CAPE MAY – It’s back to the drawing board for the Jacob Jones Memorial Committee after homeowners pushed back on the committee’s most recent proposed location and design near Poverty Beach at Wilmington and Beach avenues.
At a July 30 information session attended by some 60 homeowners via Zoom, architect John Boecker promised a “total reset of the design,” stressing that the next reiteration would be “smaller in size, not climbable, be able to withstand hurricane-strength winds, built without glass, lessen impacts to parking, and be a stop for alternate transportation, such as a trolley.”
“It will be designed for minimal maintenance, and will be maintained by the City of Cape May like the maintenance of other monuments in the city,” he added. “It will be off the dunes, relocated to an area farther south on Wilmington Avenue, so it’s not in a bird nesting area and will not encroach on the sand dunes.”
Boecker also explained that the plan would be to “integrate and consolidate it (the monument) into the Army Corps of Engineers’ seawall project, with construction aimed at being simultaneous with the seawall work to minimize additional site disturbance.”
Lastly, he said, no security issues were identified by Cape May’s police chief, and routine patrols, as happens with other city monuments, would occur. Trash collection and cleaning would be done by city workers as part of their routine service.
Referring to the redesign as a “Page 1 rewrite,” Committee Chairman Myles Martel again promised a “transparent and democratic process” as the committee revises its plan and then presents it again to the City Council, promising homeowners a chance to comment on the next redesign.
“We are moving forward,” he said, stressing the monument will be located within the city limits, despite multiple suggestions of moving it to Lower Township, where the World War II lookout tower is located.
The USS Jacob Jones was a destroyer sunk off the Cape May coast by a German submarine on Feb. 28, 1942. One hundred thirty officers and crew perished, and all but one body remains entombed within the wreckage. The monument is intended to honor the Jacob Jones and all other Navy ships and crews lost during the Battle of the Atlantic.
The committee has stood fast on keeping the monument within a direct line of sight of the beach, ocean and site where the ship went down, and of the Coast Guard base, which was a naval station at the time of the sinking and where 11 survivors were treated. Boecker said the ship went down about equidistant between Cape May and Delaware.
Martel and Boecker presented much of the same information they have shared at multiple other meetings about the background of the sinking and the proposed design of the monument, but added information showing newspaper headlines from the time of the sinking and how Cape May played in some of those headlines; information about the ship’s captain and interactions with his grandson, and snippets from Boecker’s resume, showing his accomplishments over 42 years as an architect.
Monument committee member and Navy veteran George Schu read a brief description of what the crew, whose average age was early 20s, experienced at the time of the sinking based on historical documentation.
Homeowners were asked to submit their questions using Zoom’s chat function, and while they all supported the concept of the memorial, they asked about environmental impacts, funding, and other sites considered and why they were rejected, among other concerns.
Boecker and Martel addressed the concerns during the meeting, essentially pointing to the redesign effort that would begin. At this time, no funding efforts have occurred, although Martel said early discussions with several organizations have been supportive of the monument.
Contact the reporter, Karen Knight, at kknight@cmcherald.com.
