The Dutch Gambrel of this damaged home reminds me of the house I used to live in as a boy on Staten Island. I spent the first half of my life running the roads of Richmond County.
From Bay Street to Main Street, from the Kill Van Kull to Great Kills, this tiny borough of oddly named towns like New Dorp and Tottenville became famous for a bridge linking it to Brooklyn. To me it is much, much more than a punchline or a ferry.
Many who come here to Staten Island are baffled by the insular nature of our existence. Despite repeated insults of omission as part of New York City, Staten Islanders comprise an interesting cross section of its citizens. Many work in the financial industry, ferried to Manhattan daily to toil in the countless banks and brokerage houses downtown. It is one of the chosen enclaves of our Civil Servant work force including Sanitation Workers, Correction Officers, Police and Firemen, as well as administrators and trades people, small businesses and a large container port.
Proctor and Gamble, US Gypsum and Standard Chemical once employed thousands along the north shore. Now the children of those workers teach school, deliver mail, and drive the buses that connect people of every religion, creed and ethnic background on earth. All the while, even as time has marched on and the borough grew, it avoided the spotlight due to its historical nature as a remote destination only accessible by ferry.
Before it became very much a land bridge to New Jersey from Long Island, towns like Mariner's Harbor, Port Richmond, St. George, and Stapleton evolved out of the necessity of an industrial revolution's economy. What is now a sprawling, thriving, suburban bedroom community was once farmland, wetlands, and thick woods.
The prized beaches were the Jersey Shore of its day with a vibrant summer season where so many flocked from Manhattan and points north and west to avoid summer's relentless heat and the crowding of a vertical city. Over time the summer retreat of beach bungalows along Midland and South Beaches became year-round housing. Flooding in Cedar Grove has been perennial for as long as I can remember. But people love living by the sea, and I spent much of my adolescence biking or driving to Great Kills to enjoy low tide where you could walk out for almost a quarter mile on the dark brown sand and explore the marine life teeming in the ancient oyster and clam beds.
Even in the old neighborhoods and the new neighborhoods, there is a quiet peace and calm unlike most areas of Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx and parts of Queens where the city thrum never ends. Not even in the darkest part of night.
Staten Island maintains its illusion of bucolic living in the midst of the most developed urban area in the world. Because when you are on a Staten Island beach and look out at the lower bay, from Coney Island to Sandy Hook, all you see is the horizon, and that was always, to me, a source of great inspiration for it still holds the mystery of a natural, unexplored world. An invitation to adventure, if only in the mind. The Siren's call of possibility gripped me there and has never let go.
The spirit of Staten Islanders is one of intrepid independence combined with enormous pride and steadfast ambition. The borough, of all NYC, lost the most people in the 9/11 attacks. It has seen its share of catastrophe, but never before on the scale and scope of Hurricane Sandy.
Along with Rockaway, Coney Island and lower Manhattan, Richmond County bore the brunt of an unprecedented storm surge. Homes have been washed off their foundations and many completely disintegrated. Thousands are without power, and many won't see it restored to their damaged homes even after the poles are replaced and the lines re-strung. You've seen the photos, now please help.
The Tunnels to Towers Run Foundation, organized in honor of Stephan Siller, a New York City fire fighter who on 9/11/01 ran through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and sacrificed his life in the service of others at the World Trade Center, is accepting donations with the promise that 100 percent of the monies raised will be used to help the survivors of Hurricane Sandy's most devastating effects.
I have long since departed "The Island, Our Island, Staten Island," first for a year of living dangerously in Manhattan's Theater District, then to settle in downtown Brooklyn where I live a double life as a New York City Building Inspector while pursuing the dreams I had on Staten Island's beaches as an aspiring writer in a region of highly accomplished artists. It was a complete irony that after spending the night of the storm responding to Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens, on Tuesday morning I was dispatched to help relieve the agony of my hometown. Now I am trying to do what I can to help raise awareness and funds for people who lost everything, my fellow New Yorkers, my neighbors, my Staten Island.
Remember, there is no donation too small.
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