BEHIND THE SCENES
WHEN A SOLDIER MAKES IT HOME
MAY 22, 2008
Half way round the world tonight It was the one occasion that always made me feel like a phony - or, worse, like a politician. It was the annual Asbury Park Memorial Day ceremony at Veterans Park, and invariably we council members would be invited to speak on a day that should have belonged to city veterans. My dad was a World War II quartermaster, of course, and as a teenager in the 1960s, I'd seen too many kids return from Vietnam physically injured and mentally scarred - or not return at all. But what could someone with no military experience say to someone who'd survived Vietnam or Iraq, Korea or Afghanistan, or the myriad battlefields of World War II? Somehow, it seemed like it should have been our day to listen. Then, one day, a guy in painter's clothes and a V.F.W. cap pressed an American flag pin into my hand. "My name's Jim Grabe," he told me, "but everyone calls me Flagman."
Back home they don't know too much What can I tell you about Jim? He was a proud U.S. Army veteran and a dedicated member of Asbury Park's Harold Daly V.F.W. post. His life was anything but easy: Subject to frequent seizures, he was forced to travel by bicycle in even the worst weather. And although he enjoyed cooking, he gave up that occupation after seriously burning his hand, making his living as a housepainter. But Jim was full of heart and spirit, and anyone who met him quickly learned that his major loves were America, the flag, and the V.F.W. People would sometimes snicker when he stood up at council meetings, protesting the ragged condition of a local flag - or when he came to near fisticuffs with people who abused the V.F.W. parking lot, which he proudly maintained. And his heartfelt, if imaginatively ungrammatical, letters filled the Internet and elected officials' mailboxes. And although I worried (as did he) when some of his more public confrontations got a little too heated, I secretly cheered him on when he did things like pick a fight with the bullying female head of an Asbury Park employment agency who had a reputation for mistreating workers. But Jim really defined selflessness in action when he rushed to the aid of a wounded fellow vet.
And there won't be any big parades When Jim heard that Staff Sgt. Maurice Craft - an Asbury Park native - had been severely injured in Iraq, he repeatedly bicycled to the West Side, taking donuts and flowers to Craft's distressed family. Over the next few weeks, I helped him with a publicity campaign and donation drive, and he partnered with big-hearted Debbie DeLisa to stage a music benefit at the Wonder Bar. But, over and over, I could not help contrasting how Jim - with so little himself - was willing to do so much for a fellow vet that the city would have otherwise passed by. Unfortunately, Jim's own seizures continued to worsen. Several times, I saw him covered with painful bruises after falls from his bike. Once, while visiting a depressed Asbury Park teen in a local hospital's psych ward, I was startled to see Jim's pale face on the other side of the glass. He had had a serious seizure, he told me, and had been taken there for treatment almost a week before. But the hospital doctors weren't giving him his usual seizure medications, and they had failed to contact his Veterans Administration physician.
The living will be walking down Still, Jim deflected almost every conversation about his welfare, preferring to talk about the people he loved and admired: Staff Sgt. Maurice Craft. The members of the Asbury Park First Aid squad who regularly came to his aid. Real estate broker Bill Sitar - an ex-Marine, Jim proudly told me - who supplied him with regular house-painting work. And most of all, perhaps, his V.F.W. mentor and friend Lou Parisi, who checked on him that March night when Jim failed to answer his cell phone. Dave and I were out of town that week. Afterwards, my only mementos were a little metal flag pin and a newspaper obituary that didn't say nearly enough: "James Patrick Grabe, 45, of Asbury Park died Friday, March 7, at home. He was a U.S. Army veteran, and past commander and lifetime member of the Harold Daly V.F.W. Post 1333. He was the patriotic officer of Monmouth County." And - of course - "He was known as the Flagman." I used to think that the phrase "died at home" had a comforting ring to it. But Jim Grabe died the way he didn't want to see his fellow vets live: alone. Last week, I sat in a Princeton concert hall listening to folksinger Arlo Guthrie - the same Arlo Guthrie who wrote "Alice's Restaurant", the anti-draft anthem of the 1960s - singing the song whose verses run through this column. And I probably felt closer to understanding what those Memorial Day services were about than I did during all my years on the city council. That's when I knew it was time to write one additional column. So Jimbo, old friend, this one's for you. Happy Memorial Day.
Two decades later, it will be Asbury Park residents and business owners who determine whether Sliwa and his fellow Angels go or stay.
Following the wrenching Christmas Eve murder of husband and father Cesar Torralba as he returned to his Sixth Avenue apartment with holiday food, members of Asbury Park's Hispanic community joined Neptune and Long Branch residents in requesting the Angels' help.
Since December 30, Sliwa and volunteers from Philadelphia, New York and Jersey City have met with local and county law enforcement officials, the Asbury Park city manager, residents, business owners, and ministers. And Guardian Angels - in their legendary red berets and jackets - have been conducting weekend foot patrols despite the year's nastiest weather.
Their goal? To create an Asbury Park Guardian Angels chapter that will eventually spread to Neptune and Long Branch.
Sliwa - who founded the volunteer organization of unarmed citizen crime-patrollers in 1979 - strongly believes that people cannot rely on government to end community crime problems.
"People have to scrape the barnacles off their backsides and take back their communities," he said in a recent interview. "The government didn't create the problem, and the government can't solve the problem.
"People who say, 'the government will do it for me; I pay my taxes' need to come to the realization that we have to do it. It's our civic responsibility."
He gave the example of someone who finds litter on his lawn, and rails about it or expects the city to clean it up. Instead, he said, "You need to do what my grandfather would do: You pick it up, and you pick up the trash in front of your neighbor's house, too."
Undoubtedly, the Guardian Angels - with chapters in 102 cities and 12 countries - take civic responsibility seriously: Volunteers complete a three-month training program that includes basic self-defense, physical conditioning, CPR, first aid, legal training and patrol techniques.
"We do get physical," Sliwa said. "We do make citizen's arrests."
The Angels, who patrol on foot and volunteer at least eight hours a week, travel in units of four or more people. They carry no weapons and have no special police powers.
"If someone commits a crime, we detain them until the police arrive. We also break up fights - but we do call the police."
There's no telling how much crime is prevented by the simple presence of those distinctive red berets. "We're like an ink blotter," Sliwa said. "People tell us things they don't want to tell the police, either because they're illegals, or they have criminal problems themselves, or they're afraid."
In Asbury Park, as in other communities, Sliwa and his out-of-town Road Team begin by patrolling the main thoroughfares. "Our strategy is to stabilize the key intersections and the key business areas so that people feel there's a change" before branching out into the neighborhoods.
They also use their weekend foot patrols to stir up interest in an Asbury Park chapter. "We're recruiting aggressively, especially the people out on the streets, the people who are holding up the telephone poles. We develop a relationship with the merchants. If they give up, it's a slide back into the abyss, because people will be afraid that other things will fold."
The ultimate goal is to establish a fully trained and funded Asbury Park chapter, staffed - and led - by local people.
After 29 years, Sliwa has no illusions: "You have to assume there will be nine failures for every success," he said, pointing out that people in high-crime areas are often distracted by unstable homes, early parenthood, unemployment, apathy, despair and fear.
"People have to be willing to fight for their neighborhood," he said. "You have to believe that one person can make a difference" and not buy into the dictum that "snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches."
Sliwa noted that Asbury Park's substantial immigrant population - both legal and illegal - must become actively involved. "Illegals are easy picking for the gang-bangers. They can't sit on the sidelines."
He has also reached out to the city school system to discuss programming for high school students. "We're the one (crime prevention) option that will inspire children to get involved," Sliwa said, noting that the Junior Guardian Angels work with children aged 8 through 15.
The first Asbury Park adult training class - which will accept volunteers as young as 16 with parental permission - is scheduled for early March at the city's Salvation Army facility, 605 Asbury Avenue. Vickie Vasquez, the local Angels point person, can be reached at 732-361-6654.
National board members John DiDomenico of Asbury Park's Bell Latino and Ed Moldaver of Colts Neck will also coordinate a local "Friends of the Guardian Angels" for people who want to contribute in less hands-on ways. Contact them through the group's national website, www.guardianangels.org.
As for residents of surrounding communities, Sliwa warned that "Asbury Park's problem is Monmouth County's problem is the Jersey Shore's problem" - something I witnessed firsthand as a city councilwoman. When the federal Drug Enforcement Agency began cracking down on drug dealers in the Asbury Park area, other towns reported a spike in drug crimes in places like residential neighborhoods and "big box" stores.
"There's no way you can isolate a crime problem," Sliwa said. "People from the outside drive in to buy drugs and transplant them to their own communities. That's when you see an increase in home invasions, car thefts and robberies."
Mere fences won't prevent crime, Sliwa said, citing Ocean Grove's locked footbridge over Wesley Lake. "This is a mobile society. Gang-bangers will drive into other communities prospecting."
Indeed, according to the NJ Department of Law and Public Safety, the proportion of Monmouth County municipalities reporting gang activity increased from 16 percent in 2004 to a startling 40 percent in 2007, affecting towns ranging from Middletown and Red Bank to Interlaken and Belmar.
Sliwa still regrets the opportunities lost when Asbury Park officials sent his group packing on a New York train in the 1980s.
"It takes a lot of work to make up for lost time because problems get worse. People have to have patience. It's not going to happen overnight."
Whether the Guardian Angels take root in Asbury Park and Monmouth County - or whether Sliwa once again buys a one-way ticket to New York - depends on whether area residents and business owners answer his call.
By day, we'd see our polite, soft-spoken Asbury Park neighbor heading out to work at the Neptune company his grandfather founded. On weekends, we'd hear him accompanying himself on the piano as he practiced opera arias for an upcoming performance.
Then, one day, I casually asked him what the S.S. Adams Company manufactured.
Within minutes, I was shamelessly begging, "Please, please, take me to work with you!"
Soren Adam Sorenson -- Chris' grandfather and S.S. Adams' founder -- was born in Denmark in 1879, and moved to Perth Amboy at age 5. After attending grade school, young Sam (as he liked to be called) worked a variety of jobs, including one selling dye products made with a coal-tar derivative that made workers sneeze.
Sam immediately saw the humorous possibilities, and began marketing the sneeze-producing ingredient in small glass vials under the name "Cachoo." The Cachoo Sneeze Powder Company made $15,000 in its first year, and Cachoo soon took the nation by storm, disrupting church services, classrooms, parties, theaters, and even a national political convention.
By 1906, Sam had Americanized his name to Samuel Sorenson Adams, and christened his New Jersey firm the S.S. Adams Company.
Soon a new array of startling products joined the S.S. Adams line: There was the exploding cigarette box, the short-lived and semi-toxic itching powder, the room-clearing stink bomb, and the long-popular dribble glass.
One early entry was an innocent-looking raspberry jam jar that Sam developed to tease his wife: When the lid opened, a cloth-covered wire snake popped out.
A century later, S.S. Adams still offers a variety of realistic-looking snack tins concealing multiple 30-inch snakes, including bogus peanut brittle, mixed nuts, mints, yogurt and (Chris' invention) potato chips.
The company soon added dozens of "pranks" popularized through comic book ads, magic shops, and tourist traps worldwide: fake vomit, plastic ice cubes with imbedded bugs, rubber pencils, garlic candies, disappearing ink, rattlesnake eggs, fake dog droppings, squirting flowers.
Some have sold for close to a century. Others -- like the loaded cigarettes containing what Chris dryly described as "a tiny, tiny firecracker exploding two inches from your eyes" -- were discontinued as public notions of safety and liability changed.
Their most popular product? The joy buzzer, developed by Sam with the help of a German die maker in 1928, and revamped into the highly successful "super buzzer" by Joseph (Bud) Adams -- Chris' father -- around 1985.
Despite the Depression, Sam sold more than 3 million joy buzzers between 1930 and 1941, and his delighted customers included Maurice Chevalier, Tallulah Bankhead, Henry Ford, Arthur Godfrey, Milton Berle and Jack Dempsey.
S.S. Adams also developed a worldwide reputation as a purveyor of hundreds of magic tricks, with such enticing names as the Mesmerized Walking Stick, Mysterious Talking Violin, Magical Floating Glass, and Sensational Mail Bag Escape.
They still produce magic sets and tricks, including the famous DeLand card deck with over 12,000 secret marks, a variety of coin tricks, and the ever-popular "sword through the finger" and disappearing milk illusions.
S.S. Adams outgrew its Plainfield location during World War I and moved its factory to Asbury Park in the early 1920s, taking up residence in both the brick building at the southwest corner of Fifth and Main and a second-floor location at Main and Bangs.
In 1932, they purchased the former Steiner pajama factory (whose motto -- definitely unlike Sam's -- was "We put the world to sleep") on Neptune's Railroad Avenue (now known as Memorial Drive).
During its peak years, S.S. Adams employed more than 80 people in its 45,000 square foot building, and many of the original lathes, kick presses, punch presses and other machines are still in operation.
Although many products are now made in Europe or China, the Neptune facility still churns out coin tricks, Chinese magic sticks, wire snakes and other products.
On the day I visited, Chris demonstrated the wire snake-making process and packaging machinery, and I screamed like someone hit by a joy buzzer when I found workers manufacturing their famous squirting nickels.
"I carried one of those for 10 years!" I whimpered, as Chris dropped a shiny new one into my eager palm.
Did S.S. Adams ever miss out on a major prank? Almost. When Toronto's Jem Rubber Company offered Sam the exclusive rights for what is now popularly called the whoopee cushion in 1930, he turned it down, thinking it was too gross for American tastes. When another company marketed it with huge success, Sam won the right to produce S.S. Adams' now-famous "razzberry cushion."
Sam Adams died in 1963, when Chris was only two years old. Bud Adams -- Sam's son and Chris' dad, who had worked there since his early teens -- then managed the business for almost 40 years, until his death in 2001.
Chris returned to the family business in 1988, and is the current co-owner along with David Haversat. Haversat -- a former magic store owner who cut his teeth on S.S. Adams magic tricks and who owns a major collection of vintage Adams products -- manages the day-to-day operations while Chris concentrates on his Monmouth Piano business, also located at 509 Memorial Drive.
And, yes, S.S. Adams is a family business in more ways than one: Asbury Park sisters Grace and Julia Wilson have worked there since 1955.
Interested in acquiring your own S.S. Adams pranks and tricks? Look for them locally at Funk & Standard in Red Bank, The Hobby Shop in Aberdeen, or on the Internet at www.fljerry.com.
S.S. Adams also sells a fabulously illustrated book by Kirk Demarais called "Life of the Party: A Visual History of the S.S. Adams Company," produced for the company's 100th anniversary in 2006. Contact Dave Haversat at 732-774-0570 for details.
In the meantime, I'd love to show you the sprinkler system on Thomas Jefferson's lawn. Just bend a little closer to the nickel in my hand...
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FEBRUARY 21, 2008 -- When Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa visited Asbury Park in the 1980s at the invitation of concerned West Side residents, city officials made it abundantly clear that he and his group were unwelcome.