Two Beach Saves and a Jerseyman for President
Every Democrat member of the House of Representatives arrived in Sea Girt in July as support for the nomination of NJ Governor Woodrow Wilson as the party candidate for President. Charlie Henville was the hack driver in town. He lived in Spring Lake in the winter, but resided in Sea Girt in the summer, “Because my family likes it better in the country”.
Library of Congress Photo, Wilson is at the center in a rocker.
He had all the business he wanted that summer, and he was happy to cart the fancy people from the hotels to the guard camp where they hung along the fence looking for a glimpse at the Governor, and usually settling for watching the troops shoot.
Entrance to town in 1912. Postmistress and farm store owner Mary Blakey took the photo
Back of card.
The nomination of Wilson was “The biggest thing that ever happened around here. In fact, it may be the only thing that has happened around here worth mentioning.” Henville laughed at the way people “lost their heads over the nomination”. He claimed to have carted members of the “I knew him first club”, the “Original Wilson Men” and the “I told you so’s” He noted that all the people who used to laugh at sleepy Sea Girt seemed to be here, “Walking down Rubberneck Lane, trying to grab a glance at the man who might be President.”
Wilson basking in the glory of his nomination for President in 1912
Governor Woodrow Wilson accepted the nomination for the Presidency in August from the porch at, the Little White House in Sea Girt.
“I could not have accepted a nomination which left me bound to any man or group of men. No man can be just who is not free; and no man who has to show favors ought to undertake the solemn responsibility of government in any rank or post whatever, least of all in the supreme post of President of the United States.
To be free is not necessarily to be wise. But wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free conference of untrammeled men united in the common interest. Should I be entrusted with the great office of President, I would seek counsel wherever it could be had upon free terms. I know the temper of the great convention which nominated me; I know the temper of the country that lay back of that convention and spoke through it. I heed with deep thankfulness the message you bring me from it. I feel that I am surrounded by men whose principles and ambitions are those of true servants of the people. I thank God, and will take courage.”
At the beach, extra guests meant it was a busy summer for the lifeguards.
Edward Lloyd was a lifeguard patrolling at Sea Girt on July 30. A young boy from Spring Lake was swimming and was caught in a rip. The current took him beyond the breakers near Wreck Pond and then south of the inlet. He was in trouble and he was being carried seaward. He went under and came back up. Lloyd raced down the beach from the Sea Girt side and swam out. The boy went under again. When Lloyd reached him, the boy grabbed him around the neck. As he struggled mightily, he almost took Edward Lloyd under with him. Suddenly Lloyd struck the boy in the face, and he appeared unconscious as Lloyd was able to drag the boy ashore. When he was resuscitated on the beach, the boy said nothing and walked back to Spring Lake.
Sarah Leeds kept the Tremont in the 1870s. The Chalfonte in Atlantic City was her last hotel, and her son took over from there..
The water was always dangerous for swimmers.
Talk of the Wilson activity at Sea Girt brought Ernest Hink back in time. In 1912 the mayor of Montclair, Ernest C. Hink was re-telling a story from 28 years earlier as he sat in the parlor at the Chalfont Hotel in Atlantic City for a conference. The proprietor of the hotel, Samuel Leeds was listening carefully.
A view of the inlet from a Morris photo of Big Sea Day. Note the kids playing in the inlet, which seemed calm but currents and shallows made it quite dangerous.
In 1884 while swimming at Sea Girt near the inlet, Hink dove into shallow water. He broke a vertebra in his upper back and could not pick his head up. He was paralyzed. He would have drowned, except a young boy, about 12 years old had pulled him from the shallow water and laid him on the sand. Hink lingered near death for weeks until a radical operation repaired his dislocated vertebrae and he was nursed back to health and relearned to walk.
He said he regretted never having been able to meet the boy who saved his life to thank him. Sam Leeds laughed. Mother Leeds, his mother had been the proprietress of the Tremont Hotel. Samuel Leeds told him “I was that boy.” Sam provided details about the incident that only someone present would have known. It was as if two brothers had been reunited. They remained friends and when Leeds went into local politics, Hink spoke highly of him to anyone who would listen.