1951 — Vincent Dicks

Former Sea Girt Councilman Everard C. Stokes, an executive with the Royal Assurance Company and then the Church Property Fire Insurance Company. at 83 Maiden Lane in NY lived at 212 Crescent Parkway.

In February 1951 Stokes was making his way home on the "Broker", the very crowded southbound North Jersey Coastline train. The Central Jersey RR was on strike, and the Broker was packed with over 1,000 passengers. Near Woodbridge, a temporary wooden overpass had been recently put in place near the junction of the Coastline and the Mainline to accommodate the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike. It was dark and wet, near freezing, and the engineer did not slow to the required 25 mph. The tracks shifted under the weight of the train and 8 of 11 cars derailed with several sliding down a 30-foot embankment. 81 passengers died in the largest train disaster in NJ history. Everard Stokes at 68 was one of the passengers killed.

There was a trend in politics in the borough over the years. Several times borough council was a very tight group of people working together for their vision of the community. You could not get a closer group than Mayor Edwin Doyle, and the three former lifeguards of the Mooro Castle Elvin Lake, John Holthusen, and Thomas Black III. Each time this has happened, a newer group of homeowners came to town, and formed another civic organization to lobby for their demands.

Jetties were a big issue in the mid-century

Mayor Doyle was seasoned. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1916, where he played baseball. He attended Fordham Law School for one year and was admitted to the bar in New York in 1921. He served as a Captain in WWI for the Army Air Service and was a successful stockbroker at Janney Mongomery Smith, moving to Sea Girt in 1926. He was on Council for 8 years before beginning a 30-year term as mayor.

During the 50s, the Sea Girt Real Estate Owners group became very vocal at Council meetings. They had a series of demands. They wanted the loose dog ordinance enforced. They tried to prevent trailers from parking in town. They wanted to curb speeders through the borough and asked that several of their members be deputized to stop people driving too fast. They insisted on an explanation of how their money for the new Jetty at Beacon Blvd was not enough to make the jetty as long as contracted for.

The contract specified a 600-foot jetty, but stone is sold by the ton, and the borough severely underestimated the amount of coverage they would get for the $70,000 the town had committed for their share.

The real plague of 1951 was the European Leaf Miner. The invasive insect was a threat to the estimated 8,000 holly trees in the borough, the largest concentration in New Jersey outside of the maritime forest in Sandy Hook. Residents would have to pay 50 cents per tree, and the town $5,000 to spray to eliminate the insect..

The Chemicals DDT and Chlordane were effective on the insects, but DDT severely weakened the shells of nesting birds. DDT would be blamed for ravaging the Bald Eagle and the Osprey populations in the state.