OCEAN CITY — Often during a recession people cut expenses, perhaps not taking a vacation or cutting back on small luxuries. But sometimes the tough times is when small pleasures can really lighten spirits. Escape from the doldrums of a rough economy is important, especially for children.
During a time some consider comparable to the economic strife today, in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929, Toni Pistilli Zeccardi had her first gander at the Atlantic Ocean during a retreat to the Calvary Seaside House in Stone Harbor.
On March 18, Zeccardi sat in her office at the Shores of Wesley Manor Nursing Home here reminiscing about an experience she will likely never forget. So much that, even into her retirement, she can recall with explicit detail a place that no longer exist except in the minds and hearts of those like herself on whom it made such a lasting impression.
The kindness of Isabel “Godmother” Krauth, a neighborhood do-gooder who treated the poor children Nicetown, Pa., a neighborhood of Polish, Irish, German and Italian immigrants, to the magnificence of Jersey Shore in times when basic needs, let alone simple pleasures, were scare, stayed with Zeccardi throughout her life and continues to shape her person.
Krauth, a member of the Calvary Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, was notorious for her caring and helpful nature. Zeccardi, then 10-years-old, was able to pay the $3 weekly fee for her stay at the retreat because her father still had a job as a stonemason. Children whose fathers were out of work could attend free, she said.
Although Zeccardi’s family is Catholic, her mother, Teresa Pistilli, who traveled to America from Italy at the age of 18, was bold in allowing her daughter to attend a retreat of another religious faith.
“I’m so grateful my mom didn’t listen to the neighbors and allowed me to go,” Zeccardi told the Herald. “She would say ‘Don’t they love God too anyhow?’”
She was exposed to many new things throughout that week, different places, ethnicities and her first taste of American food, grilled cheese and hotdogs, new tastes for her Italian palette.
Days were very structured at the retreat house. Krauth would play religious hymns and children would sing along before breakfast, which was cereal and toast, then it was on to chores. The beach, of course, was the main event.
As the 30 children in the Nicetown gang paraded their way to the beach one afternoon and passed two elder Italian women, one said to the other “Adesso verango gypsies.” Zeccardi recognized this Italian as, “Here come the gypsies.” This, among a slew of other memories, has taught her to be inclusive of all types of people and open to other creeds, experiences and people.
Zeccardi’s daughter-in-law Gina testified, “She always had a full dinner table.”
The retreat house was four blocks from the beach at 83rd street but was demolished in the 1950s to make way for homes, resident Barbara Burns told the Herald.
There is now a room at the Germantown Hospital dedicated to Krauth, she said.
“In these seventy-five years since the days of the Calvary Seaside House, my husband and I along with our five children and their extended families have often been to the Jersey shore and have enjoyed immensely the lovely beaches and the camaraderie of family,” Zeccardi wrote in her memoir. “But my fondest memory is that of the Seaside House of the Calvary Church in Stone Harbor. That has been for me a glowing pattern for a better life.”
Contact Truluck at (609) 886-8600 ext. 24 or at: ltruluck@cmcherald.com