The month of July was for many years spent in Sea Isle City, New Jersey. The address was 11-45th St. and it was the second house from the beach. Tivanni’s owned the house between the boardwalk/ beach and us. They had a bocce ball court that ran from 45th Street along the side of our property all the way to the next property. When I would look out my third floor window towards the beach and the ocean, I could also look down and watch our neighbors playing bocce ball. But I usually couldn’t understand a word they were saying since they shouted at each other in Italian.
Sea Isle City is located south of Ocean City and north of Avalon on the Atlantic Ocean. The house was sold sometime in the 50’s and I believe my Dad purchased it in 1917. I think that because my oldest brother, Frank, who was born in 1913, spoke of his days as a boy going to Sea Isle. He later met members of the Oblates of Mary, a missionary group of priests, who vacationed there in those days. This was in the late 20’s. He had spent a year around that time in the Archdiocesan seminary in Philadelphia but left after that year. He was still interested in a priestly vocation and these Oblates gave him another view. He ultimately did join them and was ordained an Oblate in 1939. He spent the rest of his life as a missionary in the Philippine Islands ending up as the bishop of the Sulu Islands.
The house was very large, some three stories of living space and then an attic and a full basement. The basement held the shower where we went, sometimes seemingly in the dark, to rinse off after a visit to the beach. It had a porch that started on 45th street front and then ran the length of the house on the beach side to the rear and the across the rear of the house.
The house was covered in a material I had never seen before or since, slate. Slate is described as ‘a fine grained metamorphic (changed form) rock that splits into thin smoothed surfaced layers’, I suppose the reason is that it was too expensive or there just was not enough slate to use. The porch was about eight to ten feet above the ground. From the porch floor to the ground there was wooden painted lattice works. Many times with friends and classmates we painted this latticework and the porch. It gave me companions in the days when all of my brothers were gone and only a few sisters remained at home.
July was the month of my Dad’s birthday. It was one of the days, or the weekend nearest it, that would bring him down to the shore. He did not like the beach or shore. I can’t recall ever seeing him on the beach. For his birthday those still at home and at the 45th street house had to memorize a verse, or a prayer, etc. We would then recite it when he came. My mom had been such anexcellent student that she was the first from a parochial school system to enter Girls High in Philadelphia. Girls High was a school of outstanding academic students only. As a result she was thinking of entering the teaching profession. But then she met and married dad. The memorization idea was her way of being sure that her children did something mental while on vacation. The house was sold in the 50’s. My mom had a heart attack in 1948 and never really was herself again and died in 1952.
With the sale of the house it would seem that my days at Sea Isle were finished. However in the seventies I started to run to lose weight and ended up running races of various distances from then on up to the 90’s. In the seventies there was a race held in Sea Isle. It started as a lifeguard’s competition and grew to a general run of the island. Interesting enough it started at ‘45th street’. The house was gone by the time we started these runs. But sometime in there my eldest sister Winifred and her husband purchased an old building that had been a bakery on 45th street closer to the main artery, Landis Avenue. We used the house on a couple of occasions to change and shower. The run started on the boardwalk and went north to the end of the boardwalk and then onto the beach and it ended in an area called Strathmere. You turned around ran back on the beach to the boardwalk and then down the boardwalk to where it ended around 55th street. Originally you would then go down that street to Landis Avenue and head south to the end of the island at Townsend’s Inlet. Turn around and back to 45th street for the finish. It was quite a run and got tougher later when they took out the part of going down to Landis Avenue and you did the last part of the run on the beach. Hopefully we always prayed it would be low tide so we would have some semi-hard sand, but it didn’t always work out that way. They were my last days in Sea Isle City.
When our church has a rummage sale it also sells books. At one of them I saw a pocket book that caught my interest: “Charles Colson Loving God”. The name was familiar since I have lived through the Watergate scandal of the 70’s. The book was published in 1987 and I supposed it was about Colson’s conversion to Christianity or to Faith. It was that and more. It was inspirational in its form and educational in all the examples he took from the Bible and deep traditions of the Christian faith. One thing that I thought I would read about was his family and his life after Watergate. It was not there. He did found a Prison Fellowship Ministry that still continues today. Another thing I learned is that he was imprisoned not because of his participation in Watergate matter but for devising a scheme to get and disseminate derogatory information on the Pentagon Papers Defendant, Daniel Ellsberg in 1971. At forty-three years of age he was special counsel to the President!
He had some great stories in the book. One I liked in particularly was that of having Barabbas and the two thieves who died with Christ together in a cell room discussing their beliefs. One was named David and the other Jacob. Then things began happening when they heard Barabbass name being shouted outside by the crowd. David sometime earlier had seen Christ in action. He talks about Christ coming into Jerusalem on a donkey and all the people talking about his miracles, preaching, etc. indicating he was the long awaited Messiah.It ends, as does the actual story, with David asking Christ to remember him when he comes into his paradise. Colson has seemingly written a book every year since then. The list I learned from the Encyclopedia comes right up to 2008!
Another book I read and liked was by Frank Collins, MD. He was in the news again this week. He was named by President Obama to head the NIH. The book he wrote was entitled “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”. It was a best seller. Collins has been the head of the human Genome Project for some years. He can certainly qualifies for the name ‘genius’. He graduated from high school at 16. He wen to the Univ. of Va. and earned a degree in Chemistry. After graduation he earned a PHD in physical chemistry. He enters medical school and becomes a doctor. He became the head of the Human Genome Project. He is one of the world’s leading scientists. He became an agnostic. He was convinced that everything in the universe could be explained on the basis of equations and physical principles. He was an admirer of Albert Einstein. He fell in love with medicine. He learned more about the DNA code, which led him to eventually be the head of the project. As a doctor he experienced the care of patients. It was a new relationship to people, i.e., ill person and healer. He found himself struggling to keep his professional distance as advocated. But he begins to notice the spiritual aspects of the dying patients and their faith. He is confident that any full investigation of a rational basis for faith would deny the merits of belief. He stills has questions. He is given a book by C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity” and begins to have belief. He writes, “Science is the only reliable way to understand the natural world, and its tools when properly utilized can generate insights into material existence. But Science is powerless to answer such questions as “Why did the universe come into being? What is the meaning of human existence? What happens after we die?” Humankind seeks answers to these profound questions. So we need to bring all the power of both the scientific and spiritual perspectives to bear on understanding of what both seen and unseen. The book is his answer. He later incidentally meets Charles Colson and they become friends. But they do not entirely agree on all the things of Christianity!
Until next time, Pax Tecum!