There was tension in Europe as Hitler began to absorb territories. The Sudetenland and Austria fell without resistance from France or Great Britain. People listening to the radio in America heard the following:
“Now, nearer home, comes a special announcement from Trenton, New Jersey. It is reported that at 8:50 P.M. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey, twenty-two miles from Trenton.
The flash in the sky was visible within a radius of several hundred miles and the noise of the impact was heard as far north as Elizabeth.
We have dispatched a special mobile unit to the scene, and will have our commentator, Carl Phillips, give you a word description as soon as he can reach there from Princeton. In the meantime, we take you to the Hotel Martinet in Brooklyn, where Bobby Millette and his orchestra are offering a program of dance music.”
It was Orson Wells performing War of the Worlds, narrating the invasion of Earth from space aliens. Many tuning in mid-broadcast were panicked, and called local police.
Orson Wells had a voice for radio
Chief Panz made a presentation to Council. Mayor Nellis pointed Panz to the Public Safety Committee. Panz had asked for a restoration of the 15% cuts in pay he had since the beginning of the Depression. His officers were cut by 30%. Salaries were partially restored by Mayor Doyle the previous year. They were still 5% below their 1930 salaries. Other municipalities had restored their cuts, and Sea Girt was forcing the officers to work on their days off without pay.
The department had made 27 arrests, investigated 27 accidents, and traveled 25,000 miles patrolling.
To save money while beautifying the town, Clarence Cornielus, superintendent, moved holly trees from Crescent Park to the median of Crescent Parkway. He also had planted trees on the lot on Baltimore Blvd. that the town had purchased for an eventual school in the 1920s. Today this is Baltimore Park, and this was the borough’s first money spent on it.
Baltimore Park was supposed to be land for a school.
Borough leaders complained that the WPA (Works Progress Administration) was using ‘foreigners’ to work on the government projects in Sea Girt. The Roosevelt Administration had used federal money to put 8 million people to work on infrastructure projects. Spring Lake was extending their boardwalk with cement footings with WPA workers. There was work on Wreck Pond to prevent flooding, and in Sea Girt, underbrush was cleared and trees were trimmed. Borough Council declared that if the work was not using local labor, they would stop work. In 1939 Sea Girt finally turned down another $42,000 WPA grant to fix drainage issues with Wreck Pond. They assessed the homeowners and the borough took on the debt instead. The WPA grants often came with strings and delays in funding.
The WPA built the concrete supports for the Spring Lake Boardwalk