Ocean Grove Clean Up

My husband is teasing me as I write this. I’m thumb-typing another post in the car on the Garden State Parkway because we still don’t have power.

The teasing is because I am tearing up with pride as I look through my pictures from today. My heart is warm, and filled with pride for my kids and love for my community.

Ocean Grove had a large clean-up effort today, with volunteers showing up with brooms, shovels, rakes, and garbage bags to help restore our beloved boardwalk and beach. While large front-loaders scooped sand out of the streets, smaller bobcats did the same to the in-tact portions if the boardwalk.

People teamed up in trucks with trailers, lifting the cement benches that the ocean deposited all over town during the storm. Those on foot helped shovel sand from spots the machines couldn’t reach, or patrolled the beaches and parks picking up garbage and other debris.

There were well over 100 volunteers, all working together to do what they could to dig out if the damage left in Sandy’s wake. Young and old, residents and out-of-towners worked side by side throughout the day.

There is still a lot more to be done, that will take much more time and even more money. Yet today warmed my heart. This is New Jersey at its best. Our small towns form such cohesive communities, that there is never a hesitation when it’s time to pull together to help out in a crisis.

I am so proud of my children, who worked a solid three hours without a single whine or complaint. At ages 4, 6, and 8, they pitched in and worked hard. I told my third grader this afternoon, as we were drinking some water and packing up to drive back home,

“Robbie, you did the work of a man today. Not a kid, not a boy. But a man. And I couldn’t be prouder if you.”

Well done, Ocean Grove.

(Again, apologies for the photo layout.  I can’t do anything fancier from my phone.)