Meet... The johnson FAMILY
D
aria Johnson’s oldest daughter, Kristen, was very cautious as a little girl, so jumping off the edge of the Congress Hall pool during family vacation was a daunting task. She wore floaties and her father waited to catch her with arms outstretched. And still, it looked like it just wasn’t going to happen. “But I remember so clearly,” Daria said. “Once Kristen did it, she wanted to do it all the time. It was such an accomplishment.” Daria started coming to Cape May from Sussex County, New Jersey, around 1980. “My husband and I were so happy when someone decided to take Congress Hall on,” she told us. “We used to walk around the boarded-up windows and think what a shame it would be if someone decided to knock it down. And it would have been — it’s become the center of the community.” After the renovation of the hotel, the couple started staying there with their two daughters — floaties in tow — and, as a widow now, Daria continues the tradition every year. “When my girls were teens, we’d be driving down the parkway, on our way to Cape May,” she said, “and I’d say to them, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to try a different town?’ But no one ever did!” Not even during the moodiest of the adolescent years. “I make my girls take a picture in front of the bell on the Washington Street Mall every year,” Daria said. “It’s so funny to look
658 washington street, cape may
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back on the series of photos — sometimes they’re rolling their eyes and, in one picture, there’s just one of them, because I guess the other refused that year.” But the moments of embarrassment were always worth it for the girls, because being in Cape May also meant searching for Cape May diamonds and sea glass, riding bikes to the lighthouse and climbing to the top, getting Louie’s Pizza, and attending the flag-lowering ceremony at Sunset Beach. “This is a very special place for us,” Daria said. As adult women — Kristen is now 24 and her sister, Danielle, 21 — the sisters are happy to continue the memory-making here. The Brown Room is where they each enjoyed their “first official legal shore drink” with their mom. “We also love the Fourth of July celebration on the Congress Hall lawn,” Daria told us. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather watch the fireworks than at the beach. And the history of Congress Hall — the fact that presidents have stayed here — just adds so much to the day. The celebration itself is so small-town, USA; it’s all about the simple pleasures.” Then, of course, there needs to be time for a little pampering. “My oldest is very girly,” Daria said, “so we always make sure to have a day at the Sea Spa.” Now, the women are joined by Daria’s nephew Scott and Kristen’s boyfriend Nick. “He was always a Wildwood guy,” Daria said, “but we’ve converted him.”
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