Displays Prepared For May 8-10 ‘Coast Guard Community Festival’

COURT HOUSE — “We are honored to work with Coast Guard Training Center Cape May to tell their story through our exhibit,” said Dr. Joseph Salvatore, Executive Director at Naval Air Station Wildwood, one of the many civic and cultural associations that will exhibit Coast Guard-related items at Cape May County’s May 8-10 Coast Guard Community Festival.
Salvatore’s collection – which includes items ranging from a full-sized HH-52A Seaguard helicopter, to a 41-foot patrol boat, to military memorabilia, photographs, and interactive exhibits – is permanently housed in a massive historic aircraft hangar at the Cape May County Airport in Lower Township. Like other exhibitors, on May 8-10 he will bring the more portable items to help entertain and educate the crowds expected to attend the Festival honoring Cape May County’s designation as a “Coast Guard Community.”
Most events during the three-day Festival will be held at the U.S. Coast Guard base in Cape May City, an apt venue for viewing Coast Guard-related items preserved and maintained by local groups.
A few exhibitors will display items relating to the “life-saving stations” built along the New Jersey coastline after Congress appropriated $10,000 for the mission in 1848. Ocean City Lifesaving Station #30, currently undergoing restoration, was one of eight such stations located in Cape May County. Built in 1886 and closed in 1945, the venerable building currently is undergoing restoration with the help of many volunteers, including a crew from the U.S. Coast Guard.
Project director John Loeper has spent hundreds of hours collecting and restoring items that will enable him to present authentic demonstrations of vintage life-saving techniques at the upcoming Festival. He also will display a recently located list of the 65 men who worked at the station during its lengthy history. “It reads like a ‘Who’s Who of Southern Jersey,’ ” Loeper explained. Along with these and other antique items, Loeper will display a museum-quality model of Life-Saving Station #30.
The Cape May Maritime Museum and Educational Center, which currently is reconstructing an 1876 Life Saving Station in Lower Township, also will display interesting educational materials at the Festival. Like other exhibitors, the group has a permanent collection that ranges vastly in size from life-sized vessels to smaller memorabilia. Collecting, restoring and maintaining these requires “strong, sustained commitment to the Coast Guard’s story by residents of Cape May County,” according to Museum President Kevin Maloney.
Maloney said he is “thrilled” to be participating in the Festival.
Not to be overshadowed, New Jersey’s lighthouses will be represented at the upcoming Festival by North Wildwood’s Hereford Inlet Lighthouse. Built in 1939, this unique structure was tended by Coast Guard keepers for decades. From 1915 to 1964, the Coast Guard also managed the adjoining life-saving station as an official Coast Guard Station. Today the lighthouse serves as a museum with educational displays and historic artifacts tracing the County’s rich maritime history.
Steve Murray, chairman of the Friends of the Hereford Inlet Lighthouse Committee, is often found on the Lighthouse property tending the lush gardens and talking to visitors. He’s looking forward to the Festival, he said.
“The history of the U.S. Coast Guard is tightly woven into the fabric of Cape May County,” Murray noted. “The Training Center Cape May, the only CG Training Center in the Country and the birthplace of the CG Enlisted Corps, will observe its 70th anniversary year in 2016. How appropriate it is, then, that we can now celebrate the designation of Cape May County as a Coast Guard Community.”
Along with exhibits, the Coast Guard Community Festival will feature family fun activities, a Search and Rescue mission enacted on Cape May Harbor, meals and entertainment, and guided tours of Coast Guard ships, the base, and the Harbor. Dignitaries from around the country will attend the May 8 Proclamation Ceremony at which the County receives its official designation as a “Coast Guard Community.”