On LBI beaches, Sandy's misery is receding memory

BEACH HAVEN, N.J. - Steve Webb and his family didn't arrive on Long Beach Island until Sunday night, having attended their son's graduation at Elon University, in North Carolina, over the weekend.

Webb, of Moorestown, has been going to LBI his whole life, and he was on the sand first thing Monday morning with his fishing rods to make the most of his time. And if he was worn out from all the driving, he wasn't complaining.

"I saw dolphins out there earlier," said Webb, 53, gesturing out to where the sun sparkled off the ocean. "There's nothing like seeing that."

Progress has at times been frustratingly slow, say residents and visitors, but 21/2 years after it was devastated by Sandy, robust signs of recovery were evident on the 18-mile-long barrier on the first unofficial weekend of the summer season.

On Monday, the beaches of Beach Haven Township, on the southern end of LBI, were occupied with families enjoying a Memorial Day that was sunny and cloudless, if a tad chiller than some beachgoers might have preferred. Some played soccer or football or flew kites. Only a few braved the cool waters; surf temperatures were in the lower 60s.

Sarah Rauvenheimer, 14, persuaded her father to get up early to drive her and two of her friends from West Chester to the beach so she could have her first surfing lesson.

"It was fun!" she said. "It was cold. Feet numb."

Mark Schwartz, 43, sat bundled in fleece as he watched his two sons and his daughter run back and forth between their beach chairs and the chilly water.

"The only psychopaths who would go in the water are these three," he joked as the trio shivered in the sunshine moments before darting back to play in the waves.

Beside Schwartz was his mother, Jeanne Weinraub, who grew up in Plainfield. She, her children, and her grandchildren also have been coming to LBI their whole lives, she said, and own a house just off the beach.

"Family is what it's all about," she said. "Having all three generations in the house together. It keeps us close."

In 2012, Weinraub's block was one of the streets Hurricane Sandy spared. She said the dunes saved the building.

"I did not get a drop of water," she said. "With all the reports after the storm, I thought the house was gone."

The island, however, sustained enormous damage. Hundreds of beach houses were torn up, their appliances strewn through the streets, and entire neighborhoods were swamped with water and sand.

This month, the Army Corps of Engineers began a project to restore about 13 miles of beach and dunes along the island.

The damage was estimated at more than $700 million, and restoration has been ponderous, some visitors and residents said Monday.

But employees at some businesses said they were already seeing more customers than they did in 2014.

"We've had double the customers this year as last," said Megan Lynch, 18, who works at the Cafe de Ville on Bay Avenue, a coffee and pastry shop attached to the clothing store Sur La Plage. "Business has been very consistent."

Margaret O'Brien, a lifelong LBI resident who owns the Jingles Bait & Tackle store on Bay Avenue, said business had been strong this year because people were catching plenty of fish.

After Sandy, she said, many older people left, and many others abandoned their homes. O'Brien, whose parents bought their first house in LBI in the 1930s, never considered leaving, but the year after Sandy was challenging, she said. The store, which has been there for 39 years, took on more than two feet of water, and the streets were flooded for days.

"When I walked into this store that first day after the storm, everything was all over the floor. It was chaos," said O'Brien, 67. "I said to myself, 'If there was a time to retire, that would be it.' "

But O'Brien wasn't ready to retire.

"So, you start picking stuff up," she said. "By springtime, we were back in business."