No, I didn’t marry a man I met in Bradley Beach. I couldn’t have met him here, because he came from Trenton and Trenton went to Belmar.
I did, however, meet a lot of boyfriends in Bradley that I didn’t marry. To be in high school and summer in Bradley Beach meant boys on Brinley Beach in the daytime and boys at Mike and Lou’s at night. The 50s were an idyllic romance with boys we loved for a week or so before one or the other of us moved on to the someone sitting on the next blanket.
There were romances, of course, that started and grew into beautiful love stories. My friends Gail and Joel were that romance. Joel lived on my block in Newark and met Gail as everyone met everyone – on Brinley. They fell in love and my dad let him sleep on our porch so he could see Gail every weekend.
So here’s to the couples, like Gail and Joel, who found true love in Bradley Beach; and here’s to those of us (and our parents) who played a part in their magical marriages that came to be.
-Shared by Rona Parker