SIGNAL
the
RIVERSIDE
FREE
June 17th ~ June 30th, 2011
TRUTH. HERITAGE. ENVIRONMENT.
BEACHWOOD • ISLAND HEIGHTS • OCEAN GATE • PINE BEACH • SOUTH TOMS RIVER • TOMS RIVER
Crabbe Family Cemetery Grave Emblem Stolen
Ground Broken for Seaport Society ACat Building
UNKNOWN THIEVES CHISELED BRONZE PIECE OFF 1938 HEADSTONE
PAST SOCIETY PRES. OPTIMISTIC FOR AUTUMN OPENING
By Philipp Schmidt BERKELEY – State park police are appealing to the public to help locate and return a bronze emblem depicting a sailboat and local flora that was stolen off the 1938 headstone of Birkbeck Crabbe, located in the Crabbe family burial plot inside Double Trouble State Park, which was once owned by the prominent area family. Larry Ragonese, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said that there are no suspects at this time and that the theft occurred sometime between May 13th and May 28th. “It had been cemented into the gravestone and it seems to the best of our understanding that someone chiseled it out,” he said. “It was reported by a member of the Crabbe family and we’ve been asking people [ever since].” The cemetery plot, located within the boundaries of Berkeley Township, is not an area “nor-
mally plagued by any kind of vandalism or issues” in the past. According to research performed by Steve Baeli of the Ocean County Compendium, Birkbeck Chittenden Crabbe died at the age of 32 at midnight on Saturday, November 5th, 1938 after having accidentally shot himself on a pheasant hunting trip in Sharon, Connecticut. Attempts to save his life were unsuccessful, and he was later laid to rest where he lived part the time, at Double Trouble, where his family operated the cranberry bogs present there today. Last week, Andrew Anderson, Double Trouble State Park’s historic resource interpretive specialist, sent out a flyer showing both a photograph of the emblem and a line drawing of its features with the request that anyone, especially antique dealers, pawn shops and scrap metal recyclers, who sees the emblem to call park police at 877-WARN-DEP. Officer David Beard is assigned to the case, which is marked as #11-137.
Class of 1971
You Think What You Think and I’ll Think What I Know with Frank Domenico Cipriani When I attended my daughter’s graduation last week, I noticed that very few students had their hand over their hearts to salute the flag and sing the Star Spangled Banner. I was proud to see that my daughter did. I know that for her it was a conscious decision, a defiant expression of true devotion. On the day of my own graduation, as our jazz choir sang The Star Spangled Banner, I was the only one I could see in the long line of graduates who did not have his hand over his heart. It was also an act of defiance—I thought that an act of nonconformity was the purest form of recognizing the spirit of the Constitution, the Revolution, and notion of individualism upon which it was all based. This is, after all, according to the lyrics of the anthem, the land of the free and the home of the brave, right? Wasn’t I acting free and brave by not saluting? Precisely thirty years separate the salient events of my life from those of my father. Thirty more separate my daughter’s life from mine: Graduation, marriage and the birth of my namesake have all been in a thirty year cycle. My father graduated in 1951. I graduated in 1981. My daughter is in the class of 2011.
One ritual that my father and I observed in which she will not participate, because she is a woman, is that trip to the post office to register with Selective Services for the draft. When I registered in 1981, I thought about the class of 1971, and how much of a difference ten years had made. The obligation to register which, for me, was a simple bureaucratic exercise was a serious matter a mere ten years earlier. A decade before my registration, the same long-haired boys that donned the ridiculous velour prom tuxes of the early 1970s (and that we were still wearing in the 1980s) had subscribed to a lottery in which winning meant two years of hell in a jungle on the opposite side of the world. For them, the obligation to register meant they could become soldiers, a year after their SAT’s, three years after their final little league games, having barely graduated from Saturday morning cartoons. When I began this article in the final weeks of my daughter’s high school experience, I was sitting outside Au Bon Pain, sipping a half-disgusting hazelnut iced coffee as I waited for my little girl, two weeks removed from her prom and four years from her last Pop Warner football game,
TRYC Tune-Up Regatta
By Erik Weber TOMS RIVER – Before long, one of the best remaining examples of the original Barnegat Bay A-Cat fleet of sailboats, the Spy, will be housed and displayed on a bluff overlooking the north shore of the Toms River when the Toms River Seaport Society completes construction of its new A-Cat museum building on the corner of Hooper Avenue and Water Street, here. A classic wooden sailboat that first made its rounds on the Barnegat Bay in the 1920s, earning cups and trophy wins up and down at least that body of water, it was constructed by Bay Head boat builder Morton Johnson in 1924 from prominent yacht designer Charles Mower’s plans of the Mary Ann, an A-Cat drawn up two years earlier. Placed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1985, the Spy raced until it was retired in 2000, and cont. on page 19
Call for Volunteers: Island Beach State Park PROGRAM HELP NEEDED ISLAND BEACH STATE PARK – If you enjoy spending time at an ocean beach and want to help others, then Island Beach State Park has just the spot for you. Skyler Streich, a biological technician with Barnegat Bay Partnership and natural educator and tour guide with Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey placed a call for volunteers last week, announcing that the two groups, in conjunction with Island Beach State Park, are seeking those who can help set up saltwater fish tanks, rearrange and help make displays at the nature and interpretive centers, sell merchandise at Conserve Wildlife’s soon-to-be-established gift shop, and help out during Birding-by-Kayak trips, among many other things. Interested parties may sign up to volunteer by either traveling to Island Beach State Park to fill out a volunteer form, calling 732-793-1698 or e-mailing ibspnature@netcarrier.com.
cont. on page 14
ERIK WEBER, the Riverside Signal Area sailors took part in annual Toms River Yacht Club Tune-Up Regatta. More photos on page 11.
Saving the Greys, or How a Roadside Sign Changed the Lives of Sandy and Theresa Ross
By Erik Weber
SOUTH TOMS RIVER – Life can change in the blink of an eye. Such was the case for borough residents Theresa and Sandford “Sandy” Ross, Jr. in the 1990s when, on a trip through Florida, they passed a sign that read “Save the Greys.” “I said why would someone want a grey seal or grey whale or whatever it is,” recalled Mrs. Ross, who said she quickly learned the sign referred to greyhound dogs, which have been used as racing animals for many centuries in a sport that been on the decline in recent years. “When I came home I went on the internet and I found how they get rid of these dogs in awful ways—three weeks later we had our first greyhound.” The practice of dog racing continues in a number of states across the nation, including Connecticut and Florida, and despite its
cont. on page 15
ERIK WEBER, the Riverside Signal Work commenced at a fever pitch on the Island Heights pavilion at Central and River avenues last week. Soon the second floor will be open to the public.
CONNECT TO THE RIVERSIDE SIGNAL www.riversidesignal.com
waning popularity, many racing casinos, or ‘racinos,’ maintains the sport in order to keep their license to hold the more lucrative slots and table games inside their facilities. While race track owners often protest accusations of abuse or mishandling by animal protection groups nationwide, Mr. Ross, who is also a councilman here, said that in years past the torturous ways in which many race track owners rid themselves of dogs who no longer performed were pervasive. “For a long, long time, when the animal was no longer producing for the racetrack [which typically owns them], when they’re no longer an asset, they tended to just be destroyed,” he said. “There were horror stories of large groups of them just be-