charles himself later became a policeman. His dad was in the Navy during the war so we wore Navy hats he had given us.

One day my dad bought a kite and I remember running along the beach trying to get it flying, and once we had it going it really went well. We cut little holes in the bottom of plastic cups and sent them up the kite string and tied the string to the boardwalk railing in front of the PAL House.

Just down the boardwalk was an amusement hall with a carousel that had rings you reached out for and grabbed and then threw at the open mouth of a large clown against a wall. I kept many of the rings, but was required to return them before leaving town.

One year there was a baby parade, and I guess I must have been five or six years old, old enough to remember them putting me in a little red wagon and surrounding me with boxes of cookies and candy and being pulled down the boardwalk by one of the young girls who was my babysitter. There’s a photo and a 8mm movie of this parade somewhere.

Things got a little chaotic when it rained because everybody hung out in the community room where I remember playing pickup sticks for the first time on the table back by the kitchen. They also had a handy supply of Lincoln Logs, Lagos, puzzles and card games that kept us kids occupied.

I can also recall getting dressed up to go to Church, just around the corner and down the street, an old wood clapboard church across the street from Raffa’s Deli.

Then there was the Storm of ’64. I don’t think it was a hurricane that had a name, but rather it was a 3 day ‘nor’easter and pretty much destroyed the Jersey Shore.

A day or two after it was over my dad let me come along when he drove down to check out the damage and it was pretty severe. I remember houses in the middle of the street.

If they moved the PAL House to another lot, they didn’t keep using it as they had built a small two bedroom rancher down town, near the ACME, where there were acres of clear ground that turtles over ran on their migratory egg laying expeditions. There were no houses from the main drag to the bay, which you could see from half mile away. Now it is all built up.

Since I was a little older I remember a little more, and specifically going into town – now twenty or more blocks away – to get fudge – Copper Kettle – and see a movie, which was located right next to the boardwalk just down from Braca’s Café. The movie theater itself might have been called the Braca. And I can date all of this now because that was the summer we saw the John Wayne African safari African safari movie Hatari.

Years later I sent one winter in Sea Isle – a winter rental in the same neighborhood as the second PAL house, and got to know it a little better.

The Princess of Ocean City

2011-08-24T00:12:00.000-07:00

The Princess of Ocean City

A new exhibit celebrates Hollywood star, princess and one-time OC sunbather Grace Kelly

by Marjorie Preston
Atlantic City Weekly

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1898981553507&set=a.1261194649233.2035219.1210690184&type=1&ref=nf

Her story almost defies belief: Philadelphia society girl, daughter of a bricklayer, becomes one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. At the height of her success, with an Oscar under her belt, she tosses it aside to become princess of an obscure principality on the French Riviera. Such was the life of Grace Kelly, whose glacial perfection onscreen, and fairytale marriage off-screen, has graven her into the American psyche.

A third act of her life, the final one, was equally dramatic. In 1983, at 53, Princess Grace died shortly after her car plummeted off the winding drive at Monaco’s Moyenne Corniche, site of one of her most famous scenes (in Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief).

Though she lived and traveled all over the world, Grace Kelly always loved and returned to Ocean City. This year, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her wedding to Prince Rainier, the Ocean City Historical Museum has mounted a tribute to the screen goddess that includes motion picture lobby cards (Mogambo, The Swan), photographs, and a bisque doll in Monegasque garb donated by the princess. The exhibit is small, but the memory of the golden girl who once summered here still looms large.

Bill D’Arcy may remember her best. The onetime Ocean City lifeguard dated a teenaged Grace Kelly for two years. “We had a summer romance,” says D’Arcy, of the courtship that in fact lasted two summers, in the mid-1940s. “She was a great gal.”

The couple met, of course, on the beach. Grace’s brother, Jack, was also a lifeguard (and later, an Olympic rower). Her father, millionaire John B. Kelly, was a generous patron of the lifeguard team.

Bill and Grace spent idyllic days in Ocean City, strolling the beach and boardwalk, and in Atlantic City, listening to big band concerts with stars like Vaughan Monroe, Glenn Miller and crooner Rudy Vallee.

“That was the highlight of the whole summer, to go to the Steel Pier and spend the whole day,” says D’Arcy. “They had a big ballroom in the middle of the pier and everybody danced.” According to D’Arcy, Grace did a mean jitterbug.

Romance bloomed. Back in the East Falls section of Philadelphia, where both lived in the off-season, Bill went to Grace’s junior prom, and she went to his senior prom. But the next summer, when Bill was pulling duty on Ocean City’s Second Street beach, Grace sauntered by on the arm of another boy. “And that was it, sayonara,” says D’Arcy with a chuckle. “Nothing ever really developed, but it was fun.”

The house that John B. built, at the corner of 26th and Wesley, still stands (once an oceanfront property, the big Spanish style manse is now one block from the beach). A second Kelly home across the street was demolished several years ago. The Kellys attended St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church, and many around town still remember seeing Grace Kelly at Sunday mass.

According to museum president Fred Miller, “She would come back at least once a year to visit her mother, with Prince Albert and Stephanie and Caroline, and it would always cause a lot of commotion.”

Author of the upcoming, Ocean City: America’s Greatest Family Resort (which includes a chapter on the Kellys) Miller says Grace probably spent dreamy afternoons plotting her future stardom at one of four movie houses on Ocean City’s boardwalk: the Village Theatre at Eighth Street, long gone, the Surf (now the Surf Mall), and two theatres that still remain, the Strand and the Moorlyn.

The Kellys in OC circa 1934: (L to R) Lizanne, Margaret, Grace, Kell, Peggy and Jack. RIGHT: Grace Kelly.
She never confided those dreams to Bill D’Arcy, who was amazed and delighted when his former flame became a leading lady. Grace went on to star in classics like High Noon, Dial M for Murder, The Bridges at Toko Ri and High Society, opposite leading men like William Holden, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. She won the Oscar in 1955, for her portrayal of an embittered wife in The Country Girl.

Rumors of her involvement with Crosby and Holden have never been substantiated, but Grace did enjoy a famous fling with playboy designer Oleg Cassini, who visited the Kellys in Ocean City and got a chilly reception from the straitlaced Catholic clan. Cassini later said the feeling was akin to “mort dans l’ame (death in my soul).”

Cassini soon got the boot. Shortly thereafter, Grace was in Cannes filming To Catch A Thief when a photographer from Paris Match prevailed upon her to do a photo spread with the prince of Monaco. As Rainier squired her around his private zoo, the journalist said later, “We felt like indiscreet onlookers.” Within months, the two were engaged, and Grace shocked the world by announcing she would retire.

Bill D’Arcy was pleased. “Good for her,” he says. “We knew she was going with Prince Rainier, he was at the house in East Falls, and it was great for her.” But long before she became Hollywood royalty, and then European royalty, Grace and her family, says D’Arcy, “were the royalty of Ocean City.”

Marjorie Preston is a freelance writer who has been published in Ladies Home Journal, Fitness, and New Woman magazines. The Ocean City Historical Museum is located at 1735 Simpson Ave. For more information call 399-1801."

Mrs. Doris Staley RIP 816 Wesley

2011-07-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

STALEY, DORIS LEAR (DAL) 90 - of Ocean City, went home to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, on July 11, 2011. Doris was an area resident most of her life. She was a graduate of Ocean City High School. She was a Shore Memorial Hospital volunteer, and active volunteer with the American Red Cross for 50 years, a member of St. Peter's United Methodist Church, a Friend of the Ocean City Library and an active Bridge player for 60 years. She loved to swim laps at the pool and go for long walks as long as she was able.

She was a faithful season ticket-holder to the Ocean City Pops every summer. She also enjoyed attending opera and theatre in New York and Philadelphia. Mrs. Staley was a retired antiques dealer. She had antique shops in the Cherry Hill Mall and Haddonfield, NJ.

She loved to write poetry ever since she was a child. One of her favorite poems was reminiscent of sleeping at the Alden Park Manor Hotel at Fourth Street and the beach, a hotel her father, Robert Lear, built during the Great Depression: "The Ocean is a special thing. It has a happy song to sing, of sun and sand and castles tall, and waves that break and make them small. At night when I lie down to sleep, there is no lullaby quite so sweet as the sound of the sea."

Survived by her daughter, Karen Staley of Atlanta, GA; sons Robert Stone and wife Phyllis, of Ocean City and John D. Staley, Jr. of Charlotte, NC; and sister, Louise Lear-Hastreiter of Atlanta, GA; and niece, Roberta Hastreiter-Heady of Atlanta, GA. Services are private. Arrangements made by the George H. Wimberg Funeral Home of Linwood.

Published in The Press of Atlantic City on July 27, 2011

Bill Kelly Notes:

Mrs. Staley was a good friend of my mother and a good neighbor. Her large rooming house at 816 Wesley was directly across the street from our home at 819 Wesley.

When we first moved to Ocean City in the mid-1960s, Bob and Jay (John) Staley were the first two guys who stopped by to say hello. They had some friends I also got to know wellm including their cousin Lynn Delcorio, who lived in the hugh apartment building at 4th St. and the Boardwalk. Lynn was a scuba diver who once came back with a monster lobster that I wrote a story about for the SandPaper. Lynn moved to Florida where I visited him with Rich McNally on our way to Key West, and he suggested we dive off the reef at Key Largo, which was an awesome experience.

Mrs. Staley's daughter Karen was also a good friend. When we formed CHIP - Citizens for Historic Preservation to try to save the old historic homes from demolition, Karen opposed us at first, but then later on was inspired to research the history of her home. She learned it was once owned by a family that included a Civil War soldier who died at Gettysburgh and became fascinated by the history.

While Jay and later Karen ran the apartments and rooming house, Bob helped his mom with collecting antiques for her Haddonfield and Cherry Hill Mall antiques stores.

Bob had attended Columbia University and played drums. He is now married to Phyllis Turner, a former hostess at the Tuckahoe Inn whose father made many of the floats for the Miss America Parade in his shop off the alley between West and Simpson Avenues.

Billy Mueller, who looked like General Custer with long blond hair and mustache, was a guitarist with Backroads, the local country blues band who played often at Brownies in Bargaintown, and also included Tom and Nancy and Jack Patch. Billy collected Les Paul guitars, and married Barbara Tucker, whose brother Kurt worked with me at Mack & Mancos on the Boardwalk. Kurt enlisted in the Navy and became a nuclear sub Captain.

I'll always be in debt to Billy Mueller for introducing me to Chris Columbo and the Kentucky Avenue music scene in the mid-1970s, as well as blues harpist James Cotton and Hubert Sumlin, guitarist for Howlin' Wolf.

Mrs. Staley was a real pistol. She played bridge with my mother once a week in the back room of the Chatterbox, which is just around the corner, or down the alley from 816.

I remember Mrs. Staley and my mother picking me up at the Philly airport when I returned from one of my frequent jaunts, and Mrs. Staley was driving. She was kind of dizzy so I had to take over the wheel, but she was a good friend and neighbor.

God Bless her and the whole Staley family.

Simms Restaurant 8th Street Boardwalk

2011-07-21T09:24:00.001-07:00

At one time there were dozens of family style restaurants in Ocean City, including the 21st. Street Restaurant (& Asbury Ave.), Watsons at 9th St. across from the Post Office, and among many others, Simms on the Boardwalk.

Simms served a set menu, but it was always very good and inexpensive. Then sometime in the late 70s early 80s, Roger bought it and made it a pinball arcade. I think that is when I took this photo, which seems to show the old Simms Restaurant signs but arcade games inside.

Roger, whose last name I can pronounce but can't spell, Jakobowaski - originally came from Camden, apparently investing his father's inheridance, starting off small, buying the traditional and longtime favorite Taylor Porkroll store, that had a unique mahogany paneling and counter.

It wasn't long before Roger owned a large part of the boardwalk and also the Jimminy Crickets bar and lounge on MacArthur Blvd. in Somers Point.

I don't know what happened to Roger in OC, but from what I understand he is now operating a bottled stream water company out of Upstate New York.

Last Remnants of the Sindia

2011-07-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

Parts of the Sindia wreck were visible at the 17th Street Beach for many years, at least into the early 1980s, as this post card from that era attests. There was also little grill on the beach at 17th st. that you could access from the beach or boardwalk, before it got condoed out.

819 Wesley in Winter

2011-07-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Seaspray Beach Path

2011-07-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Path to Seaspray Beach in the Northend of Ocean City is no longer there. Local residents took it over, fenced it in as part of their yard and cut off public access to the beach.

Marc Jordan

2011-07-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

Marc Jordan graduated with me from Camden Catholic HS in 1969, attended NYU, and despite being a 60s radical, enlisted in the USMC ROTC, after which he became a lawyer in NYC and now in DC. A good friend who often visited Ocean City, we went to Woodstock together and I enjoyed visiting him in NYC.

Molly and Aunt Ethel on the 819 Wesley Porch

2011-07-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

With Trooper and Katie the Cat

Bob Spiller at 819 Dining Room

2011-07-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

Bob Spiller at 819 Dining Room.
See Mom and Dad Kelly in the mirror.

Captain Chris Montagne and Pirate friend

2011-07-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Captain Chris Montagne and Pirate friend off Ocean City, NJ (circa 1970s).

Chris was a legendary fisherman, owned Chris' Restaurant next to Hogates at the end of the 9th Street Causeway for decades, ran fishing boats from there as well as his PT Boats, which he used to take tourists for boat rides.

(Photo Credit - Leo Kelly)

Ernie Ernist Filming at Seaspray Beach

2011-07-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

NFL Film photographer Ernie Ernist working at Seaspray Beach OCNJ (Circa 1976)

Mack & Manco Pizza Ocean City Boardwalk

2011-07-17T17:59:00.001-07:00

Ocean City beach at dusk

2011-07-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Ocean City Boardwalk

2011-07-17T17:55:00.000-07:00

The Flanders Hotel, Ocean City, NJ

2011-07-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

Local architect Vivian Smith designed the Flanders, as well as many other standout buildings, like the Ocean City Music Pier, City Hall and the old Ocean City High School.

Ocean City Music Pier

2011-07-17T17:50:00.000-07:00

Another classic Ocean City building by architect Vivian Smith, who also designed the Flanders, Ocean City City Hall, the original Ocean City High School and the Ventnor Municipal Building.

Also scroll down to see the Entrance Arch to the old Ocean City High School that was left as a testimony to Smith's art.

Scott & Duncan MacRae at Yesterdays Columbia S.C.

2011-07-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

Darrell Barnes, Scotty and Duncan MacRae at Yesterdays, Columbia, South Carolina

Duncan and Scott MacRae, from Lancaster, Pa., worked at Mack & Manco's on the Boardwalk in Ocean City (NJ), where I first met them. Duncan had worked there in the early 60s before I came along, and was a USMC helicopter pilot in Vietnam. After he got out of the service he got his old job back making pizzas, and his younger brother Scotty came in to work as a waiter.

One rainy Sunday afternoon when there was nobody on the boardwalk Duncan made three pizzas, and when we got done the 12-4pm shift he said "Let's go!" We got in his little sports car (a Corvette I think), and he drove us over the causeway to Bay Shores, where he parked right next to the front door. He instructed me to give the doorman one of the pizzas and that got us in the door. The next pizza went to the bartender at the first bar, Buddy Tweill, and the third pie went to the band, Malcolm and Hereafter (or was it the Bonnivilles?). Malcom were also from Lancaster, and a few of the band members were from West Virgina area.

I was only 17 and the drinking age was 21 but it didn't seem to matter to anyone. Buddy served me a long neck bottle of bud. It had to be around summer of 1967-68.

A few years later Joe Trechek and his wife Barbera Corneglia hired Scotty as a bartender at the Anchorage Tavern in Somers Point, while Duncan worked as a cook in the kitchen at the Crab Trap.

Then around 1976 Scott and Duncan and their friend Darrell moved to Columbia, S.C. to open their own place, Yesterdays, with a nostalgic down home Americana motif.

The next winter Brian O'Keeny and myself stopped by Columbia to visit them on the return leg of our first of our three cross-country expeditions, and found them expanding Yesterdays from a small corner joint to a larger place. The following year they had taken over the whole block. Although a hard core Scotsman, Duncan started the first Columbia St. Patrick's Day Parade, which ended at their bar at Five Points.

Hootie & the Blowfish were a local band who often hung out at Yesterdays, and Prince of Tides author Pat Conroy visits a special booth reserved for writers, and his younger brother worked there as a bartender.

Once when I visited my Ocean City neighbor Gay Talese he mentioned that his wife Nan, an editor and publisher, had wonderful writer, Pat Conroy, who included Yesterdays as a setting in his book. When the protagonist of Tides is called in to play for an injured starter in a Gamecocks football game, he scores a few touchdowns to win the game, and to celebrate, has dinner with his parents and girlfriend at Yesterdays. While the book is fiction, Yesterdays is not.

Yesterdays, Columbia, South Carolina http://www.yesterdayssc.com/history.php

A colorful past. A tasty future.

Experience Yesterdays’ hospitality and it will come as no surprise that the restaurant was born of friendship.

In 1976, 20-somethings Duncan MacRae, Scottie MacRae and Darrell Barnes set out to create a restaurant concept that was unmistakably their own. Rather than settling for the usual Italian, French or Chinese faire so popular at that time, the trio decided to open a made-from-scratch American restaurant, featuring regional classics from around the country.

Significant in the restaurant’s design is an onsite prep kitchen, in contrast to the microwave-crazed chains with whom they would be competing. “From the beginning, we’ve done everything from scratch, starting with what is fresh and in season,” said Darrell. “It’s always been that way.”

Each day begins with a selection of farmer’s market vegetables, to which the freshest chicken, beef and seafood are added. The menu has grown significantly since the early days and now offers a wide variety of international dishes and southern favorites. However, many patrons routinely order from the daily specials menu which features a changing selection based on seasonal availability.

Also of interest is Yesterdays location. The three of them made a trip to Columbia, South Carolina in 1976 and drove by the unusual flatiron building that housed Lombardi’s restaurant. They thought the building would make a great location for their new venture, located close to both the University of South Carolina and many state government offices. After seeing an ad in the paper the next day for a restaurant for sale, Duncan called the number and the person answered “Lombardi’s.”

The area surrounding the restaurant, called Five Points, was struggling, but the partners believed in the location and their concept. They bought the building, moved to Columbia and Yesterdays was born. Today, the restaurant remains in the unusual “flatiron” shaped building and serves as the hub of Five Points, now a landmark of shopping, dining and entertainment.

“It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years,” said Duncan. “We’ve grown up right along with this restaurant—as have many of our regulars and employees.”

Then he laughed, “If we’d known we’d last this long, we’d a partied less!”

Vivian Smith's Old Ocean City High School Arch

2011-07-05T00:57:00.000-07:00

When they demolished the old Ocean City high school, they left the entrance arch, which stands as a tribute to the legacy of the young and neglected artist and architect Vivian Smith, whose other buildings include Ocean City Music Pier, Ocean City Hall, the Flanders Hotel and the Ventnor Municipal Building, each with their own unique attributes.

Grace Kelly - The Barefoot Princess Next Door

2011-06-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

Grace outside her family's Ocean City home at 26th Street in Ocean City.

Vision of Grace
(This article first appeared in Atlantic City Magazine, January 1999)

Grace Kelly grew up at the Jersey Shore. The people who remember her as the kid next door recall her rise to Hollywood stardom, then royalty.

The Princess Next Door – Grace Kelly, screen actress and royal princess, summered at the Jersey Shore, where she is remembered as the girl next door.

By William Kelly

The Princess Next Door

Grace Kelly was a princess of our very own, who spent most ever summer vacation of her life on the Ocean City beach.

She was a princess who died suddenly in a tragic automobile accident in France, causing the world to stop and reflect on the life of the beautiful women who came from humble roots, married royalty, became a patron of charities, and was popular with ordinary people.

Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly Grace Kelly of Philadelphia and Ocean City, died nearly 15 years ago to the day before the death of Princess Diana. The death of Diana brought a sense of déjà vu to many people who knew Grace, sparking memories of the actress and Princess who her Ocean City neighbors knew as the barefoot girl next door.

“As in their death, their lives took similar paths,” noted Julie Knipe Brown in an article that appeared in The Philadelphia Daily News at the time of Diana’s death:

“Both young, shy and strikingly beautiful, they were swept off their feet by prince charmings, married in lavish ceremonies, and dogged by gossip columnists and photographers the world over. They produced heirs to thrones, played host to worthwhile charities, and spawned fashion trends that served as benchmarks of elegance and grace. One renounced Hollywood to marry a prince. The other eventually renounced her prince and fell in love with a Hollywood prince charming. Neither lived happily ever after. Diana’s marriage ended in scandal and divorce, while biographers often portrayed Grace as a drinker, distanced from her husband. Somehow, frailty made us love them even more, as tragic and heroic figures.”

Of the dozens of books that have been published about Grace Kelly, few ring true, especially references concerning her life at the Jersey Shore. One “interpretive biography” claims she spent her summers in “…Margate, the nicest section of the town.” After publication of one sensationalist pseudo-biography, Grace’s cousin John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy, noted, “If any fraction of what that book described had taken place, do you think that the press would have let that gone unreported? Do you think it is only a coincidence that ever person that he accuses her of having an affair with is now dead?”

Those who knew Grace Kelly in Ocean City, even those merely acquainted with her, remember her as a beautiful, talented women with ambition, who prized her family and cherished Ocean City’s hometown family spirit.

Like many Philadelphia families, the Kellys vacationed in Ocean City, eventually buying property and building a house that they returned to ever spring. The Kellys were famous, however, before Grace became and actress and princess. The family tree is firmly rooted in her father, John B. Kelly, Sr., who was born near the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia to immigrant Irish parents.

John B. Kelly left school to work in the building trade and eventually had a hand in constructing practically every major skyscraper in center city Philadelphia during his lifetime, beginning with the John Wannamaker department store when he was a teenager. Growing up on the Schuylkill, home of Boathouse Row, he became a member of a rowing club and went on to win two gold medals in the Olympics and both the singles and doubles rowing championships in 1920 and in 1924. Yet Kelly was not permitted to compete in the Diamond Sculls at Henley, England. The competition was only open to so-called “gentlemen,” and as a bricklayer, who worked with his hands, he was considered a common worker, and not a “gentleman.”

At the christening of his son, he vowed that John B. Kell, Jr. (Jack, aka ‘Kell”) would avenge the slight, and he groomed him to win at Henley from a very early age.

Establishing his own construction company, with the slogan, “Kelly For Brickwork,” Kelly prospered. But the Philadelphia Main Line blue blood society of “old money” shunned the new wealth of blue-collar Kellys, who lived on Henry Avenue in East Falls.

In the summer, Kelly the family to Ocean City, which later became known as “America’s greatest family resort,” where he rented a seasonal house for few years before he built a brick house in the then popular Spanish Revival style on the northwest corner of 26th and Wesley Avenue in 1929, the year Grace was born.

As it was just across the street from the ocean, the house was a retreat from active days in the water and on the beach. Family friend Marie Magee recalled, “little as she was, (Grace) would go out in that ocean and swim through the huge waves.”

Both John B. Sr. and Jr. were supporters of the Ocean City Lifeguard Association and often took the lifeguard boats out beyond the breakers, where they rowed from one end of the island to the other, preparing for the day Jack would row at Henley. Eventually, he did go to Henley and won the Diamond Sculls championship that was denied he father.

“No American family has given the nation a legend more honorable than this,” wrote John McCall, an Ocean City neighbor, “we are American gentlemen because of that.”

As the boys became gentlemen in boats on the water, it was also in Ocean City where the girls grew up to become ladies. As biographer Sarah Bradford described it, “At Ocean City there would be nights on the boardwalk…The Moorlyn Cinema, where Grace often used to go, is still there, a period piece with a facade designed to look like the noise of a 1950s automobile. There were no bars, because Ocean City was, and is, dry, and Grace and her friends would go to Matt’s to have hamburgers and coke after the movies and dance to the jukebox barefoot on the boardwalk so they got splinters in their feet.”

In their early teens, Grace and her friends Carol Macallister and Maree Rambo got jobs as waitresses at the Chatterbox restaurant on 9th Street and Central Avenue (which is also still there). That summer Grace dressed like a beauty queen and waved to the crowd from the Chatterbox float in the annual boardwalk parade, but their waitress jobs were taken away when Maree Ramob’s mother learned they were going to work at night, past curfew, and they still weren’t allowed to date.

The Kelly family grew and prospered. In addition to older brother Jack, Grace had older sister Peggy and younger sister Lizanne.

While his family played on the beach, Grace’s father could often be found on the Northfield Links of the Atlantic City Country Club, where he met Frank “Hap” Farley and James “Sonny” Fraser. With Farley, who took over as political boss when Enoch “Nucky” Johnson went to jail, and Fraser, a state legislator, Kelly became part of the syndicate that bought the Atlantic City Country Club during World War II.

But they had bigger ambitions – bring legal gambling to Atlantic County by establishing the Atlantic City Race Track, which was built by Kelly’s construction company. The Track opened on July 22, 1946, and quickly became the most popular attraction at the Jersey Shore, routinely drawing tens of thousands of people for every meet, including President Eisenhower and celebrities like Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.

But the beach was still the place for the Kelly family during the day. “Each summer there was Ma Kelly’s Labor Day party and open air barbeque in Ocean City,” wrote Sarah Bradford. “Parents, children, everybody was invited.” As friend Alice Waters recalled, “There were games, we had watermelon spitting contests and we had hide-and-seek, and we sang and roasted marshmallows. It was something I grew up with and loved.”

Mrs. (Margaret) Kelly, who attended Temple University and was a physical education instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, was as much into the sports scene as her husband and children. She ran the house and the beach.

Jim Campbell, who used to rent beach chairs for Bert’s Beach Service at the 26th street beach recalls, “Every morning the first thing I did was set up some chairs and umbrellas for Mrs. Kelly. She would come out to the porch and wave, and later bring me something cold to drink, and at the end of the day she would give me a dollar tip.”

When dinner was ready, Mrs. Kelly rang a bell on the porch that would signal everyone to come in for the evening meal.

Grace’s sister Peggy Kelly Conlan, recalled for Ocean City historian Tim Cain, “My brother was always their mascot, so we always knew the lifeguards. There were very few people on our beach in the early days…”

One lifeguard, William Ashmead said, “One year I had the distinction of working for about three weeks in the early part of the season at 26th Street. The Kelly family (was) very nice, great to the lifeguards. Grace would bring us down sandwiches and milk and sodas…Grace was probably about 16 at the time. Who knew then that she would become that famous?”

All the boys on the beach remember Grace, especially when she became old enough to date.

“The beach was a very big part of the routine here,” recalls Grace’s sister Liz LeVine. Swimming, walking along the beach and boardwalk, riding bikes and going to 14th Street – that was the most popular beach at the time.”

“I met her on the 14th Street beach the year she got out of Stevens School [a high school in the Germantown section of Philadelphia] recalls Dick Boccelli. “My father knew their family from the same neighborhood in Philly, and I knew her brother Jack, who I played basketball with down at the 6th Street courts. But it was an old chum of mine who introduced me to her on the beach, and we started dating.”

“I took her out in my father’s 47 Lincoln, so her father thought I had money,” says Boccelli, “but she knew and to her, it didn’t matter.” Boccelli recalls taking her to shows in Atlantic City and ending up at Vaughn Comfort’s club on the Somers Point Circle, where they were entertained by singing waiters.

“Grace had a great personality…a good sense of humor, was bright, sharp, fun to be with, and there were no pretensions about her,” says Boccelli, who played football at West Chester College at the time. “The whole family is big into sports and when she came to one of my football games I had a friend of mine sit with her in the stands so nobody would hit up on her. My mistake was that after we were going out for about six months, I introduced her to the most handsome man at West Chester, and that was it for me.”

“She wanted to be an actress,” recalls Boccelli. “I went up to New York and saw her in her first role [1949 Broadway production of The Father] and she did a wonderful job. She was picked out, not because of who she was, but because she was that good and stood out. To me, she was a natural,” adds Boccelli, “and when they gave her that phony accent, they missed the boat, but that’s Hollywood.”

In the summer, the Atlantic City Race Track was known as the “Hollywood by the Sea,” and Grace was the vivacious daughter of one of the owners.

“We all knew Grace,” recalls Henry Block, a former jockey at the track. “She would sit in the owner’s box, but we’d see her around the town, and she was always up for something. One day I ran into her at the Circle Diner in Somers Point, and since we were both heading out to the track, she said, “do you want to race?’”

According to Block, she drove a station wagon down Shore Road, cut over through Bargaintown, and beat him to the track.

Others remember her going with the crowd at night to Bay Shores and Tony Marts in Somers Point, where she would drink and dance to the rock & roll bands. “She was a beautiful person and a beautiful dancer,” recalls Carol Macallister, who attended Stevens School with Grace. “I could never understand why Hollywood didn’t play up her dancing.”

Once she became a movie star, she began dating men she met in Hollywood and New York. As one biographer put it, “Of course it was never easy to be Grace Kelly’s boyfriend, but when Grace brought Oleg Cassini home to meet her folks, the conversation at the dinner table was uneasy, as both John B., and her brother Jack did not take a shine to the European Casanova…Then, while attending the Canes Film Festival on the South of France, she was persuaded to take a photo shoot at the castle home of Prince Rainier of Monaco at nearby Monte Carlo.”

Grace’s marriage to Prince Rainier Grimaldi III of Monaco was the international social event of the 1950s. Rainier came to Ocean City on more than one occasion, visited the Kelly family at the beach, and sat in the owner’s box at the racetrack. Scruitized by Grace’s father, Rainier was acceptable, even if a little stuffy compared to the carefree Kellys.

Her career as an actress was over, however, as she would devote herself full time to her family and never return to the silver screen.

Of course, the wedding was not in Philadelphia, nor in Ocean City, but at Monaco’s Cathedral of St. Nicholas. Rainier arranged for an ocean liner to bring the entire Kelly clan to Mone Carlo – a voyage, ceremony, and party that became the most sensational news event in the world.

Even after she attained Royal Status, Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco returned to Ocean City on a regular basis with children Caroline, Albert and Stephanie, usually around Labor Day, to attend the annual family reunion and beach barbeque.

“Ocean City was an important part of Grace’s life,” wrote Sarah Bradford. “She would bring her own Grimaldi children to the Shore every year as if to remind them that this solid Middle America resort with its healthy pleasures was as much art of their heritage as the glittering life of the Cote d’ Azur…it ws part of Grace’s plan that the =children should remain aware of their American heritage, and they would spend part of every summer with their Kelly cousins at Ocean City.”

By that time, the Kelly clan had outgrown the original house, and in 1960, the year John B. Sr. died, a new home was built on the beach across the street from the first house. Capping a successful life for Grace’s father, it was naturally made of brick.

Neighbor Kate Field said, “I don’t think of them as royalty,” and recalled one afternoon when the young Stephanie and Albert were riding skateboards in the house up and down the hall when her grand-mother said, ‘Put the skateboard away.’ And that was it for the skateboard.”

Grace enjoyed returning to Ocean City because it was a place where she could be herself, without being bothered by the press or the public. As one of her bridesmaids, Judith B. Quine, explained, “Grace relaxed…at Ocean City…Together with her brother (Jack) and sister-in-law Mary, and with her two sisters and their husbands, they took the family’s younger se for walks on the beach and boardwalk, collecting souvenirs and seashells as they ambled. There were the inevitable barbecues, potato sack races, horseshoe crab games, and other competitions, which reminded Grace of every childhood summer she had spent with her family at the shore.”

Cousin John Lehman, who keeps the family Labor Day beach tradition going, said, “We have surfing contests, bake-offs, and other competitions at a kind of a picnic. Grace used to come and officiate the competitions…She never lost sight of or forgot the values of ‘the family first.’ And that is so rare, since so often you find people who succeed, and totally sacrifice their family, and she didn’t.”

On Lehman’s birthday, September 14, 1982, the first season she did not make it to the family reunion in Ocean City, Grace Kelly died after her car swerved off a road and went over a cliff in the south of France, an accident her daughter, Stephanie, miraculously survived.

Ocean City neighbor Kate Field recalled hearing about it on the radio. “I’ll never forget hearing about it because I was taking laundry down and I went to reach for a clothespin, and I couldn’t touch it,” she told Tim Cain. “That’s how paralyzed I as. I went to Lizanne’s house, and by the time I got there Lizanne was on the phone and I wrapped my arms around her and she said, ‘My God, I can’t believe what we’re hearing.’ All Lizanne kept saying was, ‘Isn’t it terrible, isn’t it terrible!’”

“The phone rang and then they got the official word,” Field recalled, “and I don’t think it was five minutes…we looked out the picture window and on the sand dunes there were TV cameramen out there.” Lizanne’s husband Don LeVine remembered saying, “How can they do this to us now?”

“I think the Kellys were role models,” said Field. “I think they meant stability. There were many times in their lives when they met with difficulties, and they showed that you just have to hang in there and pull it together and make it through.”

Grace’s sister Peggy and Ma Kelly have since died Daughter Caroline was in Ocean City when her husband was killed while participating in a speed boat race. In 1985 brother Jack suffered a heart attack while jogging in Philadelphia. Within hours, only a few blocks away, Peggy’s husband also died of a heart attack. East River Drive, which runs along the Schuylkill River, was renamed Kelly Drive in the Kelly family’s honor.

Grace is also honored by the Princess Grace Foundation, which awards scholarships to artists, dancers, actors, and actresses every year at a gala ball in New York’s Waldorf Astoria. Liz LeVine’s son is on the Board of Directors that chooses the scholarship winners annually. LeVine and her husband now live at the house on the 26th Street beach.

SHORTLY AFTER PRINCESS DIANA DIED, A NEIGHBOR OF mine bought Flannery O’Conner’s Irish Short Stories at a garage sale for 50 cents, and opened the cover, where there was an inscription signed by Grace Kelly. As a member of the “other” Kelly family that lives on Wesley Avenue in Ocean City, I was shown the inscription and asked to authenticate it. I called Liz LeVine to ask if she would authenticate the signature as her sister’s handwriting.

“Come on over,’ she said. So I rode a bike down the street, rang the doorbell, and was quite surprised when a young women answered the door. “Hello, I’m Grace, Grace LeVine, come on in.”

Liz Levine looked at the inscription and immediately noted that it was not her sister’s signature. She closed the book and sighed. “The death of Di has certainly stirred a lot of memories of Grace,” she said. “We’re getting phone calls from people we haven’t heard form in years. There are a lot of strange similarities in their lives, though Grace was 52, and not as young as Di. It doesn’t seem that long, but it’s been almost exactly 15 years since Grace died, so a lot of people have been remembering things and calling.”

And their paths did cross, she said. Grace attended Princess Di’s wedding, and Diana went to Grace’s funeral as the official representative of the British royal family.

“Grace was not a prima donna,” her younger sister said. “Certainly did not dress like an actress or a princess, at least not while she was in Ocean City. She’d come in, kick off her shoes, and run around barefoot, just like the rest of us.”

Just like the rest of us. And that’s how her Ocean City neighbors remember Grace, the barefoot girl next door.

This article first appeared in Atlantic City Magazine – January 1999

[William Kelly can be reached at billkelly3@gmail.com ]

The American Prince - Albert in Ocean City, N.J.

2011-06-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

PRINCE ALBERT OF MONACO

As Prince Albert prepares to get married in Monaco this weekend, I thought it appropriate to point out that his mother was an American who spent ever summer of her life in Ocean City, NJ USA, except her last one.

She was literally the Princess next door [see: Atlantic City Magazine article] who was born in 1929, the year that her father built the Spanish Revival style brick home that still stands on the northwest corner of 26th street and Wesley Avenue in Ocean City. Her brother was a life guard and she worked as a waitress at the Chatterbox and hanged out with her sisters and friends at the 4th street beach. She celebrated her sweet 16 birthday party at the Seaview Country Club, and was sophisticated enough to get served at the bars in Somers Point before she was 21. She loved to act and danced at Bay Shores and Tony Marts.

Grace Kelly left town for Broadway and then Hollywood, but always came back to Ocean City every summer to spend time with her family. One summer she brought a guest with her - Prince Rainier III of Monaco, who she met while filming To Catch a Thief in Monte Carlo.

She had previously brought home guys who her father John B. and brother "Kell," both Olympic rowing champions, thought the less of, and just didn't cut muster with them.

But Rainier was a "Man's Man" who John B. took a liking to, especially after he showed his knowledge of horses at the Atlantic City Race course.

Grace and Rainier were married in the "wedding of the century" that has never been eclipsed, though challenged by Princess Di and more recently by Prince William.

John B. leased an ocean liner for his family and friends to sail to Monaco for the affair, and a few years later, as Margaret, his American grandmother called him, "Bonny" Prince Albert of Monaco was born in 1958, and as the BBC reported at the time: “A celebratory 101-gun salute has been fired in Monaco after Princess Grace - formerly film star Grace Kelly - gave birth to a son.In spite of elaborate arrangements made for announcing the birth, the world learnt about the baby's arrival when a woman at a palace window shouted to waiting journalists: ;It's a boy, it's a boy.'"

"The 8lb 11oz baby who was born at just before 1100 local time is to be named Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre. He will be known as Prince Albert," and noted that,"The baby takes automatic precedence over his one-year-old sister, Princess Caroline. The young princess appeared on a palace balcony in the arms of her father, Prince Rainier III, shortly after her brother was born. Prince Rainier later broadcast an address to the nation announcing the Crown Prince's birth. Speaking to journalists, the princess' mother, Margaret Kelly said both her daughter and the baby were doing well. ‘It is a bonny, bonny prince,’ Mrs Kelly said.”

Officially noting the fact that, "Prince Albert was born March 14, 1958 to HSH Princess Grace (1929-1982) and HSH Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The day following Albert’s birth was declared a public holiday; flags and flowers were everywhere," and explaining the significance of the event because, "Albert’s birth ensured that Monaco remained independent of France for another generation. Under a treaty signed by both countries in 1918, if Monaco had no heir, it would become subject to French laws."

Although he was of European royalty, his mother took Albert and his sisters to Ocean City with her most summers to ensure that they experienced the American scene, and understood her mother's blue collar Irish background.

Although Grace's younger sister Lizanne missed the wedding because she was pregnant with her daughter, named Grace, she ended up babysitting Albert when he visited Ocean City with his mother. Lizanne once recalled to me that Albert developed a distinctly American streak in him, and his mother would have to scold him for riding his skateboard in the house.

By this time John B. had built another brick beach house across the street from the Spanish Revival one, and both John B. and Grace's brother Jack, or "Kell," as they called him, rowed with the lifeguards and spent a lot of time at the Atlantic City Race Track, which John B. had built and where Lizanne's husband Don worked as a steward.

Spending part of each summer with his mother in Ocean City, Albert and his sisters played ball on the beach with the lifeguards and ate at Mack & Mancos tomato pie on the boardwalk. When dinner was ready mother Margaret would ring the ship's bell that hung by the back door and everyone would come in off the beach. Margaret would later pass away quietly in the Linwood Convalescent Center.

In the mid-Sixties, I was their neighbor, and remember the large Kelly family frequently patronizing the 22nd Street Restaurant where I worked as a busboy. The restaurant was owned by Mr. Patradus, a friend of my father who was from Greece, and his restaurant was just around the corner from the Kelly house. The one thing about them was they weren't treated special and didn't seem to expect it. They were just another family on vacation at the Shore.

As the news report notes, "From all accounts, Albert had a happy childhood much as any other child. He attended school at the Lycee Albert I of Monaco where he received his baccalaureate diplomawith distinction in 1976. Then, from 1977 to 1981, he studied at Amherst College in Massachusetts and graduated on May 30, 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. Following the time spent at Amherst, Prince Albert served in the French Navy as second grade sub-lieutenant, on board the helicopter-carrier 'Jeanne d'Arc'."

Albert not only was educated at an American college, he also participated in the Olympics, following the lead of his grandfather John B. and uncle "Kel," both of whom won Olympic medals in sculling. "Throughout his life, Albert participated in many sports, including soccer, handball, judo, swimming, tennis, sailing, skiing, squash, fencing and rowing and in several Winter Olympic Games as a member on the Monaco bobsled team."

Their cousin, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, still maintains the family's Ocean City traditions, and recalled how they all used to play very competitively in games on the beach. I'm pretty sure that John Lehman will be at the wedding, representing the Kelly side of the family, and make sure that the American streak is honorably exhibited during the proceedings.

Besides cleaning up his family's dinner plates as the busboy at the 22nd Street Restaurant, I had the honor of meeting Albert on two occasions, the first in 1983, at the Ocean City memorial service for his mother at the Ocean City Music Pier, and then again in 1988 in Australia.

After the memorial service at the Music Pier, I was invited to a second reception at the old red brick school house on Wesley Avenue in Ocean City, which has since been demolished to make room for a dog park. At the time however, it was being used as an Arts Center, and was right down the street from where I lived at 819 Wesley, and about twenty blocks from the Kelly beach house at 26th street, which was also on Wesley Avenue.

On the day Grace Kelly died, since our name was Kelly and we lived on the same street, we got a lot of wayward phone calls meant for them. The answering machine at my house had a dozen seemingly important messages from all around the world that my brother Leo dutifully transcribed and then delivered to the home of the Other Kellys on Wesley Avenue. We were the Camden Kellys and they were the Philly Kellys.

At the reception at the Arts Center, local realtor John Carey, another big supporter of the Ocean City Lifeguards, presented Albert with a plaque that he had handmade, while I drifted off into the corner with "Kell," Grace's brother.

While we sipped wine and dabbled in some cheese bits, I asked Kell to tell me his Olympic story so I would hear it right from the horse's mouth and not second hand, and he obliged. Back in the 1920s, Kell explained, his father, the late John B. was a sculler, as were most of the boys who grew up along the Schuylkill River near Conshohocken. His father John B. won the Olympic Gold Medals in singles and doubles but was not permitted to enter the elite British Henley races because he was a bricklayer and worked with his hands, and the Henley bylaws only permitted proper gentlemen to compete.

Well, from that time on, John B. raised his son to be a rower, and row he did. Kell not only rowed on the Schuylkill with the crews from Boathouse Row, but also with the lifeguards off the Ocean City beach. Kell said he was primed, his whole life from birth, to win the Henley. Although he only won the Bronze medal in the Olympics, he went to Henley to achieve what the British wouldn't allow his father to do, and that he did. Upon winning the Henley race on the Thames, he returned home to a hero's welcome.

While Kell was recounting the story, Albert came over and John B. introduced me to him and we talked briefly. Kell however, didn't last much longer, and he too died while jogging along East River Drive, now Kelly Drive in Philadelphia.

I thought it amusing however, that when Prince Rainier built some new ritzy apartment buildings on the hills overlooking the harbor at Monte Carlo, Grace was given the honor of naming them, and she chose to call them Schuylkill and Conshohocken, after the river and Philly neighborhood near where she grew up in East Falls.

A few years later, while I was in Freemantle, Australia for the America's Cup sailing regatta, Albert was the guest of honor at the America's Cup Ball, and we again crossed paths briefly on the dance floor. While I know he didn't remember me, I told him I was from Ocean City and his eyes lit up and he asked me to introduce him to Jimmy Buffet. Actually, the photo of me in a tux on this page was taken that night. The local Australians had a contest to see who would be Albert's date that night, but the spotlight was always on him and he couldn't let his American side out.

As the report continues, "Prince Albert has been preparing for the most import role of his life - that of future leader of Monaco. He attends cabinet meetings with Prince Rainier and heads Monaco’s delegation to the United Nations. Prince Albert also serves on several national and international committees, organizations and federations mostly related to athletic and humanitarian concerns. Prince Albert is also Vice-President of the Princess Grace-USA Foundation in honor of his mother who passed on September 14, 1982. He attends social and official occasions such as the yearly Red Cross Ball. As health problems continue to sideline Prince Rainier, Prince Albert finds himself more in the spotlight. Prince Albert has two siblings, an older sister, Princess Caroline and a younger sister, Princess Stephanie."

While Caroline and Stephanie have been pretty quiet of late, Albert has admitted fathering a child with a stewardess before his father passed, and has taken his responsibilities as a ruler of the municipality of Monaco seriously.

More recently, in early February, he hosted an emergency conference on the revolutionary crisis that is sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, recognizing its significance early and taking immediate measures to deal with it.

And now, following closely on the heels of Prince William, "Bonny" Prince Albert is getting married, much to the delight of the citizens of Monaco, who will undoubtedly throw a big party in his honor.

From my brief impressions of him, I'd say that Albert will not have as big affair as William, though I'm sure he'll consult with Willy before hand and there will be plenty of pomp and circumstance.

Prince Albert's wedding will certainly be a great event, and should include somethings that will represent and reflect his mother's influence and his American roots, though I don't think he will ride his skateboard down the isle.

Bill Kelly
billkelly3@gmail.com

George Savisky - 1948-49 Champion Eagle

2011-06-22T00:15:00.000-07:00

1948 Champion Philadelphia Eagles football team included George Savisky

Ocean City’s George Savitsky

George Savitsky was one of my Ocean City neighbors, his daughter Lisa was my mailgirl.

I talked with Savitsky when he was honored at the annual Maxwell sports dinner in Philadelphia one year for being a four time college All-American and a two time Philadelphia Eagles champion lineman.

“I’m honored to be in such company,” he said from his Ocean City home before the dinner, where he was slated to sit at the head table with quarterback Randal Cunningham and former coach Art Shell.

Savitsky, originally from Camden, was named to All American teams each of his four years at Pann (44-47), he also played on two world championship Philadelphia Eagle teams (48-49) and lived in Ocean City for 30 years.

Besides being honored by the Maxwell Club, Savitsky was one of twelve players and three coaches inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in New York.

“I was a two-way lineman in those years at Penn,” said Savitsky, “a year older than Chuck Bednarik.”

Bednarik, the last of the two way, offensive and defensive players, went on to play on the Eagles with Savitsky.

“They were the Steve Van Buren years,” he said, “with Tommy Thompson, the one-eyed quarterback who led us to the championships.”

“It’s nice to be remembered after all these years,” said Savitsky. “Gone, but not forgotten. But no one can accomplish things, alone, without team mates, family and friends.”

To be eligible for nomination to the College Football Hall of Fame a player must be out of college for ten years and must have been a first team All American at least one year during his college career. Among the other players inducted with Savitsky were wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff (Florida State), lineman Alex Karras (Iowa) and Heisman Trophy winners Pat Sullivan (Oklahoma) and Steve Owens (Auburn).

“They’re all younger guys,” Savitsky noted. “I’m about the oldest player among those elected, but that’s pretty good company.”

After playing with the Eagles, Savitsky became a dentist, explaining that they didn’t make the kind of money that current players earn, only getting $300 per game.

“I had to raise a family,” said Savitsky, “and I couldn’t do it playing football.”

Me and Rod Serling - Enter The Twilight Zone

2011-06-19T02:27:00.000-07:00

Rod Serling

Witness one Rod Serling – Standing alone, flesh, blood, muscle and mind. A frustrated actor turned writer, he stands forever in the nightmare of his own creation, pressed into service in the role of narrator for a weekly television drama – The Twilight Zone.

For those who watched and listened, he showed how thin a line separates that which we assume to be real and that which is a product of our own minds.

There is that hauntingly repetitious four-beat score that opens the show, as Serling, dressed conservatively in dark suit and tie, steps out of the shadows and stands in the starry night. With his hands clasped in front of him, he says in his distinctive voice, talking out of the side of his mouth:

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is also an area we call the Twilight Zone.”

Marc Scott Zicree, in his book The Twilight Zone Companion (Bantam, 1982) tells us that the original music for the show was composed by Bernard Herman, who also did such classic film scores as Citizen Kane, Psycho and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Zicree describes it as, “a subtle and lonely piece scored for strings, harp, flute and brass,” but that was replaced after on season “by the more familiar rhythmic theme by French avant-guarde composer Marius Consant.”

As for the name of the show, Serling said, “I thought I’d made it up, but I’ve since heard that there is an Air Force term relating to a moment when a plane is coming down on approach and the pilot cannot see the horizon, it’s called the twilight zone, but it’s an obscure term which I had not heard before.”

Since then the lexicon should show that the CIA psychologists used the term to denote the state of mind of subjects to whom they administered LSD.

But from now on the term “Twilight Zone” will forever be associated with Serling, who conceived the idea for the TV show and wrote many if not most of the scripts. He made the show unique, parlaying an award wining TV drama into the half-hour weekly program that didn’t have the continuity that plots and characters give sit-coms and soap operas.

When word got out that the show would be scary, Serling rejected the advances of agents representing various monster and robot actors who monopolized other sci-fi shows, politely telling them he had something else “in mind.”

And indeed, the Twilight Zone would stimulate endless nightmares, portraying ordinary people in frightening predicaments. But it made people think, and come back for more.

Serling’s contract only called for him to write 80% of the shows, and for Orson Wells to do the narration, but when Orson Wells required more money than they were allocated, and others just didn’t seem right, Serling volunteered to do the narration himself. While it turned out to be the most familiar and endearing part of the series, it was also Serling’s own personal nightmare, as he had stage fright.

The producers and director were at first skeptical of Serling himself doing the opening dialog, but then, as Serling put it, “They looked at me and said, ‘Hell, at least he’s articulate and speaks English, so let’s use him.’ Only my laundress knows how frightened I was.”

According to Zicree, “Serling had more problems adjusting to his on screen role than just stumbling over the occasional word.”

Director Lamont Johnson said, “Rod was a very nervous man before the camera. When he had to do lead in time he would go through absolute hell. He would sweat and sputter and go pale. He was terribly ill at ease in front of a camera.”

Like all successful TV programs, they last only as long as the scripts maintain a certain quality, and writing is what Serling did best.

Born Rodman Edward Serling on Christmas day 1924 in Syracuse, New York, Serling was the second son of Ester and Samuel Serling, his father a wholesale meat dealer.

Popular, outspoken and confident, Serling read pulp paperback novels and mimicked movie actors as a kid. He went in for dramatics in high school, and served as a paratrooper in the Philippines during World War II. After the service he attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and started writing radio scripts and bad poetry.

His wife Carol, who published a Twilight Zone magazine that featured original short fiction, recalls that Rod’s writing habits got him up at dawn. After grabbing a cup of coffee, he would “dictate his scripts into a tape machine.” Often, if the weather was nice, he’d take the machine outside with him and sit by the pool.”

One friend noted, “He is the only person I knew who could get a tan and make money at the same time.”

After five seasons of the Twilight Zone, Serling hosted another TV weekly, The Night Gallery, which also developed short story themes.

Then, years after Serling’s death, they made The Twilight Zone movie, which adapted a few of the original shows to film. It partially succeeded, but the death of actor Vic Morrow and two children in its making put a stigma on the production.

While Serling wrote most of the Twilight Zone TV segments, only “It’s a Grand Life,” about a spoiled boy with supernatural powers, was written by Serling that is included in the film. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which originally stared William Shatner, was written by Richard Matheson, and first published in the Anthology “Alone By Night” (Ballentine, 1961), while “Kick the Can” was written by George Clayton Johnson.

Johnson once said, “On the Twilight Zone, there was an attempt to keep it literary, to keep it bright, to keep it good. No one in the show ever suggested that something would be good enough – although that’s common today in commercial television. Just to do it good enough. Quality control counted in the Twilight Zone.”

In his last published interview several months before his death, Serling said, “I just want them to remember me a hundred years from now. I don’t care that they’re not able to quote a single line that I’ve written. But just that they can say, ‘Oh, he was a writer,’ That’s sufficiently an honored position for me.”

In May, 1975, Serling suffered a mild heart attack while scheduled to give a lecture at a college in upstate New York, and had to have a coronary bypass operation.

When I read in the news papers that he was in the hospital, I sent him a small note, mentioning that I too had attended classes at Antioch College while a student at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and included a poem by William Bulter Yeats, from Supernatural Songs – The Four Ages of Man.

“He with body waged a fight, but body won, it walks upright.
Then he struggled with the heart, innocence and peace depart.
Then he struggled with the mind, his proud heart he left behind.
Now his war on God begins; at stroke of midnight, God shall win.”

A few days later, on June 28, 1975, after ten hours of open heart surgery, complications arose and Rod Serling died. I heard about it on television at home in Ocean City, and wondered if he ever got my note.

The next day I went out on the porch and took the mail from the mail box and was surprised to see one postmarked from upstate New York. The corner of the envelope said it was from Rod Serling.

I could hear the music from the Twilight Zone as I opened the envelop – Da da, da da, da, da, da da....

It was brief and to the point, typewritten, apparently dictated and signed, thanking me for the poem, and saying that he was really worse off than what the newspapers had let it out to be, and that he wouldn’t be working on any projects for awhile.

And now he’s stuck in that middle ground between light and shadow, and is remembered not as a writer, but as our host in his personal nightmare – the Twilight Zone.
Now whenever anything strange or unexpected happens, we hear the faint strains of that music, and quickly turn around, half-expecting to see him standing there, in dark suit and tie, hands clasped in front of him, welcoming us.

Gay Talese at his table at Elaines?

2011-05-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK — Everyone went to Elaine's – and now they'll have nowhere to go.

For regulars still mourning the death of Elaine Kaufman in December, the news that her namesake restaurant in Manhattan was closing on Thursday has been a double blow. They gathered one last time at the place where they ate so-so food while rubbing shoulders with the likes of Michael Caine and Woody Allen. And then they will be cast adrift.

"Half the people in this room are never going to see one another again," said legendary writer Gay Talese, who added that Elaine's had created a circle of people, many of whom had nothing in common besides the place itself.

"This is saying goodbye to one another," Talese said.

"I don't know what many of us will do," said TV broadcaster Rikki Klieman, who was introduced to Elaine's by her husband, Bill Bratton, a former New York City police commissioner and Los Angeles police chief. "I guess we'll just have to stay home."

Bratton held court in the packed room at "Jack Maple's table." Maple was the architect of CompStat, the system the New York Police Department uses to track crime. He sketched it out on a napkin at the table in 1994, Bratton said.

"You're going to hear the term bittersweet a lot tonight," Bratton said. "There will be plenty of stories told at these tables tonight and few more made."

Elaine's was synonymous with plugged-in New York for the better part of five decades. "And they were all impressed with your Halston dress and the people that you knew at Elaine's," Billy Joel sang. The restaurant inspired books titled "Everyone Comes to Elaine's" and "Last Call at Elaine's."

For the regulars, Elaine's was more than a scene. It was a family, a club without dues, a dinner party with a glittering guest list.

Ruth Westheimer, better known as sexpert Dr. Ruth, described the night as sitting shiva for the bar. Shiva is a Jewish bereavement custom.

"She went out of her way for people she liked," Westheimer said of Elaine.

Loren Korevec played the piano at the bar from 1987 to 1999.

"It's a kind of mourning – this is never going to happen again anywhere," he said as he greeted old friends including former longtime bartender Tommy Carney, 71, who had just arrived from New Jersey.

"It was so comfortable for us because we were on the inside," said Kathryn Altman, who started going to Elaine's in the 1970s when her late husband, film director Robert Altman, was riding high after "MASH." "It was like a club."

The club was not limited to boldface names. Dana Carey, who is director of event sponsorships for a trade publication, started going to Elaine's as a young woman nearly 30 years ago.

"I knew that every Thursday I could walk in as a single person and I would know about a third to half the restaurant," Carey said. "And everybody was always, `Come sit with us, come sit with us.' There was no other place like it, where you would see an actor, a writer, a neurosurgeon and a former Mets baseball star, all sitting together, and the only common denominator was that they were an Elaine's regular."

Kaufman died at 81 after running Elaine's for 48 years. Longtime manager Diane Becker inherited the restaurant and tried to keep it open before announcing May 17 that it would close for good on Thursday.

"This is one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make," Becker said in a statement. "But the truth is, There is no Elaine's without Elaine."

The regulars said Kaufman's uncanny ability to introduce guests to the fellow guest they would most want to meet made it difficult to imagine the restaurant without her.

"If you were sitting alone, she would introduce you to somebody interesting," said Harry Benson, a Scotland-born photographer who arrived in America with the Beatles in 1964 and is currently shooting for Vanity Fair. "A detective who was working on the Son of Sam case. She never put you with some dreary person."

The food was not the selling point.

Allen, who shot the first scene of "Manhattan" at Elaine's, said through a spokeswoman that he was not available for an interview. But he told New York magazine at a screening of his latest movie "Midnight in Paris" that he went to Elaine's every night for decades "despite the unrelenting bad food." He added that "everybody went for conversation and meeting people and chatting, and that was the success of the place."

The decor was indifferent as well. The dark-paneled walls at Elaine's were festooned with the framed covers of books by authors who ate and drank there.

Celebrities like Allen knew that Elaine's was one place where no one would bother them. And there were plenty of celebrities.

"Catherine Deneuve used to go there when she was in town," Benson said. "Willie Nelson. Clint Eastwood. A lot of unlikely people."

Carey said she met her best friend, mystery writer Carol Higgins Clark, at Elaine's. She also met mystery writer Stuart Woods, whose protagonist is always having dinner at Elaine's.

Ruda Dauphin, the U.S. representative of France's Deauville American Film Festival, said she brought people by to show them off to Kaufman and to show Kaufman off to them.

"I brought in Buzz Aldrin," she said. "From the moon to Elaine's. He loved it."

Klieman said that Kaufman would tell her, "I think you might want to stay tonight" when she was expecting a Jack Nicholson or a James Gandolfini.

Her husband, Bratton, said the clientele spanned the range of New York life from writers and actors to the occasional mobster.

"The cast of characters could best be described as sort of a Damon Runyon crew," he said.

Many of the regulars have been returning to Elaine's every night since the closing was announced and planned to be there Thursday.

"Everybody changed their plans in order to be there," Klieman said.

They will exchange numbers and make plans to keep in touch, but it won't be the same.

"Everybody will eventually find a new place to go but we won't all find a new place together," Carey said. "We'll all gravitate to different places."

There may be speeches. There will surely be tears.

"It's like losing Elaine twice: first herself, then the living room where she conducted her nightly salon," Woods, the mystery writer, said in an email. "It was a club where the public were allowed to pay to watch the members dine, and the members liked that."

___

Talese House Ocean City

2011-05-08T19:08:00.000-07:00

Gay Talese, Famed Ocean City Writer, Has Packed Up and Left the Island
By Kevin C. Shelly

His wife's purchase of a country home led to his decision to sell the century-old Ocean City house they’d owned since 1967, when they bought it for $37,000. It sold for $1.6 million.

http://oceancity.patch.com/articles/gay-talese-famed-ocean-city-writer-has-packed-up-and-left-the-island?ncid=M255

Gay Talese reluctantly but resignedly left the island that spawned him Friday.

Accompanying moving trucks, the famed 79-year-old writer and his wife, noted publisher Nan A. Talese, 77, are headed to a country home in Connecticut -- a home she bought without his knowledge.

After the purchase, she waited a month to tell him.

As he said of his wife earlier in the week, “she has her will,” reminding me that Nan had forced the issue of marriage on him at the start of their long relationship.

His eldest daughter, painter Pamela Talese, laughed when I mentioned her father’s comment to her Friday.

“There is no movement, no accommodation from Gay Talese. He hasn’t changed direction for as long as I’ve known him,” said Pamela, who spent summers in Ocean City. Her mother had wanted to move for years, she said, and the buy forced the issue.

Pamela says each summer she was watched over by a nanny while her father worked a set schedule writing in a sequestered third floor office in the Ocean City home and her mother worked during the week in New York publishing houses, coming to Ocean City for weekends.

Unable to justify maintaining three homes -- the couple has lived in a brownstone on the Upper East Side since they married more than 50 years ago -- Talese struggled for months to come to terms with his wife’s decision.

Nan's purchase of a country home set in motion his decision to sell the century-old Ocean City house they’d owned since 1967, when they bought it for $37,000.

Eventually, he listed his Ocean City home for sale, but wanted no sign, no open house, no special marketing effort. Even with his home for sale, he was not quite ready to cut ties to the city that shaped him as a journalist and safe-harbored him as a writer.

I’ve know Gay for 29 years, but I learned of the sale second-hand. So I wrote him
-- the surest way of engaging him, though he has begun using email.

Several notes came to me last winter, including a trademark post card he’d fashioned from a shirt cardboard. The letters discussed his emotional struggle with going through with the sale. He didn’t want to have a story written about the possible sale until the home sold because he simply was not ready.

On April 13, I called Gay and informed him that the buyers he’d selected -- he chose the buyer’s he’d verbally committed to first, not the highest offer -- had agreed to buy the house.

The couple buying the home, with a long family history in Ocean City, paid $1.6 million, $200,000 under the asking price. They plan to rehabilitate the home and move into it, a process they think could take a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A closing is set for June 10, though the agreement could come sooner, according to the buyers, who have asked not to be identified until the sale is complete.

Gay was still clearly conflicted by the sale when I spoke to him at the E. Atlantic Boulevard residence Thursday amid packing and preparing to have dinner with the buyers.
He talked of how crowded Ocean City is now, how bad the parking has become, the wear on his wife caused by traveling to and from Manhattan on the jammed Garden State Parkway and the mess caused by reconstruction on the Route 52 causeway.

But he also spoke of how his career as a writer of books -- he’d begun as a journalist, writing about sports and features, first for the Ocean City Sentinel Ledger and The Press of Atlantic City before college, eventually taking a job at the New York Times -- had taken shape here.

He also spoke of the pleasure he’d gotten from spending summers at the shore with daughters Pamela and Catherine, and spending time with his late mother, Catherine Talese. His mother's home was a few minutes away, also in the Gardens section of the city.

We also talked of the the book he is at work on: his relationship with his wife.
Nan, who usually absents herself when Gay is interviewed, mixed in more than usual Thursday. She rolled her eyes and smiled when I asked about the topic of the planned book.

“I married a writer, and I trust his writing. But he knows nothing about marriage. I’ll be surprised when I read it,” she said.

As we spoke, neighbors stopped by to ask if it was true that the house was sold, to recall old times, to ask about the Talese’s grown daughters.

As the talk wound down, Gay handed me a signed copy of Unto the Sons, a book set largely in Ocean City.

He gave me the book, in part, because he was working on the galley proofs for the book when I first met him.

But he also gave it to me because it was one fewer thing that he needed to worry about taking with him -- or leaving behind.

A full account of my interview with Gay Talese will appear in the July edition of New Jersey Monthly.

For more information on Talese: randomhouse.com/kvpa/talese/

Gay and Nan Talese in Ocean City

2011-05-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

Where a Literary Couple Catch their breath Down the Shore
Julia Lawler - NYTimes Travel Section - August 3, 2007

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/travel/escapes/03away.html

See: Slide Show
Ocean City

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/03/travel/20070803_AWAY_SLIDESHOW_index-10.html

GAY TALESE never learned to swim and only occasionally ventures onto the beach. The wind makes it impossible for him to read the newspaper and, he said, during a recent visit to his second home in Ocean City, N.J., “I’m not going to sit on the sand swatting flies.”

Yet for the last 40 years, Mr. Talese, a writer, and his wife, Nan, a Manhattan book editor, have spent weekends and summers there, in the town where he was born, tucked into a rambling red-shingled Victorian they own that sits just one block from the ocean.

Unlike the Hamptons or Litchfield, Conn., where many of the couple’s Manhattan friends seek refuge, Ocean City has long been a getaway for middle-class Philadelphians.

The Taleses like it because it’s the antithesis of the Manhattan literary whirl. So, don’t ask for a whole-wheat roll at the hoagie shop, or a chic mixed drink when you’re dining out. Ocean City has been dry since its beginnings as a Methodist retreat in 1879. Night life? Choose between the kiddie rides on the boardwalk or star-gazing on the beach.

“It’s a great contrast to New York,” said Mr. Talese, who is 75, as he conducted a tour around town, pointing out the building on Asbury Avenue where his mother owned a dress shop, his father ran a tailoring business and the family lived in an upstairs apartment.

Large parts of many of his books, including “The Kingdom and the Power”; “Thy Neighbor’s Wife”; “Unto the Sons,” a family reminiscence that’s largely set in Ocean City; and his latest, “A Writer’s Life,” were written in the third-floor office of his Ocean City Victorian.

“Nobody bothers me here,” he said. “I much prefer it in winter. It’s empty, and you can see the sky. It’s light, and cheerful.”

Built in 1902, the house sits on a tree-lined street in one of the resort town’s most desirable neighborhoods, the Gardens. As in most houses of its kind at the shore, the first floor is raised above street level to take advantage of sea breezes, with a wraparound porch, white wicker furniture and a green-and-white-striped awning. Although the original view from the front porch favored dunes stretching all the way to the Atlantic, by the time the Taleses arrived there were already houses across the street. Five years ago, those were torn down and replaced by town houses, which still did nothing to revive the old sea view.

If you squint, though, you can still see a bit of ocean from a wide window seat in the second-floor master bedroom. Mrs. Talese, who is publisher of Nan A. Talese/Doubleday books (her writers include Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan), likes to read there in the afternoons after her morning swim and some weeding in the garden. “It’s marvelous with the sun on your skin,” she said.

The house has seven bedrooms, four on the second floor and three on the third, one of which is Mr. Talese’s office. The three bathrooms on the second and third floors contain original claw-foot tubs, each painted to coordinate with the wall color.

Their purchase of the house came about almost by accident. The couple rented it for the summer in 1967 when their older daughter, Pamela, was a toddler, and their younger daughter, Catherine, was a newborn. They were planning to rent it again the next summer when they discovered that another family was considering buying it to live in year-round.

“I said to Gay, ‘Buy it,’ ” Mrs. Talese recalled. They were renting an apartment in an Upper East Side brownstone, a building they would buy many years later, and had little money to spare. But it didn’t deter her. “It was on the spur of the moment,” she said. “He’s cautious. He wants to be unfettered. But I like real estate.”

It turned out to be a wise investment. The house cost $32,000, including the adjoining lot. Mr. Talese said he recently had offers of $1 million to $1.4 million.

Although the two considered buying a place in the Hamptons or Connecticut in the 1970s to be able to spend more time with friends, they decided it would be too much like their social life in New York.

“It’s a place to be away,” Mrs. Talese said. “When we come down, we just stay at home.”

One of the first major changes they made was to winterize the house so Mr. Talese could write there year-round. A deck was added on the back, and bookshelves were added to in the dining and living rooms. And a pantry wall in the kitchen was demolished to open up the space.

Mr. Talese’s third-floor office is set up so that he rarely has to leave. There is a bed that he sleeps in when he’s in Ocean City alone; an ancient IBM Selectric with a grimy plastic cover; and a five-year-old Power Macintosh, which is not connected to the Internet. (Mr. Talese does not engage in e-mail and prefers to hand-deliver his manuscripts to his editors). To reduce the glare from a skylight, Mr. Talese has put together a plastic foam canopy that swoops over his U-shaped desk like a sail on a blustery day. Mrs. Talese calls it “the suspension bridge.”
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Ocean City
His summer routine is to write in the morning, play tennis in the afternoon, then maybe watch a game on the 36-inch Sony Trinitron with DirecTV service that he has set up in his office. His tastes run from the Yankees to Japanese skiing.

At the other end of the hall is a room that doubles as a home gym (Mr. Talese lifts weights, and Mrs. Talese uses a videotape for Pilates) and a guest room for visiting writers. The novelist William Kennedy and Mr. Talese’s cousin, Nick Pileggi, are among those who have stayed and worked there for extended periods.

The house is strictly a kick-off-your-shoes-and-stay-awhile place, even though Mr. Talese continues his habit of dressing formally — even in the heat of summer.

“There’s nothing spiffy about this place,” Mr. Talese said one 90-degree day earlier this summer, looking natty in a long-sleeve, pink linen shirt with contrasting white collar, cufflinks, tan pants, a yellow-and-green neck scarf, white belt and brown shoes. Outdoors, he covered his silver hair with a straw fedora and, by early evening when the sun had lost its edge, slipped on a beige jacket with a yellow silk handkerchief tucked in the pocket.

Memories are what seem to count most in the Taleses’ Ocean City home. In the living room, the surface of an old baby grand piano with yellowing keys that once belonged to Mr. Talese’s parents is crowded with family photos and pictures of him with his writing peers — John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, William Styron, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller. In one baby photo, the Taleses’ daughter Catherine, now a photo editor in New York, sits on the lap of the legendary Random House editor Bennett Cerf.

Journalist pals, like the late David Halberstam, have always been frequent guests. Pamela Talese remembers her father and his writing cronies lined up on the front porch in their chairs in the mornings, each with his own copy of The New York Times.

Growing up, the Talese children remember old-fashioned summers of swimming, biking and baseball games in the yard. But they also had chores. Each morning they would buy their father a glazed doughnut, leave it outside his office door, then return at 11 a.m. with a plate of poached eggs. After reserving a tennis court for her father in the afternoon, Pamela would bring him a hoagie sandwich and half a beer at 3 p.m. while he watched a ballgame on TV. “Then he would go back and write,” she said.

Although the Talese children have long been on their own, they say they still love visiting the Ocean City house. Once there, they fall into the old routine — padding around in bare feet and taking daily dips in the ocean with their mother, who’s an avid swimmer. On a rare day, they might even catch a glimpse of their father on the beach in a long-sleeve shirt, straw hat, neck scarf and swim trunks, struggling with a newspaper and swatting flies.

Gay Talese at the Bar

2011-05-08T19:03:00.001-07:00

Old Ocean City High School Arch

2011-05-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

All that's left of the Old Ocean City High School is the arch that was supposed to have been destroyed with the rest of the place but was saved and eventually let stand.

The old Ocean City High School was designed by Vivian Smith, a local architect who also designed the Ocean City Hall, the Ocean City Music Pier, Ventnor City Hall and other significant Jersey Shore buildings that stand out for their unique beauty.

Grace and Ranier at Monaco

2011-05-03T11:49:00.000-07:00

Grace and Kate

2011-05-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

Grace Kelly and Kate Middleton

2011-05-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

Desingers and commentators have been pointing out the similarities in the gowns worn by Britain's Duchess of Cambridge in Apri of 2011 and Princess Grace of Monaco in April of 1956. (Credit: Getty Images)

(CBS) Before her wedding to Prince William, Kate Middleton was said to have admired the wedding gown worn by film actress Grace Kelly when she married Prince Rainier of Monaco in April of 1956.

The Sarah Burton-designed lace and satin gown that Middleton herself wore when she married Prince William on Friday, April 29, 2011, had some similarities to that Grace Kelly classic design.

Both gowns have the sleeves and shoulders covered with lace that ends in a tight bodice and then flows into a full skirt with long train. Both brides wore embroidered veils.

The similarity was not lost on many commentators and onlookers. Several designers have called it a modern twist on the Grace Kelly gown. Tim Gunn, of "Project Runway" fame, also acknowledged the resemblance but said Middleton's low-cut neckline gave it a modern look.

BK NOTES:

During the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, it was repeatedly pointed out that America has no royalty, other than the symbolic royality often bestowed on the Kennedy family.

But America does have royality, in Prince Albert and Princess Caroline and Stephanie of Monaco, the son and daughters of Princess Grace, the former Grace Kelly of Philadelpia and Ocean City, NJ.

Of course we know Grace from her time in Ocean City, where her father built the Spanish Revival style home on the north west corner of 28th street in 1929, the year Grace was born. Grace Kelly spent parts of every summer of her life in Ocean City, except her last one.

Grace played on the beach in front of her house, and her father later built another brick house across the street on the beach, where members of the Kelly family lived into the 1990s. The last Kelly resident, Grace's younger sister Lizanne, recently passed away in Florida.

As they grew up, they often hung out at the Flander's pool, where Lizanne met her future husband Don Levine, a lifeguard.

Grace had her sweet sixteen party at the Seaview Country Club, where her father was partners with Sonny Fraser, the son of the former golf pro and State legislator who brought the first legal gambling to South Jersey by establishing the Atlantic City Race Track.

As a teenager, like other young girls in Ocean City, Grace worked as a waitress at the Chatterbox on 9th Street, where some of the old timers still remember her.

After her success as an actress on Broadway and in the movies, she met and married Prince Ranier of Monaco, who also visited Ocean City to ask John B. Kelly for the hand of his daughter.

John B. leased an ocean liner to take all of his family and friends from Philadelphia to Monaco for what was called "the Wedding of the Century," and one not matched until the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana.

Also See: The Princess Next Door. (Atlantic City Magazine)

GRACE KELLY & KATE MIDDLETON
Posted on Apr 29, 2011 3:04 PM by Kim Grundy

Kate Middleton’s wedding dress reminds us of another beautiful royal wedding gown -- Grace Kelly's beautiful gown. The Princess of Monaco had a similar design and silhouette when she married Prince Rainier.
Grace Kelly’s wedding dress has been given the honor of being one of the most copied wedding gowns in history -- and Kate Middleton may be one of them!

Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956 and wore a wedding dress designed by MGM costume designer Helen Rose. Kate Middleton’s dress was designed by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen.

Both dresses have beautiful and feminine lace sleeves and a fitted satin bodice. The bodice of Kate’s gown was from English lace and French Chantilly lace that was sewn onto an ivory silk tulle, while Princess Grace’s gown was made from rose point silk needle lace and tulle. Both dresses have a full skirt and long flowing veils.

Both dresses contain a row of satin buttons, however, Kate’s were in the back whereas Grace had hers in the front. Kate’s v-neckline gave her dress a more modern look compared to Grace Kelly’s high neckline.

Designers have taken note of the similarities, with Mark Badgley of Badgley Mischka calling it a "classic Grace Kelly look."

"A combination just in between 1956 Grace Kelly and 1947 Queen Elizabeth dress," said Christian Lacroix. "I love the modest veil with the Queen Mother’s '30s scroll tiara and balanced volume of the whole gown."

Another similarity between the two worth noting: Both Kate Middleton and Grace Kelly were commoners that married into royalty.

Ted Bundy by Wayne Gacy

2010-11-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Henry Milligan in Cape May

2010-11-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

Amateur Boxing Champ – Golden Gloves for Silver Screen
The SandPaper – Thursday, June 11, 1987

The beach bullies don’t kick sand in Henry Milligan’s face. Its not that the diminutive, bespectacled Milligan is so imposing. He’s really quite timid. It’s just his reputation.

Though he hasn’t obtained celebrity status yet, he’s known as a boxer and in fact is quite an anomaly in the history of contemporary American boxing.

Sitting in a both at Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, just across the street from his favorite Cape May beach, Milligan pondered his past and his future over three stacks of pancakes. Considering his main goal, in many ways he is in the same situation in which he found himself in 1981 – seeking recognition in an unobserving world.

As the oldest son of DuPont executive, he was a Princeton University engineering graduate who didn’t want to just settle down in a plush job at the company. His father was known as Hank, so he was always Henry, who then worked part time at the shore as a bouncer at Gloria’s saloon (now Cabanas).

“Working for the summer as a bouncer, I though a lot about boxing,” Milligan says while munching on his pancakes. He called a boxing trainer on the telephone and told him he was interested in taking up boxing. “He asked me how old I was, and when I said 23, he thought I was too old.”

That’s all Milligan had to hear to get him into training. When they told him he couldn’t go to Princeton, major in engineering and play three sports he went out and became the first and only Princeton graduate to ear ten varsity letters in three sports – football, wrestling and baseball. And they say that if he would have majored in a less demanding discipline he would have been a candidate for a Rhodes scholarship.

At first the boxing handicappers, sitting back with their cigars, didn’t know what to make of this handsome 185-pound, well-fed white boy.

Like gymnasts and ballerinas, those who want to be groomed as a boxing champion have to start early, and those who train champions want young, easily malleable students. But Mulligan had already proved he was both a good student and great athlete. In the beginning he looked a little out of place, but stepping into the ring over 40 times in his amateur career, he often knocked out his opponents before they could start boxing.

In 1983 at Colorado Springs, Colorado, he went undefeated to win the National Amateur Boxing Championship and was recognized as the best athlete in the tournament.

The following year he competed in the U.S. Olympic trials, losing only to Mike Tyson, who is now considered to be the number one undefeated professional contender for the heavyweight championship. While still an amateur, however, Tyson was runner up for the heavyweight Olympic challenge, losing to Henry Tillman. Tillman, whom Milligan had previously beaten for the U.S. amateur title, went on to win the Olympic gold medal that year.

“It was very frustrating sitting out the Olympics and having a guy I knew I could beat, in fact already had beat, win the gold medal,” Milligan said while pondering his career over breakfast. After three regular plates of pancakes, he ordered what he calls “round two,” 25 silver dollar pancakes and three waffles.

Putting his amateur career behind him, Milligan then turned professional, winning his first ten bouts and generating a lot of fan support from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, and his summer home at Cape May.

Every time he had a bout at one of the Atlantic City casinos his friends, family and fans would rent buses and go to the shore in a caravan to watch him fight. His younger brother Mike helped him train for many of his fights.

Then he lost a decision to go ten and one before breaking his nose, or rather having his nose broken in a fight at Resorts International. He didn’t want to throw in the towel and came out at the bell, but he was drinking his own blood, so the referee called it a TKO – technical knockout. Now he’s retired from the ring.

“It’s not so bad,” he said. “I don’t miss the violence or the hurt, but I do miss the attention, the limelight, and people recognizing you for who you are and what you’ve done.”

But he was still eating. “Round three” was a final order of Indian corn pancakes, no butter and just a little syrup.

“Now I’m writing nutritional articles for athletic magazines, doing some modeling and trying to break into acting,” Milligan said with a smile, citing his Princeton theatrical experience and work as a boxing commentator.

“I’d be in New York knocking on doors tomorrow if I just had the name of an agent or someone who could help me get into acting,” Milligan said, “though right now I’m concentrating on promoting nutrition.”

Though his mother thinks that maybe he’s a bit over-conscious about his nutrition, there’s little chance of arguing about his health. There’s not an ounce of fat on his body, yet he eats like a horse.

“Your average American doesn’t eat right,” Milligan asserted, complaining about their using a lot of butter and other additives. “It’s not what you eat, it’s what you put on the food. Pasta and pancakes are all right. They’re easily burned off if you work out like I do – swimming and running, but you can’t put a lot of junk on them.”

Finishing up his last pancakes, and Milligan holds the Uncle Bill’s unofficial record of 22 pancakes, he reflected briefly on next week’s “War at the Shore” with Michael Spinks and Gerry Cooney, knowing that it could possibly have been him up there, maybe as an under card. “Yea, I miss the limelight, the attention, the fact that everybody’s watching you, and you’re up there in the ring going one on one with somebody to see who is the better man.”

“Maybe that’s why I want to be an actor now,” he reflected, “to get back in the limelight.”

Now all Henry Milligan needs is an agent to tell him he can’t make it as an actor in New York, and he’ll be there in a minute.

John J. Crean

2010-10-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

CREAN, JOHN J. 58 - of Linwood, passed peacefully into heaven on October 24, 2010 after a valiant battle with cancer. John was born in Camden, NJ and graduated from Camden Catholic High School.

He formerly was the proprietor of Collingswood Upholstery and later Versailles of Ocean City and was a master artist in the medium of upholstery. John also had a passion for music; his baritone graced numerous local choral ensembles. John was a charter associate at the Borgata Hotel, Casino and Spa as the Foreman of Casino Maintenance and was a member of the NJ Carpenter's Local 623.

His brave soul, zest for life, and his courage to face adversity with a positive attitude and constant comedic humor will remain a testament to his spirit - an inspiration and legacy to all lives that he touched.

John is predeceased by his parents John A. and Isabelle, and brothers Kevin and Eugene. He is survived by his wife Michele and her sons Jake and Nicholas Lawless; His son Sean and his wife Sheryl, grandsons Tyler and Ryan of Wake Forest, NC; and son Zachariah Chirico-Crean of Greenwich, NJ. He is also survived by his brothers Jere and Cindy of Richland, TX; Joseph and Ruth of Egg Harbor Township, William and Martha of Pittsburgh, PA; sisters Mary Belden of Somers Point and Angela and Tim Mowery of Wichita Falls, TX, sister-in-law Alyson Matley-Crean of Key West, FL and his lifelong friend Patricia DiLorenzo of Brigantine.

In addition, he was affectionately known as Uncle John or "UJ" by his many beloved nieces and nephews. Services will be held at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, 724Maple Avenue in Linwood, NJ on Thursday, October 28, 2010; visitation begins at 11:30am followed by mass at 1pm. Arrangements entrusted to and condolences may be sent to the family at www.adams-perfect.com

Published in The Press of Atlantic City from October 26 to October 27, 2010

OC NJ Lifesaving Station

2010-04-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

Impending demolition sign at the Ocean City New Jersey Lifesaving Station at Fourth Street.

Steve Sundstrom "Nine"

2010-03-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

STEVEN SUNDSTROM RIP

Steve was a good guy. A surfer dude who trucked around Ocean City and Somers Point with a six pack in a back pack.

He always had something nice to say about me and what I wrote about, and always complimented me on my writings.

For awhile, when he was down and out, which was pretty much all the time, Walt Gregory gave him a job doing odd work around Gregory's, like folding up the empty carboard boxes and cleaning out the trash bins in the back. That was just to keep him going.

God Bless Steve Sundstrom.

If anyone has a photo of him I'd like to post it.

SUNDSTROM, STEVEN 53 - of Atlantic City, passed away on 2/14/2010 at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in Atlantic City. Born on April 13, 1956 in New Brunswick, he was formerly of Ocean City for many years before moving to Atlantic City. Mr. Sundstrom was a graduate of Ocean City High School, class of 1974 and attended Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA. After college, he lived in Hawaii, before returning to Ocean City. Upon his return, he worked as a Lifeguard for the City of Ocean City, working at 7th Street Beach and had worked at the Cherry Hill Skateboard Park along with Shore Memorial Hospital and Greate Bay Country Club. Beloved son of the late James and Elsa Sundstrom and beloved brother of the late Jimmy Sundstrom. Surviving are his brothers and sisters, David Sundstrom and his wife Dianne of Northfield, Scott Sundstrom of Ocean City, Susan Sundstrom of Malibu, CA, Kimberly Sundstrom of Egg Harbor Township, Jean Sundstrom of Bradenton Beach, FL, Mellisa Sundstrom of Bryn Mawr, PA, and five nephews, Shaun, Kyle, John, Kevin, and Kesun. Private services will be held April 13, 2010 in Seaside Cemetery, Palermo, NJ and at the 7th Street Beach in Ocean City, NJ. To email condolences, visit www.godfreyfuneralhome.com

Published in The Press of Atlantic City on March 18, 2010 print

The Flanders Ghost

2009-12-11T00:54:00.000-08:00

When Jim Dwyer owned the Flanders he remodeled the Plate Room and renamed it the Board Room.

Here's a photo of the Board Room with one of the Flander's Ghosts.

While "Emily" is more popular, there's also a photo of the Board Room that has a waiter in vest and bow tie in the mirror.

Kelly's Beach House

2009-12-03T18:32:00.000-08:00

Kelly's Beach House, looking South on Wesley Avenue

J.B. Kelly House on Wesley Avenue

2009-12-03T18:30:00.000-08:00

Lizanne Le Vine at Home in OCNJ

2009-12-03T18:19:00.000-08:00

Tropical road by Snow

2009-12-03T17:54:00.000-08:00

Lizanne Kelly Le Vine RIP

2009-11-26T19:46:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth, Grace, Margaret "Peggy" Conian and John Jr.

Lizanne Kelly Le Vine

http://www.philly.com/philly/obituaries/20091126_Elizabeth_Kelly_Le_Vine__76__Grace_Kelly_s_sister.html

Posted on Thu, Nov. 26, 2009

Elizabeth Kelly Le Vine, 76, Grace Kelly's sister

By Sally A. Downey
Inquirer Staff Writer

Growing up in East Falls, Lizanne Kelly and an older sister, Grace, acted in productions at the Old Academy Players in Philadelphia.

Grace would go on to become an Academy Award-winning actress and a princess.
Lizanne would become an accomplished athlete, a community volunteer, a wife, a mother, and devoted "Aunt Lizzie" to Grace's three children and other nieces and nephews.

Elizabeth "Lizanne" Kelly Le Vine, 76, died of cancer Tuesday at the Quadrangle, a retirement community in Haverford.

Though she chose not to pursue an acting career, Mrs. Le Vine did experience Hollywood's glitter. She spent summers "chaperoning" Grace on movie sets and had her photo taken with Alfred Hitchcock, who directed Grace in To Catch a Thief, said her son, Chris, an investment adviser.

Mrs. Le Vine, whose father, John B. Kelly Sr., and brother, John Jr., were Olympic rowers, was a star hockey player at Ravenhill Academy in East Falls. She also played basketball at Ravenhill and was president of the student council.

She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she captained the varsity hockey team. Wearing her hockey uniform, in 1955 she was one of the first women to appear in a photograph in Sports Illustrated, said her son.

After graduating from Penn, Mrs. Le Vine married Donald C. Le Vine at St. Bridget's Church in East Falls on June 25, 1955, her 22d birthday. Grace was her maid of honor.
Mrs. Le Vine was not in the wedding party when Grace married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956. She couldn't travel to the wedding, her son said, because she was eight months pregnant with her first child. She named the girl Grace.

Mrs. Le Vine and her husband, a stockbroker who became a horse owner and trainer, raised their two children in Gladwyne. They later took over the Kelly family's summer home in Ocean City, N.J., where they often hosted Grace and her husband and children.
Mrs. Le Vine was active with local charities and was past president of the Women's Auxiliary of the Medical College of Pennsylvania.

She and Grace had breakfast in Philadelphia in April 1982, when her sister was honored for her films at a gala at the Annenberg Center. That September, the Kelly family received word that Grace had been seriously hurt in an automobile accident in Monaco.

It was Mrs. Le Vine who answered the phone call from Grace's daughter Caroline, who told her, "Mommy died."

A year later, Mrs. Le Vine told a Philadelphia Daily News reporter, "Naturally, there's been a terrible void. I don't think it's been as hard for us here in the States as it has been for Rainier and the children. We don't have the thing where every day you turn around and have a constant reminder. It's not easier, but not quite as hard."

Mrs. Le Vine told a reporter that she kept busy following her husband wherever his work took him. He spent part of the year at Atlantic City Race Course, and for eight months he was at Turf Paradise, a racetrack in Phoenix.

"I had never been in the Southwest. I didn't know anybody. I had to work and meet people and it took my mind off the tragedy a little bit," she said.

Mrs. Le Vine and her husband also spent time at a racetrack in Tampa, Fla. She enjoyed horse racing, her son said, and played tennis and golf.

Mrs. Le Vine's husband died in 2000, and her daughter died in 1999. An older sister, Margaret Kelly Conlan, died in 1991; brother John Jr. died in 1985.

In addition to her son, Mrs. Le Vine is survived by three grandchildren.
A Funeral Mass will be said at noon Saturday at St. Bridget's Church, 3667 Midvale Ave., where friends may call after 10:30.

Ocean City Lifesaving Station 4th St.

2009-10-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

OC Lifesaving Station Backyard

2009-10-19T17:32:00.001-07:00

To be Demolished

2009-10-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

The Paint Crew at 819 Wesley

2009-10-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

Ernie Ernest NFL Films at Seaspray Beach

2009-10-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterdays - Five Points Columbia, SC

2009-10-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterdays at Five Points, Columbia, South Carolina

Yesterdays at Five Points, Columbia, South Carolina, on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, for the now annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. This was an early one, when Duncan was Grand Marshall and the parade ended at Five Points.

From Ocean City to Five Points, Columbia, SC

Working at Mack & Mancos Pizza on the Ocean City (NJ) boardwalk was certainly a major part of the life of anyone who worked there.

Two of the people I met working there were Duncan and Scott MacRae, two of the best people you would ever get to meet. They were from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where their mother was a school teacher and there is now a school named MacRae School after her.

Duncan had worked at Mack & Mancos previously, years before I got there, and was a legend, having left to serve as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and returning a hero,he could have done anything in the world, but went back to work twerrling pizzas for the summer for Mr. Mack.

His younger brother Scotty, handsome, brash and immensely likeable, who left Mack & Mancos to be a bartender at the Anchorage, through Joe Tricheck, the brother-in-law of owner Andrew "Anchorage" Carnelgia, and a regular customer at Mack & Mancos with Andrew's sister.

When he came back, Duncan could do no wrong. They say he was let off by a Marine helicopter right out in front on the beach, and walked in with his flight suit and helmet under his arm.

He drove a fancy sports car, I think it was a Corvette Stingray, and he couldn't get arrested no matter how fast he went or what crazy assed thing he did on a binge, because he had done his time in Nam and was everyone's hero. On one rainey Sunday he took me over to Bay Shores for the Sunday afternoon matinee show to see Malcom and the Bonnievilles (or was it Hereafter?), and introduced me to Buddy Tweill, Malcolm and real rock & roll.

Besides working at Mack & Mancos, Duncan had also worked in the kitchen as a cook at the Crab Trap, the best restaurant in Somers Point for decades, and with Scott's experience as a bartender at the Anchorage, they decided to go into business for themselves, with Duncan handling the kitchen and Scotty taking care of the bar.

With a partner, they bought a small bar and restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina, near the university and not far from the State House, and called it Yesterdays, with a nostalgic twist.

When Brian and I were on the return leg of our first trip to the West Coast (circa 1977), we stopped by Columbia to say hello to Scotty and Duncan and see how they were doing.

Very well thank you.

While still small, they were making money, and expanding, eventually buying up the entire block, including the supermarket for its parking. Later they expanded and opened Yesterdays II, in a suburban neighborhood, and brought Bob Brumage, another Mack & Manco guy, in to run it.

From what I understand, Duncan is now retired and living on his saleboat somewhere where its warm, but one summer he visited his old haunts in Ocean City and Somers Point, and found me at Charlie's in Somers Point.

I had since left Mack & Mancos and was trying to make it as a part time teacher and writer, and had earlier done an interview with Ocean City native and superstar journalist Gay Talese. It was a front page cover story in the local weekly SandPaper, and was an interview with Talese conducted at his Ocean City home, sort of an "at home with" type piece.

Gay Talese's wife, Nan Talese is a publisher with a major publishing house, and one of the first things Gay said to me was that his wife was reading this wonderful manuscript that they were going to publish by a new, young writer Pat Conroy. The book, "Prince of Tides."

Of course Conroy's masterpiece matched and surpased his other workes, "The Lords of Discipline" and "The Great Santini," and established him as one of the great American writers of our time. All three books have been made into movies, with Barbara Streisand producing and acting in "The Prince of Tides."

Duncan MacRae didn't know I had interviewed Talese, who had paid tribute to Pat Conroy when he caught up with me at Charlie's Bar in Somers Point, but while rehashing old times, he thought I would appreciate the fact that the brother of a famous writer, Pat Conroy, worked as a bartender at Yesterdays, and Conroy is a frequent customer. They even have a special booth where Conroy and other local writers hang out, and had a little Algonquin circle going.

They also had a hot band that lived nearby, Hootie & the Blowfish, popular with the college kids and about to go national with a few hit singles and a some popular albums. So with Conroy as the writer in residence, and Hootie & the Blowfish neighbors and regular customers, Yesterdays had developed quite the popular flair.

Over a few beers at Charlie's, Duncan related the story told by Conroy, that he had to overcome the objections of the publisher's lawyers to include Yesterdays in the novel. They thought that since the novel was a work of fiction, and Yesterdays a real place, clearly identified in the story, would leave them open to libel or some case, should the owners object to being mentioned in an ostensibly fictional work.

Conroy persisted however, and in the end, as part of his literary masterpiece, we have Yesterdays, enshrined in all its glory.

"Prince of Tides" (Pat Conroy, p. 528-529)

....On the football field I struggled for three years with my own sense of inadequacy. I was surrounded by superb athletes who gave me daily lessons in deficiencies I brought to the game. But I lived in the weight room in the off-season and began building my body with deliberate intent. When I entered the university I weighed one hundred sixty-five pounds. When I left four years later I weighted two hundred ten pounds. As a freshman I bench-pressed one hundred twenty pounds; as a senior, I bench pressed three hundred twenty. I blocked on the kickoff team and was a third string defensive back in my sophomore and junior years until Everett Cooper, the kickoff returner, got hurt during a Clemson game my junior year.

When Clemson scored, I heard Coach Bass call my name.

And my years in college turned golden.

When I went back to receive the kick-off, no one in the stands except Sallie and Luke and my parents knew my name.

The Clemson kicker approached the all and I saw that awesome movement of orange helmets down field and the roar of sixty thousand voices as that ball lifted into pure Carolina sunshine and traveled sixty yards in the air, where I caught it in the end zone and took that son of a bitch where it was supposed to go. "The name, ladies and gentleman, is Wingo." I screamed as I tucked the ball under my arm and took off up the left hand side of the field. I was hit on the twenty-five, but spun out of the arms of the tackler, and, cutting back across the field, a Clemson player dove and missed me with an arm tackle. I put a move on a defensive back and leapt over two of my team mates who had taken down two Clemson boys. I angled across the entire field until I picked up the blocker I needed and saw the opening I had lofted a prayer to heaven for. When that opening came, I streaked for the open field and felt someone dive for me from behind; I tripped but balanced myself with my left hand, kept my feet, and saw the kicker at their thirty-yard line, the last Clemson player with a chance of keeping me out of their end zone.

But there were sixty thousand people who did not know my name and four people I loved whose voices were urging me along in the stadium called Death Valley, and I had no plans to be tackled by a kicker. I lowered my head and my helmet caught him in the numbers and he melted like snow before the goddamn glance of the Lord, flattened by the only boy on that field who knew Byron's name or a single line of his poetry. Two Clemson players caught me at the five and I gave them a free ride as we tumbled into the end zone at the end of the run that would change my life forever.

The score was thirteen-six and there was a quarter of football left to play when I heard those sweet words spoken by the announcer. "The run by number forty-three, Tom Wingo, covered one hundred and three yards and sets a new Atlantic Coast Conference record."

I returned to the sidelines and was engulfed by my teammates and coaches. I went past the bench and stood waving like a madman at the place high in the stands where I knew Sallie and Luke and my parents were on their feet cheering for me.

George Lanier kicked the extra point and we were six points behind the Clemson Tigers when we took the field in the forth quarter.

With two minutes left in the game, we stopped Clemson at their own twenty-yard line. And I heard one of the assistant coaches yell to Coach Bass, "Let Wingo take the punt."

"Wingo," Coach Bass screamed, and I ran up to him.

"Wingo," he said as I adjusted my helmet, "do it again."

I had turned golden that day and Coach Bass had uttered magical, incantatory words and I tried to remember when in my life I had heard that phrase before as I took a position on our thirty-five-yard line, shuttering out the extraordinary noise of the crowd. As I watched the center snap the ball to the punter, I remembered that distant sunset when I was three and my mother had walked us out on the dock and brought the moon spinning out from beneath the trees of our island and my sister cried out in a small ecstatic voice, "Oh, Mama, do it again!"

"Do it again," I said as I watched the spiral tower far above the field begin its long descent into the arms of a boy turned golden for a single day in his life.

As I caught the ball I looked upfield.

I took the first marvelous step of the run that would make me the most famous football player in South Carolina for a year I will cherish as long as I live. I caught the ball on our forty-yard line and raced up the right sideline, but all I could see was a moveable garden of orange heading my way. Three Clemson players were moving in for the tackle from my left side when I stopped dead and began running the other way, back toward our own goal line, trying to make it to the other side of the field. One Clemson lineman caught me at the seventeen but was cut in half by a vicious block by one of our linebackers, Jim Landon. Two of them were matching me stride for stride when I turned upfield. When I looked up the far sidelines, I saw something amazing happening in front of my eyes. Our blocking had broken down completely after the punt, but each of my teammates trailing the play had watched me reverse my field with eleven Clemson players in healthy pursuit. I was looking down a lane of blockers that stretched for fifty yards downfield. A Clemson player would be about to catch me; then I would see a South Carolina player step between me and the tackler and cut him down at the knees. It was like running inside a cannonade. It was a fine life I was leading that day and I felt like the fastest, sweetest, dandiest boy who ever breathed the clean air of Clemson. When I hit their thirty-yard line running faster than I ever thought I could run, there was not a Clemson player left standing on the field. When I crossed the goal line, I fell to my knees and thanked the God who made me swift for the privilege of feeling like a king of the world for one glorious, unrepeatable day of my young life.

After George Lanier made the extra point and we stopped Clemson's drive on our own twenty-three-yard line and the final whistle blew, I thought I would be killed by the rush of Carolina fans onto the field. I would have died in perfect rapture. A photographer caught the exact moment when Sallie found me in the crowd, leapt into my arms, and kissed me on the mouth while screaming at the same time. That picture was on the front page of every sports section in the state the following morning, evenin Pelzer.

At midnight that night, I walked outside Yesterday's restaurant in Five Points where my parents had taken us to dinner and felt diminished when that marvelous day was over.

The following week, bumper stickers appeared on automobiles the length and breadth of South Carolina saying, "Kick it to Wingo, Clemson."

The Murder of Harry Anglemyer

2009-09-30T23:06:00.000-07:00

Copper Kettle Fudge

The Murder of Harry Anglemyer – The Fudge King

No one is officially investigating the murder of Harry Anglemyer today, but in the decades since he was killed the case is still a matter of public interest, and people question whether justice will ever be served.

Harry Anglemyer was an Ocean City, New Jersey businessman who was attempting to reform the city’s arcane blue laws when he was killed in the parking lot of the Dunes nightclub in what is now Egg Harbor Township on Labor Day, 1964.

While no one has been convicted of the crime and there is no official interest in pursuing the case, the former Ocean City Director of Public Safety, the former Chief of Police and former and present Ocean City Fire Department personnel have been implicated in the affair.

Until the day after Labor Day 1964, the biggest mystery about Copper Kettle Fudge was the recipe, but then Harry Anglemeyer, the founder of the Jersey Shore fudge empire was found murdered.

The 37 year old “Fudge King,” as he was called, was a successful, albeit controversial figure who owned a chain of fudge shops on the Ocean City and Atlantic City boardwalks and in Avalon and Sea Isle City.

A member of the Ocean City Planning Board and founder of an Ocean City civic association, Anglemyer was controversial, not only for trying to change the Ocean City blue laws, but because of his personal lifestyle, which was flagrantly homosexual.

While it was his stand on the blue laws, which he thought should be stringently enforced or liberalized, that brought him into the public spotlight, it was his gay lifestyle that brought complaints from traditionally conservative citizens who wanted to keep Ocean City from changing, especially opening for business on Sundays.

Over a year before he was killed Anglemeyer was arrested and charged with lewdness by the Cape May Country Prosecutor. According to newspaper reports at the time, “He was accused of improper behavior with three different men….Anglemeyer insisted that he was innocent and announced he would fight the charges.”

The news reports also noted, “The start of the investigation which led up to Anglemyer’s arrest is cloaked in mystery.”

The morals charges stemmed from the events of the night of May 28, 1963 and the early morning hours of May 29, 1963, events that were suspiciously similar to the night that he was murdered over a year later.

Then Ocean City Public Safety Director D. Allen Stretch came forward and announced that he had assigned Ocean City detective Dominic Longo to investigate Anglemyer after he had received numerous phone calls complaining about Anglemyer.

Although neither the mayor, the chief of police nor the city attorney were aware of Longo’s inquiry, Cape May County detective George Doughterty filed charges against both Anglemyer and Longo, noting in the complaint that, “Anglemyer had improper relations with Longo…a charge based on a statement given the prosecutor’s office by Longo himself.”

According to published reports, Longo began his investigation on the night of May 28, 1963 when he “found Anglemyer with friends at a Somers Point bar. Longo joined the party. Later he and Anglemyer paid a brief visit to another Bay Avenue, Somers Point bar, and then headed for a bar on the Somers Point – Longport Blvd., in what is now Egg Harbor Township. According to Anglemyer, he left the bar for a few minutes and returned to find his highball “spiked” with extra liquor. He refused to drink it and requested a new drink from the bartender.”

“Then Longo asked Anglemyer to drive him to Ocean City,” the newspaper reported. “Anglemyer agreed. On the way, according to Anglemyer, Longo said he ought to have a cup of coffee before going home (to 104 4th Steet). He asked Anglemyer to take him to Anglemyer’s summer apartment at 11th Street on the boardwalk (above the Copper Kettle Fudge Shop there), and make some coffee. It is concerning what actually happened at the apartment where the two men disagree.”

Anglemyer, in his formal complaint, said that the detective tried to force him to perform an unnatural sex act, while Longo’s affidavit “claims Anglemyer took the initiative and that Longo submitted.”

After leaving Anglemyer’s apartment, Longo reported to Public Safety Director Stretch, who telephoned then assistant Cape May County Prosecutor William Hughes, who turned the case over to detective George Dougherty.

Dougherty had both Anglemyer and Long arrested under New Jersey State statute 2A:115-1- “Any person who…in private commits an act of lewdness or carnal indecency with another, grossly scandalous and tending to debaunch the morals and manners of the people is guilty of a misdemeanor.” If found guilty the fine was $1,000 and imprisonment for up to three years.

Longo was permitted to stay on the job because, “while alleging he permitted an illegal act on his person by Anglemyer, was on duty at the time and therefore not subject to automatic suspension as required by the Civil Service regulations when a police officer is charged with a misdemeanor.”

Stretch pointed out that Longo was “simply getting the evidence,” and that he “conducted this investigation on my instructions. I assigned him to the case, and directed him to pursue it with vigor.”

Also implicated at the time were former Ocean City policeman ..............., then a laborer on the city payroll, and ................., a bridge attendant.

“The prosecution is based on sworn statements made by Ocean Cit Detective Dominic Longo, .................and ................ The three men alleged that at various times since 1959 they, individually, had improper relations with the defendant.”

The prosecutor said that the three charges would be handled in two cases, with Longo’s tried separate from the charges that concerned .......................

Anglemyer’s stand on the blue laws was not overlooked, as news reports noted, “Whispered assertions that the arrest of Harry Anglemyer, a prominent civic leader,…on three lewdness charges was brought about because of Anglemyer’s leadership in the fight to liberalize Sunday observances.”

But this allegation was branded “silly” by Public Safety Director Stretch, who was quoted as saying, “I have the greatest regard for Captain Longo as a police officer and a man of character.”

Although both Anglemyer and Longo were both initially arrested and charged, when a Grand Jury convened they only returned indictments against Anglemyer.

In April, 1964 the first case came to trial, ending in Anglemyer’s aquital when the jury deliberated for less than 20 minutes in finding him not guilty. The two other charges were pending, and although officials considered dropping the charges as a result of the disposition of the first case, Anglemyer was adamant about seeing them through to clear his name.

Then, early on the morning of Monday, Labor Day 1964, Anglemyer’s body was found in his car parked along the side of the highway outside the Dunes nightclub. One of his employees, Raymound W. Daley, recognized Anglemyer’s car when he passed the scene on the way to deliver fudge to the Atlantic City store.

Anglemyer was slumped dead on the floor of the car, so Daley called the New Jersey State Police. Because the Dunes nightclub was in Egg Harbor Township, which had no police department at the time, the initial investigation was handled by Troop A of the New Jersey State Police out of Hammonton, which was then led by Captain Harry C. Armano. Detective Robert Saunders and James Brennan handled the bulk of the investigation, but were assisted by as many as seven investigators who worked for many weeks developing leads.

An autopsy conducted at Shore Memorial Hospital revealed that Anglemyer had been dead for several hours before he was found and had suffered two skull fractures, one above the left eye and another behind the right ear.

The investigation learned that Anglemyer had been out on the town the night before his death. Early in the evening he had stopped at the Jolly Roger bar on the Somers Point Circle. Two women who knew him said that they sat with him at Steel’s Ship Bar on Bay Avenue, where they listened to music. They said he invited them to join him at the Dunes for a drink, but they declined, although they noteed that he was “stone cold sober,” when he left them. He may have also stopped at the Anchorage Tavern, and a bartender who frequently served him noted that Anglemyer always asked for his drink to be short, as he didn’t want to get drunk.

Anglemyer then went to the Bala Inn, on Bay and Maryland Avenues, where he made reservations for an end-of-the-summer party for his employees. He then stopped down the road at O’Bryne’s, where he had something to eat.

During his bar hopping round Anglemyer mentioned to more than one person that he had an appointment to meet someone at the Dunes that night and expressing his regret that he had to make the meeting.

When he got to the Dunes he sat at the bar with an acquaintance and was quoted as saying, “I wish I hadn’t made an appointment to come here tonight.”

Although he reportedly had at least one drink at each of his four or five stops, those who were with him that night all concurred that while he appeared tired, Anglemyer was not drunk.

While the Somers Point bars had to close by 2 a.m., the Dunes, as it is in Egg Harbor Township, stayed open all night. “Dunes ‘Till Dawn” was the moniker on the T-shirts. Someone noted that while not drunk, Anglemyer appeared very tired, “half asleep at the bar,” and when the person he was suppose to meet didn’t show up by 5:30 a.m. he left, but not by the front door.

Above the regular bar at the Dunes was the SandPiper Club, a second floor, private club for locals that could be reached from an inside flight of stairs as well as a separate side entrance. Anglemyer was still seeking the person he was suppose to meet when he went into the priave, members-only SandPiper Club.

From there, as the newspapers reported, Anglemyer contined his “nocturnal quest, minutes away from his rendezvous with death.”

Evidence at the scene of the crime indicated that he was knocked unconscious and dragged ten or twelve feet to his car. There were coins scattered around the ground, and his platinum wrist watch, wallet and three diamond rings, one valued at $10,000 were missing.

Daniel Le Roy, 46, identified as Anglemyer’s longtime secretary, was quoted as saying his “pockets were stripped of everything but a cigarette lighter and a pocket comb.”

Anglemeyer’s large diamond ring stood out conspicuously, and he was known to carry around large amounts of cash, making him a mark for robbery, and providing an apparent motive.

Three men, one identified as a 22 year old Ocean City “rooming house deadbeat,” and the two others as “beach boys,” were taken in for questioning. The “beach boys” had previously bragged about how easy it would be to “roll” Anglemyer for his ring, which he frequently flashed around while carousing the bars.

Friends and family publicly speculated that Anglemyer was “prey for a wolf pack,” and two other youths were sought for questioning because they had boasted they had “rolled” Anglemyer, beat and kicked him and stole $90, but he had refused to surrender the ring despite threats against him. A passing delivery truck driver was said to have broken up the fight, but the thieves escaped.

Then two witnesses came forward, a young couple who said they were sitting in a parked car outside the Dunes “making out.” As they were parked in a car along the road behind Anglemyer’s car, they saw Anglemyer talking with another man in a suit and tie. They heard the men arguing before the man hit Anglemyer, who fell to the ground, apparently hitting his head on a slab of concrete.

The witnesses said that as the man in the suit and tie walked away, two other men appeared and dragged the limp Anglemyer to his car where they placed him in the front seat. These men were called “the good Samaritans” in the newspapers and were asked to come forward and give statements, but no one did.

Because the strangers would not recognize Anglemyer’s car, and they were most likely the ones who took the watch, wallet and rings, these two men were also considered as possible accomplices to the murder.

A composite drawing was then made of the suspected murderer, which was published in the newspapers, and a “statewide manhunt” was undertaken for a white male between 25 and 30 years of age, medium build, five foot ten to six feet tall, who wore a dark suite, light shirt and dark tie.

A break in the case came in 1969 when it was reported tat the largest of Anglemyer’s rings was located out of state, which brought the FBI into the case.

Then 27 year old Christopher Brendan Hughes was charged with the murder. Hughes had previously been arrested in Philadelphia in October, 1966, allegedly part of an “interstate extortion ring preying on homosexuals.” Although the first court session ended in a mistrial because of information published in the newspaper, another trial was scheduled.

The trial, which took place in a Mays Landing court room in September, 1969, included the testimony of the original witnesses, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth W. McGinley, who had married since the murder. They testified they were sitting n a car directly behind Anglemyer’s car, when the altercation occurred, but when asked if she recognized the murderer in the court room, Mrs. McGinley pointed to a law enforcement officer rather than the suspect.

Then, at the last moment, the state’s star witness, Ronnie Lee Murray, a 30 year old black man, who served time in prison with Hughes, was suppose to testify that Hughes confessed to having committed the crime and related details of the murder to him while they were incarcerated in the same jail cell together. But when it came time to testify, Murray declined, and Hughes was found not guilty.

The last note on the public record quoted an anonymous law enforcement official as saying, “Unless an entirely new suspect or suspects turns up, law enforcement authorities regard the murder case as closed.”

None of the three jurisdictions – Egg Harbor Township police, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office nor the New Jersey State Police claim to have the files on the case, and no one is officially investigating the murder at this time. There are some indications that the official files related to the murder are currently in the possession of the Ocean City Police Department.

But now, over thirty years later, a new witness has come forward, and identified possible suspects in the murder.

While he wishes to remain anonymous, the witness was a former Ocean City municipal employee who was working as a delivery man in early September, 1964. On Monday, Labor Day, he said that in the early morning hours he had pulled his truck off to the side of the Somers Point – Ocean City causeway. While checking his inventory and delivery list, he noticed a vehicle parked down a dirt road that ran to the water, an old boat ramp.

There were three men standing around the vehicle arguing, talking loud enough for him to hear some of what they were saying. One of the men, in an Ocean City high school football jersey, ripped off his shirt, which appeared to be smeared with blood, rolled it up and threw it in the water.

As they left the delivery man recognized the three individuals as local guys he knew from school.

The next day, after news of the murder was out, one of the three men approached the delivery man and threatened him if he talked about what he witnessed the day before.

The delivery man said that he remained silent about the incident for many years, but is now talking about it because he is fearful for his life.

The delivery man identified one of the three men as a local man who retired from the Fire Department after being injured in the line of duty. A second individual, possibly a bouncer at the Dunes, is now dead, having passed away in Flordia, while the third individual is a brother of an Ocean City policeman who became Chief of Police after Dominic Longo.

Dominic Longo, after serving for many years as Chief of Police, became Director of Public Safety, which oversees the Police and Fire Departments. He has since passed away.

The delivery man has died too, but the brother of the former Chief of Police, who was identified as being one of the three men who disposed of the bloody shirt, is still alive, and while justice can never be served, he could answer the questions as to what really happened to Harry Anglemyer, and why he died.

xxxx

Duke Mack RIP

2009-09-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

DOMINICK "DUKE" MACK

MACK, DOMINICK "DUKE" 79 - founder of Mack's Pizza, passed away at his home surrounded by his family on Friday, September 18th.

Duke was a unique individual; one of a kind, a lover of life and fun, but at the same time a serious businessman and a warm and loving person devoted to family and friends. After operating a restaurant in Trenton on Nottingham Way (near the Trenton Fairgrounds), Duke, along with his father Anthony, took a drive to Wildwood and that's where the first Mack's Pizza was born.

They were the original founders of Mack's Pizza in Wildwood, as well as being the "Mack" in Mack and Manco's Pizza in Ocean City.

Duke's other businesses included a nightclub/restaurant named after him in AC, Duke Mack's, Hamilton Bowling Lanes in Hamilton Township and even Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer.

Duke was a huge NY Yankee supporter and a fan of Joe DiMaggio "the grea Yankee of them all." Duke had a great sense of humor and was a constant source of strength for his family and friends. Under his tough exterior, he had a heart of gold. Predeceased by his brother, Vince Mack and his first wife, Charlotte; Duke is survived by his wife Pat, two sons and a daughter-in-law, Ronald Mack and Darryl and Mary Mack; grandchildren, Eoin and Laura; Pat's daughter, Maryanne, who Duke loved and thought of as his own, her husband Michael and grandchildren, Brittany and Nicky Ziccardi. Duke is also survived by his loving brother and sister-in-law, Joseph and Sharon Mack; and his sister Catherine Moloney.

A funeral service will begin 10am Wednesday at the Saul Colonial Home, 3795 Nottingham Way, Hamilton Square. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 11am Wednesday at the Holy Angels RC Church, 1733 South Broad Street, Trenton, NJ 08610. Interment will follow in St. Mary's Cemetery, Hamilton, NJ. Relatives and friends may call 8-10am Wednesday at the Colonial Home.

Memorial contributions may be made to Holy Redeemer Health System, Development Department (Hospice Program), 21 Moredon Road, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 or the Prostate Cancer Foundation, 1250 Fourth Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401. www.saulfuneralhomes.com

The Secretary who Changed the World

2009-08-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

The Secretary who Changed the World
& The Legend of Woodstock before the Festival.

The legend and the legacy was set before the festival was envisioned.

It's hard to say exactly where to begin, New York, Somers Point, Montreal, the Woodstock myth began in the Manhattan office of Albert Grossman, the entertainment manager whose stable of acts included one Bob Dylan, folk singer extradonaire on the rise.

Dylan had come in to the office excited recently, and made Grossman sit down and listen to this - "Once upon a time you dressed so fine, didn't you......?"

They knew "Like A Rolling Stone" was a hit right off the bat, without even having to test it on somebody else's ears.

The Byrds had taken Dylan's folkie "Mr. Tamborine Man" and made it a rock and roll song with drums and electric guitars, and now with "Like A Rolling Stone," Dylan was writing rock & roll, and you could sense the direction he was going, and it wasn't to Woodstock.

As the legend goes, Dylan asked Grossman, his manager, about getting a rock and roll band to back him on his next tour, and who would Grossman recommend.

I don't know if they asked her opinion, or if she overheard the question and volunteered her feelings, but being from a small town in Canada, she knew that the Hawk were the best rock & roll band she had ever seen.

Rockabilly Ronnie Hawkins had left the band, and they continued on the road under the name of Levon & the Hawks, after drummer Levon Helm, from Arkansas, the only American in the Canadian band who had toured with Hawkins for years.

Grossman asked where the Hawks were playing and found out that their manager, Colonel Kutlets, had booked them into a nightclub in Somers Point, New Jersey - Tony Marts.

Without ever having seen or heard of them, and based totally on this unknown secretary's opinion, Dylan got the phone number for Tony Marts and gave them a call.

Levon had never heard of Bob Dylan, and when Dylan asked them to back him at Carnege Hall, Levon asked who else was on the bill.

"Just us," Dylan said, incredulously.

So Levon and the Hawks went up to New York and met with Dylan and Grossman and agreed they would get out of their contract at Tony Marts and back Dylan at Forest Hills, a tennis stadium just outside New York city.

Although Anthony Marotta, aka Tony Mart, didn't like the idea of the "best rock and roll band on the East Coast" breaking their contract and leaving before the Labor Day weekend, he let them off the hook, gave them a cake and fairwell party and wished them luck. He called Colonel Kutlets and asked for a new band to replace the Hawks and Kutlets sent Tony a new band, the Detroit Wheels, who had a hit, "Devil With the Blue Dress."

But luck the Hawks didn't have.

When Dylan plugged his guitar in at Forest Hills, the old folkies booed him, but he played on.

Levon really didn't like it however, and after a few gigs he left and went back home to Arkansas.

Then Dylan was in a motorcycle accident, and rumors were he died, or was on life support, and then that he was okay but just really banged up and in seclusion while recouperating.

Word eventually filtered out that Dylan was recouperating at Al Grossman's house at Woodstock, New York, an historic artists community with a history that dates back to the turn of the last century.

Joining Dylan at Woodstock were some of the Hawks, who leased a pink duplex in nearby West Saguarties, and jammed in the basement. Around town they became known simply as "the band," and eventually adopted that name. Their first album, "Music From Big Pink," showed the Big Pink house on the cover, and featured a painting by Bob Dylan on the back. A few of the songs were written by Dylan as well.

Then came bootleg recordings, pressed into bootleg LPs with a plane white cover, known as "The Basement Tapes," ostensibly recorded in the basement of Big Pink, and featuring Dylan, not only singing old and new songs, but talking and telling jokes.

The one joke from the original Basement Tapes I remember, that didn't make it to the official release years (decades?) later, is the story of the Checkmate Coffee House of East Orange, New Jersey.

Dylan says he went there once, and paid for his coffee with chess piece, a rook, and got a knight and pawn for change. Or something like that.

But "Music from Big Pink" and "The Basement Tapes" put Woodstock on the map in the back of a lot of people's minds, a year or so before they began to put the festival together.

And after the festival was moved to Bethel, fifty miles from Woodstock, and The Band performed the festival, both the original town of Woodstock and The Band, got left in the festival's wake.

For some reason, and I think Grossman advised The Band not to permit it, but The Band is conspiciously absent from the Woodstock movie and soundtrack, which is not an accident. I don't think they, The Band, at Grossman's advise, permitted them to use them in the Woodstock film, just as The Band's version of "The Weight" is not used in the Easy Rider film or soundtrack, but a cover band's version. And I think that decision was Grossman's.

Around 1986, after seeing the Band and the Band minus Robbie Robertson, and Danko and Manuel together a few times, I helped arrange for the Band to return to Somers Point for a Tony Marts reunion at Egos, the new disco nightclub that was built on the Tony Mart site.

After we booked the Band, but about six weeks before the show, Albert Grossman, Tony Marotta and Richard Manuel all died within a few days of each other.

The show however, went on. And while they were in town, I got to know Rick Danko, Levon and Garth Hudson a little bit on the personal level.

While Rick passed on a few years ago (after playing the Good Old Days Picnic at Kennedy Park), both Levon and Garth returned to Woodstock and live there today.

The Woodstock museum and arts center is not in Woodstock however, but in Bethel, where the festival was held.

There is no doubt however, that rock & roll history was made when Bob Dylan joined forces with the Hawks - electrified Forest Hills and the music scene, and then hibernated at Woodstock, establishing the Woodstock legend years before the festival.

And it only happened because Albert Grossman's secretary knew the answer to the question of who was the best rock & roll band on the East Coast.

Why that would be the Hawks.

From Ocean City to Woodstock

2009-08-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

From Ocean City to Woodstock

Okay, it's been 40 years, I know, know, and it's always going to be there - a generational milestone against which other major events are measured.

And I did this twenty years ago, when I thought it was a passing fad, and I can't find that clip so I'm going entirely on memory here, but I will do the best I can, spurred on by nudging from my pal Jerry Montgomery, who was inspired to blog his own recollections.

Blog wasn't a word in the dictionary in August, 1969, and the multi-media networks are a major development since the last Woodstock anniversary worth noting.

Just perusing the internet world I quickly realize that others are doing the same thing, and my recollections don't seem to jive totally with what is out there.

For instance, there's the Santana bit about their first album not being out in August, 1969, and that it wasn't released until after they played Woodstock.

Well, that's not the way I remember it.

I remember very distinctly being in a Wildwood motel room with Jerry and Marc Jordan, another good buddy from high school days, and one of them turning me on to Santana, playing what I thought was Black Magic Women, but since that song is not on their first album, it must have been Persuasion, or one of the smooth, thundering Santana songs, putting it on the record player while handing me the album cover, saying, "And Santana is going to be there!. We really got to go to Woodstock."

I knew about Woodstock, having previously had a epiphany like experience the first time I heard the Band's "The Weight" on the radio sometime in 1968. I was living at 362 (Garden Avenue, Camden, N.J.) at the time, and it was a Sunday night, but I don't remember if the dj was Meatball Fulton on the Penn station or Dave Herman on WMMR, where Herman introduced AOR - Album Oriented Rock and changed the world.

Fulton was further out there in Left Field, playing Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart (Trout Mask Replica), so it was probably Dave Herman who played "The Weight," - "take a load off Mammy," you know the song that changed the world, at least for me.

At least it got my attention, and even though this was years before I even learned the Band had been down the Shore at Tony Marts in Somers Point while I was hanging out in Ocean City, but I did know that they had backed Bob Dylan at the historic Forest Hills gig where the folkies booed him for "going electric," and that since Dylan had been in a bad motor cycle accident, their tour together had been postponed and they were all laid back recouperating at a place called Woodstock.

It was an old time, turn of the last century Artist Colony in Mid-state New York, where Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had a home and recording studio. Dylan was holed up at Grossman's house in a cast, while the rest of the Band lived in a pink split level house they called Big Pink in nearby West Saugerties. It was in the basement of Big Pink that they recorded the "Basement Tapes," many of the cuts featuring Dylan. So he was alive! And at Woodstock! This was the legend before the festival was envisioned.

When Jerry and Marc were telling me that Santana was going to be at a rock concert at Woodstock, all I could think of was Dylan and the Band.

And the Band were in the lineup for the festival at Woodstock, Marc said convincingly.

We had all went to high school together - Camden Catholic High School, class of '69, and has spent the previous few years at my family rooming house in Ocean City, but this summer Jerry and Marc were working at a grill on the Wildwood boardwalk and living at the motel a few blocks away.

The TV was on with the sound down, Santana was on the record player, and Jerry and Marc were trying to convince me to go to Woodstock with them for this rock festival.

But I had a real, steady job, flipping pizza on the Ocean City boardwalk, and I couldn't just take off a weekend in the middle of the summer.

Then I got a letter in the mail from the University of Dayton (Ohio), where I was due to enroll as a freshman in September, but this letter said that I was to show up for "Freshman Orientation" the same weekend as Woodstock.

So I showed the letter to my boss, Mr. Anthony Mack, who was then in his seventies, and didn't read anyway, so the letter could have said anything, but I was honest with him about the letter, and he said that I had to go, that my education was more important, but make sure I was back for the following weekend - Labor Day, the busiest weekend of the season. I'd be back on Monday I promised.

Then one day, while I was working, Jerry and Marc started talking with a guy with a napsack who was hanging around Shriver's Pier at 9th street and the boardwalk(no longer there), where all the hippies hung out and played guitar and sang. He was in town to visit his sister, who was working at Cooper Kettle Fudge on the boardwalk, and didn't have a place to stay.

No problem. "Our friend has a house down the street and lets everybody stay there."

When I got done making pizza the four of us went to the 9th Street diner (no longer there) for something to eat, and I learned that Jerry and Marc's new friend Mark Connally from Pittsburgh, was also going to be a freshman at the University of Dayton. He too was going to skip "freshman orientation" and go to Woodstock, so we all agreed we were going, and we made plans on meeting up with Mark Connally there. (Ha ha, but little did we know).

Thursday night, after I closed the pizza place, I hurried home, a few blocks away, and Marc and Jerry and Bob Katchnick, another friend from high school, were there, all packed and ready to go. My 1959' CJ5 jeep with no doors was packed with blankets and camping junk, was parked in the alley, but it was damp and wouldn't start.

My mother came out to say goodbye to us, and when we told her the jeep wouldn't start, she said to "take your father's car."

That's what she said, and we didn't argue.

And we were off, in Dad's relatively new 1967 Ford, a square box car, but since my father was a policeman, it had a sign "County Detective" on the visor, which came in handy when we had to pass people and get past roadblocks.

Jerry says he was driving, and I know I crawled in the back seat and went to sleep, but it wasn't long before we were parked on the side of the road and there was a flashlight in my face from the window. It was a cop, and he was asking me, "Does your father know you have this car?"

Before I could answer, he asked another question.

"Are you going to Woodstock?"

"Yes," was the answer, and it must have been the right one, because he let us go with a simple, "Be safe."

By morning, a few hours later, we were getting really close, because we weren't moving very fast as traffic was getting tight.

As everyone who was there knows, the Woodstock festival was not held at Woodstock, the Arts Colony town where Albert Grossman had his home and recording studio (Bearsville?), and Dylan and the Band were holding up.

The festival, due to the concerns and protests of the local community, was not to be held at Woodstock, but at Max Yasker's farm about fifty miles further down the road.

At some point we picked up a hitch hiker, a fortunious move, as Jerry recalls in his blog -[http://users.section101.com/?page=user_blog&room=jerrymontgomery] because the guy had already been to the site and knew a back way in, down a dirt road and through some fields that emptied out right back stage, maybe two hundred yards to the right rear of the stage.

It wasn't long however, before we were blocked in and parked there for a few days.

It was damp when we left, and wet when we got there, but it only rained periodically, but when it rained, it rained.

Jerry remembers some acid being consumed by some, but not me. I didn't drink alochol or even smoke pot, and may have been the only straight and sober person there.

We did have a leather gourd with some wine that we shared, but for the most part, I didn't partake and should have a clear recollection of everything that happened.

I don't.

I do remember scouting out the scene, walking around amazed at everything, and eventually working my way down in front of the stage where I sat with some strangers, who became my friends, and listened to Richie Havens, who I remember the clearest.

Joan Biez also stands out as someone I actually paid attention to, but some of the bands just didn't interest me - like the Who. I just didn't get it.

After seeing Richie Havens and Joan Biez from pretty close up, I went for a walk around the outskirts of the scene, a big mistake because I never got down close to the front of the stage again.

I remember the food court shelling out all kinds of food, and the port a potties, and swimming naked in the lake with a bunch of strangers, actually just to get clean after a rain storm.

There was the medical facilities, that looked like a MASH tent, and there were helicopters constantly flying in and out and buzzing around above us.

Every once in awhile I went back to the car to see if any of the other guys had checked in, but usually nobody was there, until it got dark and we slept in the car, which at least was dry.

I knew my companions for a few years, having me them at Camden Catholic High School. Jerry lived near me in East Camden, is quiet but has a good sense of humor.
Marc was more serious, a transfer to CCHS from arch rival Bishop Eustice, which was an all guy prep school and basketball powerhouse at the time. Marc had played basketball, but was also pretty smart, and for some reason, transferred to Catholic and didn't play basket ball. He drifted towards me and my locker because I was a radical, politically, a "clean for Gene" anti-Vietnam war activist.

Bob Katchnick, which is spelled phonetically, was a real handsome - Troy Donahue like artist, who has a younger hippie sister, and was good friends with Bob Lodge, another artist - the Two Bobs.

Jerry and Marc were hanging out together and close to the wine gourd, while Bob took off on his own, and was probably doing extra-psychadelic enhancers, and of us all, was probably enjoying himself the most.

I know Mark wanted to leave almost as soon as we got there, or at least go get a motel room somewhere, but we were stuck now, in the middle of a half-million people.
That's more than Napoleon's army, and more people than some countries (Monaco, Lichenstein, and the UAE country that's been named to host the next America's Cup).

Finally The Band came on, the one group that I really came to Woodstock to see, and I couldn't get down close to the stage, but I got as I could to the stage left, and when I still couldn't see, I climbed a tree and laid back on one of the limbs with people walking along a trail below me.

While we never did hook up with Mark Connally from Pittsburgh, I thought it was quite unbelievable when, after awhile, I heard Jerry's distinct voice calling out my name. "Yo! Bill."

And I think I frightened him a little when I answered him from above, hanging on to a tree limb.

I saw the Band and heard them, and now I thought the whole trip was worth it.

But Dylan was nowhere to be seen, on or off stage, and I don't think I was the only one disapointed at that.

By Sunday afternoon, there were still a dozen acts to play, but we were pretty much set on getting out of there as soon as the car could be moved and there was traffic moving.

Mark was anxious to go and it didn't take too much convincing me to get going while the gettin' was good.

Bob Katchnick didn't want to leave though, because some of the best acts were still to come, so he said not to worry and that he'd hitch hike home and see us in a few days. And we didn't argue with him.

We left Sunday afternoon so we missed the Sunday night acts and, of course, Hendrix on Monday morning, but I'm sure Bob Katchnick was there, and I later learned from Mark Connally that he hung around and helped clean up the mess.

I don't remember the ride home at all, but when we got home, I do remember that I never saw my father so happy to see me, and his car, though we were both covered in mud. We didn't realize that the festival had made the national news, or the news at all, until we got home and it was only then that we realized what a big thing it was.

I'm going to have to blend Jerry's Blog narrative with this, to see how it jives, but he's told me that he remembers us getting back to Ocean City late Sunday night, and while Mark jumped in the shower, we walked down the alley and around the corner to the Purple Dragon Coffee House on 8th street (now the Horse Horse Ice Cream Parlor), just to show off our Woodstock mud.

If so, that was the only time I bragged about being at Woodstock, because the next day I had to be back at work at Mack & Manco's Pizza on the boardwalk, where I had to tell everybody that I spent the weekend in Dayton, Ohio at "freshmen orientation."
I would have gotten fired for sure if I told them I had actually been to Woodstock.

When I finally got to Dayton, I hooked up with Mark Connally and we became good friends, and eventually moved into an off campus apartment together.

A year or so after Woodstock, Richie Havens came to Dayton and played a concert at the Dayton Arena. I had seats right down front, and after the show I handed Richie a piece of paper that just said something like "Friend Bill Kelly from Woodstock" and the address of a party.

An hour or so after the concert, the party was going pretty strong, with people in every room, but I was hanging out in the kitchen, when a limo pulled up out front, and Richie Havens got out and asked for me, and joined us in the kitchen. The other party guests didn't believe me when I said Richie Havens was coming by, and I was pretty shocked to see him myself, but he came in and pretended he remembered me from Woodstock, and then proceeded to show us how to roll a joint with one hand, just like the cowboys do when they're riding a horse on the range.

By then I was smoking, and drinking draft beer, and we had a grand old time. Richie is still on the road, playing all the time, and when he's not on the road, he lives somewhere in North Jersey. Havens was interviewed on CNN a few nights ago (it should be on YouTube by now), along with Dick Cavatt, who had interviewed Joni Mitchell and Hendrix, both complete interviews also available. The interviewer kept asking Richie Havens these long questions, and Richie, being stoned, answered real slow in few sylables.

As for my Woodstock friends, Jerry is now a computer guy in the mid-west, while Mark is a lawyer in DC, whose married to a lawyer. After Woodstock, Mark got a scholarship to NYU in NYC, and lived in the Village where I visited him a few times. While there he too had an epiphany, joined ROTC and became a USMC officer after graduation. We stayed friends.

We left Bob Katchnick at Woodstock, and I was going to say that we haven't heard from him since, but now I do remember hitich hiking with a girlfriend from Dayton to Detroit and visiting Bob at Wayne State University. I'd like to find out what became of Bob, and get his Woodstock reminisces but I can't seem to get a correct spelling for his last name.

I really became a Band fan, and caught them performing in Cleveland at the Armory there in 1970, and then in Philly at the Spectrum many times, including tours backing Dylan.

One of the first articles I ever had published (Atlantic City Sun) was the story of how the Band, as Levon & the Hawks, played the summer of '65 at Tony Marts nightclub in Somers Point, where they were playing when Dylan convinced them to leave there to back him at Forest Hills.

Then in 1986 we brought The Band back to Somers Point for the first Tony Marts reunion at the original site of Tony Marts, Egos nightclub.

Tony's son Carmen Marotta, opened a nightclub in New Orleans in partnership with the Band's drummer and vocalist Levon Helm - the Classic American Cafe. Later, Levon and his band from Woodstock, including his daughter, played the Bubba Mac Shack in Somers Point (no longer there) a few times. The last time he played there he was sick, and couldn't sing, but since then, he's beaten the cancer and can now play drums and sing like the good old days. His last album "Dirt Farmer" won a Grammy and he's going to be playing the Borgatta Casino in Atlantic City (August 22) with the Black Crows, who recently recorded a live album at Levon's barn at Woodstock.

In all the Woodstock reminisces I've read over the past week, I haven't seen anything about Dylan, The Band, Albert Grossman, Big Pink or any of the reasons I went to Woodstock in the first place.

So I guess that gives me the opportunity to set the record straight, if I could only remember.

Bill Kelly
August 16, 2009
Browns Mills, NJ

MORE TO COME

America's Cup 2010 Ras al Khaimah

2009-08-16T01:31:00.000-07:00

Our new friend Ynotoman, reported in his blog:

http://ynotoman.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/ras-al-khaimah-will-hold-33rd-americas-cup/

that "The neighboring Emirate to Oman, Ras al Khaimah, will hold the 33rd America's Cup as landlocked Switzerland has nominated the Emirate for 2010. Congradulations Ras al Khaimah."

"Sitting next to Musandam the event might well come into Omani spectacular waters."

"With 11 wins in 20 starts by Masirah, Oman's racing boat, Oman really should try and put an AC33 yacht and team in for the America's Cup 2010."

You wouldn't even know that there's going to be a 33rd America's Cup regatta if you only paid attention to USA news media, as I have not seen this covered anywhere yet.

This will be the grudge match - best of three races between Swiss and USA only.

BYM Sailing :

America's Cup: Ras al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates selected as venue

http://www.bymnews.com/news/newsDetails.php?id=58426

The America's Cup Defender, Alinghi, and its yacht club, the Société Nautique de Genève, today announced the venue for the 33rd America's Cup in February 2010.
“We are pleased to announce that Ras al-Khaimah, in the United Arab Emirates, will be the Host Country for the 33rd America's Cup,” said Fred Meyer, Vice-Commodore of the Société Nautique de Genève (SNG).

“This is a venue that offers perfect weather and great sailing conditions for a Match in February; the authorities have shown tremendous interest in, and support for hosting the America's Cup; and the country has experience in organising first-class sporting events such as ATP tennis, PGA golf and Formula One. They will make a purpose-built island available at the Al Hamra Village in Ras al-Khaimah to provide the America's Cup teams, sponsors and fans with an outstanding venue.”

Having won the 32nd America's Cup in 2007 in Valencia with its yacht racing team, Alinghi, the SNG is granted the right to choose the venue for the next America's Cup which is scheduled to start on 8 February 2010.

“Our absolute priorities in making this decision are the prevailing weather conditions and the resulting safety that they bring to both teams,” explains Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth. “We looked everywhere for a venue that suited having good racing for the Match dates in February. We had trained in the UAE in the winter with Alinghi before and in the end we settled on Ras al-Khaimah in particular because of the infrastructure in Al Hamra Village and because it has a great building sea breeze during the day, similar to Mediterranean conditions in the summer, making it good for these boats and safe for all concerned.”

His Highness Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Crown Prince of Ras al-Khaimah, expresses his satisfaction:

“It is a great moment for us to host the America's Cup here. It is significant because it reflects how the Emirates have become a place for hosting international events. It is a reflection on what we have achieved in terms of becoming the destination for tourists and trade and industry and is a reflection of our integration in the world at large. This announcement reflects the nature of our country and its aim of becoming host to many nationalities who live side by side in peace. It is a hope and dream that this is the kind of space that we want to have on our globe. It is a great moment for us to host this prestigious event and to welcome all the sports people to the UAE and to Ras al-Khaimah to watch this great event; we are looking forward to its success.”

Background information on the 33rd America's Cup venue

RAS AL-KHAIMAH

Ras al-Khaimah literally means ‘the top of the tent' in Arabic. One of the seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it covers an area of 656 square miles (1,700km2) and borders on Oman, situated in the southern part of the Persian Gulf. The emirate has a population of approx 300,000 and is ruled by HH Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammad Al Qasimi. The Deputy Ruler is Crown Prince HH Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi. The capital city of Ras al-Khaimah is located 45 minutes from Dubai airport and is also served by the Ras al-Khaimah International airport.

THE VENUE

A 22-hectare purpose-built island inside the Al Hamra Village lagoon will host the team bases and all the necessary facilities for the media, the sponsors and the public. The Al Hamra Village is a new luxury resort with more than 3,500 residences on the coast of Ras al-Khaimah.

INTERNATIONAL EVENTS IN UAE

- Motorsport: Formula-1 in Abu Dhabi since 2009 (Hamilton, Alonso, Schumacher…)
- Golf: PGA in Dubai since 1989 and Abu Dhabi since 2006 (Woods, Els, Montgomery, García…); Tiger Woods has designed his first golf course in Dubai
- Tennis: ATP in Dubai since 1993 (Federer, Nadal, Murray, Roddick, Agassi…) and WTA in Dubai since 2001 (Williams, Hingis, Davenport…)
- Sailing: RC44 in Dubai since 2007 (Coutts, Spithill, Barker, Col…) and Alinghi winter training in Dubai in 2006/7
- Football: FIFA Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi in 2009 (FC Barcelona, Estudiantes, Auckland City…)
- Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi (completion expected in 2011)
- New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Abu Dhabi in 2009

INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC INITIATIVES IN UAE

- École Polytéchnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is creating a new University campus in Ras al-Khaimah
- Harvard Medical School Dubai Centre was launched in 2004 through a joint effort by Harvard Medical and Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC) to develop an academic centre for health care delivery, medical education, and research

ABC NEWS REPORTS:
August 5, 2009 (AP)

America's Cup grudge match headed for Persian Gulf port Ras al-Khaimah

By BERNIE WILSON
The Associated Press

Everything leading up to the 33rd America's Cup has been unconventional and surprising, so it figures that the venue might as well be extraordinary, too.

Yes, the stodgy old America's Cup is going to be decided in the Middle East.

Two-time defending champion Alinghi of Switzerland picked the Persian Gulf port Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, as the site where it will settle its bitter feud with American challenger BMW Oracle Racing.

A twisting, two-year court tussle between bickering billionaire syndicate bosses has led to a rare best-of-3 series in massive multihulls for the oldest trophy in international sports. The nautical grudge match is scheduled to begin Feb. 8.

It could be the most extreme, spectacular racing in the 158-year history of the America's Cup. The space age-looking boats are 90 feet long, dwarf their crews, are capable of sailing 2 to 2 1/2 times the speed of the wind and are potentially lethal if pushed too hard.

Alinghi, led by biotech tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli, will sail a catamaran. BMW Oracle Racing, owned by Oracle Corp. founder and CEO Larry Ellison, is testing its trimaran in San Diego. The one-time pals sail aboard the boats they own. Each boat is estimated to have cost well more than $10 million.

Ras al-Khaimah, which literally means "The Top of the Tent," is a little-known, mostly industrial city-state on the southern end of the Persian Gulf. It's not far from the Strait of Hormuz, which separates the UAE from Iran, and is known for producing cement, not oil.

Alinghi officials said Ras al-Khaimah is ideal because of its weather and support pledged by leaders there.

"It's a pretty nice place to sail," Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. Butterworth is a four-time America's Cup winner and former crewmate of Russell Coutts, one of the Cup's most dominant skippers who now leads BMW Oracle Racing.

Butterworth said Ras al-Khaimah has a nice sea breeze that reminds him of the Caribbean. Safe weather conditions for the crews and their big boats was a concern, he added.

In a statement released by the Swiss, Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi said it is "a great moment for us to host the America's Cup here. It is significant because it reflects how the Emirates have become a place for hosting international events. It is a reflection on what we have achieved in terms of becoming the destination for tourists and trade and industry and is a reflection of our integration in the world at large."

BMW Oracle Racing officials aren't as enthusiastic. As with many other issues, the Americans are considering going back to a New York court to challenge the selection.

They believe the choice of Ras al-Khaimah, without mutual consent, violates the provisions of the Deed of Gift that governs the America's Cup and the decisions of New York courts. The Americans believe the venue should be Valencia, Spain — which the Swiss say will be too rough for the big boats in February — or a Southern Hemisphere port.

Coutts, Alinghi's skipper in its 5-0 victory over his native New Zealand in 2003 before having a falling out with Bertarelli, told The AP that BMW Oracle Racing will likely send officials to Ras al-Khaimah to gather more information before deciding whether to return to court. He's sailed in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but not Ras al-Khaimah.

"I didn't really know where it was on the map until it was announced," Coutts said. He said the only thing he knows about Ras al-Khaimah was from seeing an animation of the venue on a sailing Web site.

"We're not going to rush to make a decision," said Coutts, who sailed undefeated through three straight America's Cup matches, the first two with Team New Zealand. "We're going to try to find out the information first. Frankly, none of us have been to Ras al-Khaimah. I certainly don't know what's there and what's been planned."

Fred Meyer, vice commodore of Alinghi's backing yacht club, Societe Nautique de Geneve, said UAE officials will build an island to be used by the teams, sponsors and fans.

Alinghi trained in Dubai, UAE, prior to the 2007 America's Cup, when it beat Team New Zealand in Valencia.

"It was a real eye-opener for me," Butterworth said. "We went and watched Tiger (Woods) play in the Desert Classic there and Roger Federer played there that time of the year, so there's a lot of sport going on in that area. I think eventually a regatta was going to happen there one way or the other."

Alinghi is believed to have wanted a port with light wind and flat seas, which could give its giant cat, Alinghi 5, an edge over BMW Oracle Racing's trimaran.

Alinghi is scheduled to use a giant, Russian-built helicopter to lift Alinghi 5 off Lake Geneva on Friday and fly it over the Alps along the Great St. Bernard Pass to Genoa, Italy, for a month of training on the Mediterranean.

The America's Cup got its name after the schooner America beat a fleet of British ships around the Isle of Wight on Aug. 22, 1851, to win an ornate silver trophy that had been called the Hundred Guinea Cup. Since then it has been contested off New York; Newport, R.I; Fremantle, Australia; San Diego; Auckland, New Zealand; and Valencia.

The Comets Summer 2009

2009-08-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

Original drummer for Bill Haley & the Comets, Octogenerarian Dick Richards Boccelli
lives in Ocean City, and when he's in town, hangs at the 4th Street Cafe
with Jody Marks Cigars Kish, and has breakfast at Bayshores II in Somers Point with
Fred Prinz and friends.

I remember in the 70s, John Dean told me about Dick and then introduced us.

The Comets got together for a Dick Clark American Bandstand revival TV show,
and I brought them back to Ocean City to play the Flanders 75th anniversary with
Charlie Gracie, Mike Pedicin, Sr., Robert Hazard and DJ Michael Tearson.

They also played the Bubba Mac Shack at the Point five years in a row around Labor Day, and toured Europe every year, playing before tens of thousands at music festivals, where the fans really know the difference between the original acts and cover bands.

Now they have a regular gig at Dick Clark's Rock & Roll Theater in Branson, Missouri, in the Heart of America, and recently played a show at the Mohegan casino with other classic acts.

The Bowzer was the leader of Sha Na Na, the oldies show that played Woodstock.

Here's Marshall's report from that show:

Dear Friends,
Jimmy Jay, and his BW, Joanne.
brought this beautiful cake, with the title of my new book,
"Still ROCKIN AROUND THE CLOCK."

The Bowzer Rock & Roll Party at The Mohegen Sun was a BIG SUCCESS
with about 8,000 people loving every minute of the over 3 hour show.

After Bowzers opening, the crowd was Rockin to the FABULAS Charlie Gracie, Philadelphia's 1st Rock-n-Roller.

Bowzer then introduced The Queen of Rockabilly, Wanda Jackson
who took control and told that crowd Let's Have A Party.

Then Came the Fantastic Joey Dee with The Soul Survivors,
they really hit a home run with Shout.
Then BOWZER Amazed the Audience with his Piano Solo.

Next Came,
Bowzer and The STINGRAYS. They hit a home run with every song
like Hand Jive, and their Dance Contest is always a big hit.

Then Lesley Gore, was a Big Hit with It's my Party and
I'll Cry if I Want To. Closing 1st Half of the Show.

INTERMISSION
2nd Half starts with Bowzer introducing the big talents of SAM THE SHAM,
The WOOLEY BULLY MAN, is always a hit with the crowd.

Then it was our turn, and Bowzer, gave us a great introduction,
telling our ages Joey 75, Marshall 76,(Sept.1st) and Dick 85.
We did SHAKE- ALLIGATOR- RATC- and Dick's Drum Solo w/the Bass
antic's was a BIG HIT.

The Bowzer introduced the wonderful talents of LOU CHRISTIE,
who closed the 2nd half with his great Hits.

BOWZER does his GOODNIGHT SWEETHEART.
And the crowd was VERY HAPPY.

I LOVE YOU ALL
Marshall

Sam McDowell - The Old Smuggler & Iron MIke

2009-08-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

Sam McDowell Donates Art to Local Museums

“It’s a great spot to grow up,” says Sam McDowell of Somers Point and Ocean City, where he and his eight sisters and brothers lived, went to school and worked on the beach and boardwalk. McDowell’s memories of the Jersey Shore are reflected in his art, copies of which were recently donated to the Somers Point and Ocean City Historical Societies and Bayside Center.

“I’ve been very lucky and feel I owe it to the people to tell them how nice it really is,” McDowell said in a telephone conversation from his home in Carmel, California.

“I lived in Somers Point, and liked Ocean City very much, the high school, the beach patrol, it’s a great spot to grow up, so I wanted to give something back to the community.”

Sam McDowell, who most people remember from the Smuggler’s Shop on the Ocean City boardwalk at 13th street, was born in Somers Point in 1929 (now 79), and worked as a lifeguard (1948-53 and 58-59) between a stint in the Air Force. He rowed with Tom Oves and Bob Harbough, both of whom own boardwalk grills. He had a whalers boat custom made that he rowed past the breakers every morning in Ocean City, then in Carmel and later in Bequa, an Island in the West Indies where he has a studio he lived seasonally for many years.

Working as an art teacher in Princeton, McDowell spent summers at his boardwalk shop from the 50s through the 70s, where he worked next to Iron Mike the antique diving suit, and sold nautical gifts, including scrimshaw, carvings on whalebone.

While whale bones are no longer legal tender, he began carving scrimshaw on faux ivory himself, and became a scrimshaw trader. At a party in Princeton he met then Senator John F. Kennedy, an avid scrimshaw collector who encouraged him to continue his scrimshaw art work, which are now collector’s items.

“I realized that I could make more money doing scrimshaw than I could teaching or working the Smuggler’s shop,” explained McDowell, so putting everything else aside, he concentrated on the bone carvings and is now considered one of the foremost scrimshaw artists in the world.

Not just a rare, contemporary scrimshaw artists, McDowell has actually been whaling, having accompanied some natives from Bequa, where they are permitted to hunt four whales a year, as they have done for the past two centuries.

”I could row, so they let me go along with them,” said McDowell, “and it was scary, because they do it exactly like they did it 200 years ago. They throw a harpoon into the whale and hope for the best,” going on what they call a “Nantucket sleigh ride.”

Although his scrimshaw earns the bread & butter, his other art work is also popular, and prized by collectors. Some of his paintings reflect his early life in Somers Point, including his family’s Sunny Avenue home that is still there.

Having recently made exact gicle prints of some of his paintings, McDowell gave two of them to each of the local museums, including Christmas Shopping on the Shore Fast Line and Decoration Day on Bay Avenue.

Christmas Shopping on the Shore Fast Line shows people getting off the trolley in Somers Point after Christmas shopping in Ocean City, some holding bags from Talese’s tailor shop and Stainton’s Department store.

Decoration Day, now Veterans Day, has people getting ready for the big parade that ends at the Somers Point beach where they laid wreaths in the water for those who died during wartime. There’s a schooner sailing on the bay with Ocean City in the background.

Accompanying each picture is an essay McDowell wrote explaining what he was trying to convey in the paintings. McDowell’s art is now hanging at the Ocean City Historical Museum and Bayside Center, and at the Somers Point Historical Museum, which is open Saturdays (10AM – 1PM) and Tuesday evenings (7PM – 9PM) and Thursday mornings (10AM-1PM).

Sally Hastings, President of the Somers Point Historical Society, said “These pictures are really special because they capture a sense of family and community that we would like to preserve. We are very appreciative of all that the McDowell family has done for us. Although spread across the country, they have remained a close family and always remember their roots growing up here in Somers Point.”

William Kelly
Billykelly3@yahoo.com

Parkway Murders - Cold Case Gets Hot?

2009-07-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

After 40 Years the Parkway Murders Cold Case Gets Hot

By William Kelly

It was a cold case from the start when the bodies of Elizabeth Davis and Susan Perry were found three days after they were murdered over the Memorial Day weekend, 1969.

The college coeds had spent a few days in Ocean City before the holiday weekend and left their 9th street rooming house early on Friday morning, ate breakfast at the Point Diner and then disappeared down the Parkway north, heading home to Pennsylvania.

By Monday, when it was realized that an abandoned convertible towed off the Parkway Friday morning was the car belonging to the missing girls, the bodies were found in the woods nearby.

There were many leads followed and many suspects checked out over the years, including two mass murders in Florida prisons who confessed to having killed the girls, but closing the case remained elusive for the Atlantic County Prosecutor and the lead investigators – the New Jersey State Police.

Now, 40 years later, there’s a new book about the murders, a new State Police investigator has been assigned the case, and a new lead may develop additional suspects.

Christian Barth, a lawyer from Cherry Hill, N.J., has recently published a book, The Origins of Infamy, which describes how serial killer Ted Bundy may have committed the crime. The book, which is available on line at Amazon [http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Infamy-Christian-E-Barth/dp/1440138931], is also available at Sun Rose Books in Ocean City, where Barth will be selling and signing copies of his book on Wednesday, July 22, from 5 to 8 pm.

According to the publisher’s synopsis, “Based on a true story, The Origins of Infamy tells of Ted Bundy's alleged involvement in the murder of two coeds at the Jersey Shore on Memorial Day 1969.”

“Speaking to his biographer on the eve of his execution, Bundy is offered the chance of clemency in exchange for a confession to his involvement in the unsolved deaths. Before learning what transpired that weekend two decades earlier, journalist Richard Larsen, author of The Deliberate Stranger, is led on a psychological journey through the condemned murderer's past. From Bundy's own voice, Larsen learns the root causes motivating him to become America's most notorious serial killer. Beginning on Death Row at Florida State Penitentiary, then traveling back in time to Seattle, Philadelphia, New York City, and Ocean City, New Jersey, The Origins of Infamy vividly recreates a historical account of New Jersey's most famous cold case.”

Ocean City historian Fred Miller has said, "Barth's novel is a spellbinding reimagination of one of the more disturbing unsolved cold cases in local history. With hope, perhaps his work shall bring closure to this troubling mystery."
Drawing on details of the crime, Barth develops a plausible scenario as to what really happened.

But did Bundy do it?

The investigation never really tried to find out, as they never checked Bundy’s gas credit cards from when he was a student at Temple, or compared his fingerprints to the prints found on the car, or attended the Bund Conference at Quantico after he was executed to see if he could have been responsible for other crimes.

Now however, there is a new lead in the investigation, as a local insurance man has said that on the day before they were murdered the two girls were in a fender bender accident with two young men in a Volkswagen Van. The insurance man handled the claim and after the murders informed the New Jersey State Police about the incident, but was never contacted. Did that lead get lost in the shuffle of leads at the time of the murders?

With a new State Police investigator responsible for the case, both Bundy and the boys in the VW Van will probably be checked out, as well as other leads that failed to pan out before.

Two things are for certain however, whoever is responsible for the murders, committed other crimes, and may still be committing them, and the details make for stimulating reading on the beach this summer.

Bill Kelly can be reached at Billykelly3@yahoo.com

Positively 4th Street - Crean's House

2009-07-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

Word on the street is that the Crean's house on Fourth Street in Ocean City is history.

Gone. Demolished to make room, I guess, for a duplex.

The Kellys and the Creans went back to East Camden where the Crean home was around the corner from St. Joseph's school, and since there were seven Crean kids of every age, the Crean house was a popular place to visit. It's a big house on a corner that's still there.

Shortly after the Kellys moved to 819 Wesley in Ocean City (circa 1971), the Creans bought the house on 4th street, a building that was very similar in style to 819, with first floor brick apartment, cedar wood clapboard, four floors, nice porchs, front and back, and dated to the same period - 1899-1900.

When 819 was sold (circa 1999), mom Kelly, who the Crean kids all called Aunt Molly, moved to a year 'round apartment at Garden's Plaza high rise, along with Monsignor O'Conner and a few of her bridge playing friends. After one year there she moved into the first floor apartment at the Crean house on 4th street.

The Creans had a boat they called "Positively 4th Street," an old woody that they kept on the lot next to their house, which was later developed into a duplex.

John Crean, a union electrician at the casinos, took over the house after Mister and then Mrs. Crean passed away.

When Kevin died, after the funeral mass at St. Francis nearby, they invited me back to 4th Street but I didn't make it, and now it's gone.

A lot of good times were had by all, and I'm sure John Crean, if he still owns it, will build a nice place where a lot more good times will be had.

Songs of the Summer of ' 69 Flashback

2009-07-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

Summer of '69 - The Summer that Shook the World

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longislandlife/ny-summerof69-sg,0,5654962.storygallery

CRIMSON AND CLOVER - Tommy James & the Shondels
EVERYDAY PEOPLE - Sly & the Family Stone
DIZZY - Tommy Roe
AQUARIUS : LET THE SUNSHINE IN - 5th Dimension
GET BACK - The Beatles
LOVE THEME FROM ROMEO & JULET - Henry Mancini
IN THE YEAR 2525 - Zager & Evans
HONKEY TONK WOMEN - Rolling Stones
SUGAR, SUGAR - Archies
I CAN"T GET NEXT TO YOU - The Temptations
WEDDING BELL BLUES - 5th Dimension
COME TOGETHER/SOMETHING - The Beatles
NA NA HEY HEY KISS HIM GOODBYE - Steam
LEAVING ON A JET PLANE - Peter, Paul & Mary
SOMEDAY SOON WE'LL BE TOGETHER - Diana Ross & The Supremes

Cavafy's Awaiting the Barbarians

2009-06-25T23:40:00.001-07:00

Awaiting the Barbarians

by Constantin P. Cavafy
Konstantinos Kavafis, a Jew of Alexandria
Composed in 1904

— Why are we come together in the market place?

Barbarians are expected here to-day.

— Why in the Senate-house this inactivity —
why sit the Senators and do not legislate?

Because barbarians are to come to-day
What laws should they make now — the Senators?
Presently the barbarians will make laws.

— Why has our Emperor risen close upon the sun —
why is he waiting there, by the main city-gates,
seated upon the throne, — august, wearing the crown?

Because barbarians are to come to-day
And so the Emperor in person waits
to greet their leader. He has even prepared
a title-deed, on skin of Pergamus,
in favour of this leader. It confers
high rank on the barbarian, many names.

— Why do our consuls and the praetors go about
in scarlet togas fretted with embroidery;
why are they wearing bracelets rife with amethysts,
and rings magnificent with glowing emeralds;
why are they holding those invaluable staffs
inlaid so cunningly with silver and with gold?

Because barbarians are to come to-day;
and the barbarians marvel at such things.

— Why come not, as they use, our able orators
to hold forth in their rhetoric, to have their say?

Because barbarians are to come to-day;
and the barbarians have no taste for words.

— Why this confusion all at once, and nervousness:
(how serious of a sudden the faces have become):
why are the streets and meeting-places emptying,
and all the people lost in thought as they turn home?

Because the daylight fails, and the night comes,
but the barbarians come not. And there be
who from the frontier have arrived and said
that there are barbarians now at all.

And now what shall become of us without barbarians?
These people were in sooth some sort of settlement.

Translated by John Cavafy

(Poems by C. P. Cavafy. Translated, from the Greek, by J. C. Cavafy. Ikaros, 2003)

http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=218&cat=1

http://www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk/cavafy.htm

AT APPROXIMATELY NINE PM MDS COMPOSED OF MOTOR CYCLISTS RIOTED AT WEIRS BEACH LOCATED ON LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE. TWO HUNDRED NATIONAL GUARDSMEN RESPONDED COUPLED WITH RIOT TRAINED DEPUTIES FROM BELKNAP COUNTY AND LACONIA…POLICE DEPT.

DAMAGE HAS INCLUDED BURING O BOARDWALK, OVERTURNING OF POLICE CRUISER AND ADDITIONAL FIRES. RIOTERS HAMPERED FIRE FIGHTERS AND THUS FAR TEN HAVE BEEN ARRESTED. MATTER BEING FOLLOWED CLOSELY BY BOSTON AND BUREAU WILL BE KEPT ADVISED. END

FBI WASHINGTON DC
JUNE 23 1965

LACONIA, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Riotous conditions developed at Weirs Beach located on Lake Winnipesaukee at Laconia, New Hampshire, on the night of June 19, 1965, when a crowd of 6,000 to 10,000 men and women who had congregated on Lakeside Avenue at the resort became disorderly and defined the local police.

NATURE OF THE CROWD

The crowd was composed primarily of motorcyclists from all parts of the United States who were in the area to attend the annual motorcycle races at nearby Loudon, New Hampshire. Most of the individuals were in their twenties or early thirties….REDACTED

INITIAL INCIDENTS:

Trouble first occurred at about 7:00 p.m. on June 19, 1965, when someone threw a smoke bomb and the crowd converged in that area. Several more smoke bombs were thrown in the next hour with similar results. The crowd became disorderly and noisy, taunted police officers with vulgar and profane remarks, and interfered with traffic.

RIOTING ERUPTS:

By 9:00 p.m. the crowd had become an unruly mob completely defiant of police orders. Members of the mob fought among themselves, threw firecrackers, rocks and over turned two automobiles, one of which caught fire. An unsuccessful attempt was made to burn a bowling alley by pouring gasoline into the air-conditioning system of the building and igniting it. At 9:30 p.m., traffic was completely stopped in the area and some of the motorcyclists were drag racing amid the mob.

POLICE ACTION:

The Riot Squad of the Laconia Police Department, consisting of thirty men, moved into the area at 10:10 p.m. equipped with shotguns and other riot gear. They were met with a barrage of flying objects from the mob which refused to move. At that time the local police were joined by sixty New Hampshire State Police troopers and by officials of the Belknap County Sheriff’s Office. Tear gas was used by the police with little effect, the mob still refusing to disperse. Shotguns were then brought into play by the police who fired birdshot at the feet of the rioters….REDACTED.
…….Approximately 200 members of the National Guard detail assisted the police in the clean-up operation. A rumor that the motorcyclists would attempt a similar riotous disturbance on the night of June 20th 1965 did not materialize. As of 12:45 a.m., June 21, all of the motorcyclists had left the area and conditions were quiet.

ARRESTS AND INJURIES

Thirty-three rioters were arrested and each is being held in custody in default of $500 cash bond. Fifty were charged with failure to dispurse under a new State anti-riot law, eleven were charged with participating in a riot and the remaining were held on charges of drunkenness or assaulting an officer. Thirty-one rioters were treated for birdshot wounds at the Laconia General Hospital. Two of the injured reportedly received eye injuries. Several police officers were victims of minor injuries. REDACTED……

CAUSE OF THE RIOT:

REDACTED…….
…..no evidence to indicate that any racial aspects were involved or that subversive, radical, or criminal influences were present.

PRECAUTIONARY POLICE MEASURES:

REDACTED

NOTE: See memorandum W.C. Sullivan to A. H. Belmont….original to White House,…copies to General Counsel, President’s Counsel on Equal Opportunity, the AG, the Deputy AG and Assistant AG Doar.

When the Hell's Angels Came to Town

2009-06-21T00:24:00.000-07:00

When the Hell’s Angels Came to Town

It was Labor Day, 1965, and Word was Out;
The Angels Were Coming to Ocean City

The SandPaper/Ocean City, Friday, September 15, 1995

“The farther the Angels roam from their own turf, the more likely they are to cause panic.” – Hunter S. Thompson

By Bill Kelly

The day the Hell’s Angels didn’t come to Ocean City was even more spectacular than the day that they actually did.

Three decades ago their arrival was greatly anticipated by many and dreaded by others, especially city officials and the undermanned summer police force.

A run was on and the Hell’s Angels were on the way to Ocean City on Labor Day Weekend, 1965.

Lyndon Johnson was president, the war in Vietnam was raging, protesters sang songs, “Mr. Tambourine Man” was the number one song on the radio and Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels were the main attraction at Tony Marts. It was the ‘60s.

Former Ocean City Mayor Thomas Waldman remembers it well. Although the storm of ’62 was the most significant thing that occurred during his tenure in office, which ran four terms from 1959 to 1978, it’s hard to forget going eyeball to eyeball with the leader of the most feared gang of criminals to cross the state line.

The Ocean City encounter was like a scene out of “The Wild One,” starring Marlon Brando, which was based on a real incident that took place at Hollister, California in 1947, when a wild motorcycle gang took over a small town.

“There really were two entirely different and unrelated incidents,” recalls Waldman, who is now retired in Ocean City. “The Hells Angels did come to town, but the two incidents were not really connected, and that’s a different story.”

When the Hells Angels did come to town – sometime in the late summer of ’64 or early spring of ’65, they were met at the causeway by a police officer in a patrol car.

“What happened was a black police officer ordered them to pull over and they ignored him,” said Waldman. Probably the first black police officer on the Ocean City, New Jersey police force.

As they cruised down 9th Street into town they were met by a police roadblock at West Avenue where they were corralled into a vacant lot at what is now McDonald’s.

“They would only talk to the mayor,” said Waldman, who was summoned out of his 8th street travel agency office, and went over to talk with their leader, who a the time was probably Ralph “Sonny” Barger, the baddest Hell’s Angel.

“Barger’s word goes unquestioned,” writer Hunter S. Thompson, father of gonzo journalism, wrote of the gang leader. “The Maximum Leader, is a 6-foot, 170 pound warehouseman from East Oakland, the coolest head in the lot, and a tough, quick-thinking dealer when any action starts. By turn he is a fanatic, a philosopher, a brawler, a shrewd compromiser and final arbitrator.”

He met Mayor Waldman, a suit and tie travel agent and leader of Ocean City.

“We talked, and I introduced them to the black officer,” remembers Waldman, “but they were very racist and weren’t going to take any orders from him. I told them he was only doing his job and trying to earn a living for his family. They were very polite, and eventually we all shook hands in the end. But we didn’t go out and have cocktails together.”

“Whenever you have a transient population like we do, you will have exposure to all types, including these violent motorcycle gangs. But you can’t condone it, and you can’t ignore it,” the former mayor said.

It was with that incident still fresh in their minds, when word on the street was that the Hells Angels were coming to Ocean City for their annual Labor Day run.

“The State Police had gotten word that Ocean City was one of two places this violent motorcycle club were going to try to take over,” Waldman said. He isn’t even sure it was the Hells Angels, and it may have been the Pagans or Warlocks, other clubs that have given the local authorities trouble in the past.

If there was even a shred of truth to the rumor, Ocean City authorities had reason to be concerned.

The attorney general of California filed the following report on a “run” that occurred in that state.

“On July Fourth, 1965, the Oakland Hell’s Angels made a “run” to Willits, California. An advance group of 30 entered the city the previous day and by the afternoon of the Fourth there were some 120 motorcyclists and their female companions congregating at a local bar. Periodic fighting between the motorcyclists and the local citizens broke out with beer bottles, belts made from motorcycle chains, and metal beer can openers being used as weapons…Assistance was obtained from the California Highway Patrol….and the group was instructed by the chief of police to move out of town to the city limits.”

Journalist Hunter S. Thompson described another Labor Day encounter with the Angles this way when he rode with them for a few months in the early ‘60s.

“California, early Labor Day weekend…with the ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levi’s roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads….”

“The Menace is loose, the Hell’s Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and 90 miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by incuse….like Genghis Khan on an iron horse…flat out through the eye of a beer can…tense for action, long hair in the wind, beards and bandannas flapping, earrings, armpits, chain whips, swastikas and stripped-down Harleys flashing chrome as traffic moves over, nervous, to let the formation pass like a burst of dirty thunder.”

A similar experience was expected by Ocean City authorities.

Waldman said there were lengthy meetings with the State Police and representatives from other communities, “and they said we were targeted because we had cracked down on a motorcycle gang in the past and this was to be in retaliation.”

The New Jersey State Police Intelligence Unit was receiving reports from police in other states and they were tracking the bikers as they headed towards the Jersey Shore.

Waldman said the local police worked very closely with the State Police to come up with a strategy and tactics that would save the city from the dreaded bikers.

“In those days we had a very large influx of day trippers and college kids,” recalls Waldman, “and the fear was that these college kids, being young, restless and out for a good time, would misinterpret the actions of the motorcycle gang, who were very violent types, and the college kids would end up in the middle and get hurt. You can’t tell them to stay away.”

The Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger newspaper reported, “There were widespread rumors that young rowdies were planning a hot weekend fling here and they were geared to meet them.”

“It was to (then Governor Richard J.) Hughes to whom we turned,” Waldman explained, when rumors reached city hall of impending rowdyism by hundreds of out of town youths over the Labor Day weekend.

“Governor Hughes was quick to see the problem we faced if our small summer police force were outnumbered by gangs,” said Waldman. Hughes put the National Guard on alert New Jersey State Police Superintendent Col. David B. Kelly assigned a task force to town that included his top intelligence officer, a drunkmeter expert and a large contingent that included the entire student body of the State Police Academy, who arrived by bus.

“We put all our people on 24-hour duty,” recalls Waldman, “and we worked closely with the State Police. They told us what to do and we did it. They did a very fine job, and kept them out.”

Benjamin Dungan was the acting Ocean City police chief at the time who coordinated the local police action with the State Police. When the gang arrived, they planned on raising the drawbridge into tow, but they didn’t have to because the bikers never showed, and sent no regrets.

“Business Good (Not Bustling) on Holiday Weekend,” the Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger headline read, “Rumble Rumor Blamed” and “Big Blowoff Averted on College Beach.”

But there was a minor riot on Monday, Labor Day, when it was apparent that the Hell’s Angels weren’t coming after all. According to the news reports, “People packed the beach solid, guitars were strummed, songs were sung and boys and girls were basking in the sun.”

The trouble, according to Waldman, was stirred up by a TV news team out of Philadelphia that was anticipating the arrival of the Hell’s Angels.

“That’s one of the reasons I look at news reporters with a jaundiced eye,” said Waldman, “because they tried to stage something for the cameras.”

The young, rookie reporters for KYW-TV that summer are said to have been Tom Snyder, David Brenner and Gary Shenfield. Covering the Jersey Shore was their seasonal assignment that summer and they had already raised the wrath of locals y calling attention to the underage drinking, the bar scene in Somers Point and for breaking into Somers Point City Hall to get the goods on Judge Ed Helfant, who was later killed in a mob hit.

After telling their bosses back in Philly that the Hell’s Angels were coming to town, and facing the prospect of coming up empty, Snyder and Brenner allegedly egged on the large contingent of college kids until a minor riot did orrur.

“There was an incident on the Boardwalk,” said Waldman, “but it was this TV crew from Philly that provoked a lot of it to get film footage.”

The Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger later reported, “There was minor trouble on the 9th Street Beach, where people converged on the pavilion, the police broke up a hootenanny and a fight ensued….Monday night things got out of hand. A city aide was punched in the eye and the ring leaders were apprehended after a chase by automobile through city streets. Four youths were arrested for various disorderly conduct charges. But mostly things were orderly.”

By Tuesday morning things were back to normal. The State Police contingent pulled out and the Hell’s Angeles never came back.

Ah, the ‘60s.

“Those were good days, but they’re gone,” said Waldman. “Ocean City was what it was, but it’s changed, though sometimes not for the better.”

Last of the Kellys Checks Out

2009-06-21T00:01:00.001-07:00

LAST OF THE KELLYS CHECKS OUT OF OC – By William Kelly

Ocean City’s image as a family resort was shaped in large measure by the family of a Philadelphia bricklayer John B. Kelly, who began to visit Ocean City in the 1920s and established a living local legacy with a family that included two Olympic rowing champions, a President and Steward of the Atlantic City Race Course, and Academy Award winning actress and princess and a Secretary of the Navy.

It all centered around the Kelly family home at 26th Street and Wesley Avenue beach, where the Kelly family maintained a residence from 1929 until the 2001, a 72 year run.

For Lizanne Kelly Levine, the last surviving daughter of John B. Kelly, the past few years were exceptionally hard, with the death of her daughter, Grace and husband, Donald Levine.

Her father built the original Kelly house on the North West side of 26th Street and Wesley Avenue in 1929, the year daughter Grace was born. It was the only house around. As the neighborhood grew up around them, with riparian rights to the sea, a brick duplex beach house was built across the street on the North East corner in 1960, the year John B. Kelly died.

While her mother, also an athlete, lived to be 90 after a debilitating stroke, her older sister Peggy passed away before her sister Grace died in a spectacular auto accident in Monaco in 1982, which captured the world’s attention.

Then in 1985 brother John “Kell” died of a heart attack while jogging along East River Drive (now Kelly Drive) near Boathouse Row along the Schuykill River in Philadelphia, within an hour of her brother-in-law’s equally sudden death in an office building a few blocks away.

Now, with the passing of her husband, Donald Levine, Lizanne sat back in the living room of her Ocean City home and reflected on her past and her future. She recently sold the house.

“We’ve had it tough, but we’ve always got thorugh it,” she said. “We got through almost everything. We’ve had a lot of good times too. But now my whole family is gone. It’s the end of an era and I’m the last of the Mohicans.”

And now she feels it’s time for her to move on, especially since the big brick beach house is too large for her to live there alone, and so she will leave at the end of the summer of 2001.

The Kelly family legend has been told and retold, passed on to all Ocean City lifeguards, surfers, crew rowers and little girls who dream of becoming a princess. Lizanne Levine remembers it all too well.

She remembers the early years in Ocean City when, although she was only a few years old, the family began to spend summers leasing an apartment near 8th street. After two years, in 1929, her father bought the beachfront lot at 26th street and Wesley Avenue and built the two story house that’s still there today.

“My brother and sister used to say my mother and father built it up in the ‘boonies’ – the boondocks, because 2nd street was the street and most popular bathing beach at the time, and they had to get a ride or hitch hike to get down there.”

“This was Old Ocean City,” she explained. “There weren’t any other houses around. The only other house was at 25th street on the beach, and I didn’t even know who lived there.”

“My mother selected that style,” Levine recalled, “because she saw similar buildings in Florida and told my father what she wanted.”

The Spanish Mission Revival design is similar to a number of other significant Ocean City buildings from the same period – the Music Pier, Chatterbox, Flanders Hotel and other private residences.

In the winter they lived in East Falls, a small, blue-collar, working class neighborhood on the river near center city Philadelphia, but every spring they would return to Ocean City at the Jersey Shore.

“We came down as soon as we got out of school,” Lizanne recalled, “I always had my birthday, the 25th of June, in Ocean City, so we were always there before then.”

“We always had beach parties and cookouts on the beach because my dad built a brick fireplace, but the Storm of ’44 washed that away. That was the worst storm.”

Although she was still a child, she remembers it distinctly. “The waves were breaking over the all there, and they said on the radio that Ocean City was being evacuated, and my father jumped in his car and drove down here and found us all save and sound. But it was really strong winds, I could hardly stand up. My mother wanted to take some candles over to the neighbors across the street but I couldn’t stand up against the wind. I was 11 years old at the time but it truly was an experience.

“Mother would send us down to the beach and never think anything of it because the lifeguards babysat for us, and there weren’t that many kids on the beach. So mother reciprocated with a few sandwiches for the lifeguards. The late John Carey was a lifeguard on this beach for several years, and I always had a crush on the lifeguards. I loved John Carey.”

The Kellys struck up a personal rapport with all of the lifeguards, which would eventually include her brother Kell, one of the most proficient rowers on the OCBP.

It was her father, however, who made the stamp that was imprinted on the Kelly family.

Of course both houses Kelly built in Ocean City were made of brick. John B. Kelly started out as a brick layer and laborer, but eventually owned his owned company, whose slogan “KELLY FOR BRICKWORK” on signs and t-shirts were seen at the construction of many of the skyscrapers that make up Philadelphia’s skyline.

An Olympic gold medal rower, John B. Kelly went on to the Henley Regatta on the Thames in London, but because he was a laborer who worked with his hands, was not considered gentleman enough to qualify. It was a slight that he would remember and vow to revenge at the baptism of his son “Kell,” who also became an Olympic champion, and who returned to the river Thames and avenged his father’s slight by winning the Henley.

When Kell returned home, all of Philadelphia met him at the train station and gave him a parade to the Henry Avenue home in East Falls. Even when successful, John B., as he was called, refrained from moving to the more fashionable blueblood Main Line, and stayed in East Falls. For the same reason he shunned the prestigious Margate and Ventnor beach front neighborhoods for Ocean City.

Lizanne, like her mother Margaret Major, was an athlete, played most college sports, basketball, hockey and tennis. Margaret Major Kelly was the first women physical education teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, so sports and competition ran in the family.

“When I was a teenager,” Lizanne recalls, “14th street was the most popular beach, but everybody went swimming and diving at the Flander’s pool. That’s where I met Don, who became my husband. Grace and Peggy liked to dive, and Don was a great diver, and he taught swimming and diving at the Flanders. I was taking my nieces down and was waiting for them to finish their swimming lessons, sitting poolside, and Don was across the way teaching a lesson. He looked over to me and I looked at him, and he started to imitate me. If I crossed my legs, he crossed his legs, and well, after that, a mutual friend introduced me to him. And that was all, she wrote.”

After the sun went down, they strolled the boardwalk, or hit the Point – Somers Point, where the nightclub scene was in full swing.

“I can remember going over there a lot of times,” she said. “I’ll never forget one time, at Bay Shores, or was it Tony Marts? Grace and I were the youngest, and while we weren’t, we looked over 21, and didn’t have to lie, we just walked in. No one carded us. We didn’t have fake cards because mother wouldn’t have it. She said, ‘You can go in there if they let you in, but I don’t want you drinking with fake ID.’ Well anyway, we went over to see the band Mike Pedicin, Sr.. And while we were there my older sister Peggy came with her husband. She was 23, but they wouldn’t let her in without an ID. She looked in and sees Grace an I sitting there, and we waved and laughed at her, and she got so mad.”

“She said to the man at the door, ‘Look, you let my two younger sisters in, and you won’t let me in?’ And they wouldn’t let her in. We got the biggest kick out of that. The next morning she said, ‘Mother, can you believe they wouldn’t let me in and they let those to brats in!’”

The father, John B. Kelly was one of the founders and builder of the Atlantic City Race Course, which was also built out of brick in 1944. Horses and the race track was always a big part of their family life at the shore. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, before casino gambling came to Atlantic City, the race track would attract 30,000 people for the nightly races. Lizanne’s husband Don Levine worked at the track as a race steward.

In 1960, shortly after returning from his annual Kentucky Derby party, John B. Kelly died, and Lizanne’s mother decided to build the beach house across Wesley Avenue from the original house. “We needed more room for the grandchildren,” Lizanne explained. “Of course it’s a very sold building, I don’t know what they’re going to do, but they’ll have trouble tearing it down. We had a couple of hurricane parties and went upstairs to watch it, and it was fun.”

The most fun, Leveine recalls, were the Labor Day beach barbeques, a seasonal tradition that’s still maintained by the family. “We still do it,” she notes. “ We still have the King of the Surf competition up at the 47th street beach because we now have too many people on this beach. We have body surf competitions and a chicken bake off. I’m a judge, Grace was a judge, and one year Kell had Frank Purdue down here to judge the bake off.”

Things changed a little bit after Grace married Prince of Monaco and became Princess Grace.

“Those several years were really unbelievable,” she recalled, “because as soon as she came back here people were hanging over the wall and looking in the windows, but we got through it. We got through almost anything.”

The neighbors however, were always very supportive of their privacy. Levine’s cousin John Lehman, who became Secretary of the Navy under President Regan, helped keep the Labor Day beach barbeques going.

“We have surf contests, bake offs, and other competitions,” he said in an interview a few years ago. “Grace used to come back to officiate the competition…She never lost sight of or forgot the values of the ‘family first.’ And that is so rare, since you often find people who succeed…totally sacrifice their families, and she didn’t.”

Grace’s daughter Caroline was visiting Ocean City when her husband died in a sports race accident, and on September 14, 1982 – John Lehman’s birthday, Princess Grace Kelly Grimaldi died in an auto accident in Monaco. It was the first September season she didn’t make it home for the annual family reunion and beach party.

Lizanne Levine and John Lehman continued the family tradition however. “One year we’d have the Labor Day bash here and the next year we’d have it at 47th street,” said Lizanne. But this year, 2001 will be the last summer for the Kellys at 26th street.

Some nuns from her old school visited for a week last month, and a new generation of grandchildren are now spending summers in Ocean City, looking for work at Bob’s Grill and the Chatterbox, where Grace once worked as a waitress one summer.

Without any big plans, Lizanne Levine is looking over some of the old photos of the good times in Ocean City.

“I just look around and one thing about this family is that they had not been camera shy. I have pictures that you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of them.”

As for what she’s going to do, “Well, I have friends on the east coast and the west coast of Florida. We always went to the east coast, because of the race track, but I’m going to go up the east coast and back the west coast, visiting all my former friends. They all come to see and visit me in the summer, so I’m going to visit them in the winter, tit for tat.”

“It’s the end of an era,” Levine said, “and we’ve had our share of tragedy, but we’ve had some really good times, too. “

And while she may be checking out, there’s always a new generation of the Philadelphia Kellys coming to Ocean City, where the Kelly family legacy will always be remembered.

[Editor’s note: William Kelly is not related to the Philadelphia family. He’s from the Camden Kelly’s ]

Ocean City Lifesaving Station

2009-06-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

THE Life of the Station – Ocean City New Jersey’s 4th STREET LIFESAVING STATION - By William Kelly

It was there before anyone alive today was born; it has survived ‘noreaster storms, blizzards and hurricanes, and now it faces the sternest test – development money.

To save it, Ocean City Council voted to allocate $2.9 million to purchase it, but the 150 year long saga of Ocean City’s historic 4th Street Lifesaving Station is not over, as it drags on. It remains at a precarious crossroads, surrounded and besiged by development - the Alamo of Ocean City. It can be saved in the public trust for future generations or it can be lost to developmental pressures and be replaced by modern condominiums. And what happens will be the legacy we alive today leave behind.

Is it worth $2.9 million to the city and the community to save the station for the public? That’s ten times the value of the property was worth six years ago, when it was appraised for taxes at $250,000 as a single-family home.

As the cornerstone of Ocean City’s Historic District, that was the appraised value when the owner decided to sell her home to a prolific developer for $750,000 without bothering to place a sale sign on her lawn to let people know it was available and on the market.

Those active in attempting to preserve historic buildings and landmarks have learned that the only way to save historic buildings from deteriation or development is to buy them, own them and be restore them.

But in situations like Ocean City where the land value increases much more than the building, regardless of size, condition or historic stature, then there is little if no financial incentive to preserve any structure. Few realtors even bother placing a “For Sale” sign on a listed property when they personally know a dozen developers who will pay triple the home’s value to tear it down and condo it out for much larger profit. Therefore other factors must come into play to deter such money, because money wins over preservation every time.

They say property owner rights are at stake here, and the owner certainly has the right to sell to whomever they want for whatever they can get. But it is also un-American and against the open free market enterprise system to sell historic landmarks for demolition under the table and behind closed doors, without notifying the community that the property is available.

That’s the basis for the Historic District ordinance, which merely states, in one sentence, that such historic structures must be placed on the open market for six months so anyone who wants to buy and preserve it may have the opportunity to do so. That’s the American Way.

There were a number of qualified families and individuals who were interested in buying and living in the station and keeping it as a single-family home, for $290,00 seven years ago or $1 million last year. The increasing value of the property reflects the value of all the land around it, and the amount of money that can be made if each of the three lots can be developed to their fullest, the greed behind the idea to move it.

Some say moving the building to the boardwalk and developing the lots is a reasonable alternative, but moving an historic building is a last resort, not a first resort, as in this case. Moving it would eliminate state and federal funds to offset the purchase and attempts to move other historic Ocean City buildings were unsuccessful (i.e. the Parker Miller house and Journie Manor) failed. The house where Parker Miller was the first child born on the island was moved to the Tabernacle grounds, where a particularly cold winter made it attractive firewood. Moving the core structure of the Lifesaving Station to the boardwalk would only place it in the harms way of future storms.

In addition, it is not only the core building that is historic, but the entire building, complete with additions, the flora and fauna of the grounds, and the survey marker, that can never be built on because it is the marker that every survey of the island has used as a starting point for all city surveys – ground zero Ocean City.

A court decision that allows the owner to remove additions to the core structure is being appealed by CHiP because the additions themselves, some over 100 years old, are also historic. Photos of nearby Somers Mansion in Somers Point clearly make this point. When the State of N.J. took over ownership of the centuries old Somers Mansion they removed the spindle-laden wrap around second floor porch with its spectacular view of the bay. The removal of the porch took away part of the building’s history, just as the entire Lifesaving Station property is historic, and not just the core frame. CHiP will continue the court proceedings as long as the station remains in jeopardy and the historic preservation laws and ordinances are not followed and enforced.

The idea that the side yard garden is still much the same as it was over a century ago gives you an idea of what Ocean City looked like before it was over developed. Just looking at the grounds you can see many varieties of trees, plants and flowers, all of which would and will be bulldozed over if allowed to be developed. An interested local science class should conduct a survey of the types and numbers of flora and fauna, most of which are unique to this area and have dwindling space to grow.

A real alternative solution is for the city and the developer to agree to a land swap, at no cost to the taxpayer, or to decrease the amount of the transaction. The Central Ave. Park is of equal value for development, but apparently its current use by a few neighborhood dogs to relieve themselves takes precedence. Other city own land, like the beach front lot at the South End, and other city owned land could still be thrown in the deal to decrease the tax payer’s contribution, and placing new ratables on the tax map.

The $3 million being considered to save the property as it is will be offset by state, federal and private contributions, and will be worthwhile when the “Private Property – Keep Out” sign is taken down and it becomes public property that can be enjoyed and experienced by all the citizens of the community.

[William Kelly is co-founder of CHiP – Citizens for Historic Preservation. He can be reached at billykelly3@yahoo.com ]

Barney Connolly Today

2009-06-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

Barney Connolly Today in Thailand (Far right)

Mark & BK at 819

2009-06-20T23:52:00.000-07:00

Mark Jordan and Bill Kelly at 819 Wesley living room.

Mark & BK on OC Beach

2009-06-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

Mark Jordan and Bill Kelly on Ocean City Beach

Barney and Friend

2009-06-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

Discarded Snow Sled at Beach

2009-06-20T23:49:00.000-07:00

Discarded Snow Sled at Seaspray Beach, Ocean City Gardens (Circa 1976)

Ernie Ernist of NFL Films at Work

2009-06-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

Ernie Ernest of NFL Films at work filming a crab in the tide at Seaspray Beach, Ocean City, NJ (Circa 1976)