Free Republic

News Release: April 8, 2009 Memorial Service planned to honor Captain Robert S. Craig Ocean City, MD – A memorial service for Captain Robert (Bob) S. Craig will be held 3 p.m. Saturday, April 25 on the beach at North Division Street. Captain Craig passed away on Saturday, March 28 at the age of 90. Captain Craig joined the Ocean City Beach Patrol in 1935 and served as its captain from 1946 until retiring in 1987. Captain Craig is credited with building the Ocean City Beach Patrol into the professional organization it is known as today. When Captain Craig turned...

(April 3, 2009) The man who not only epitomized the Ocean City Beach Patrol, but also built it into a serious and professional organization, passed away Saturday. When Capt. Robert (Bob) S. Craig turned 90 last July, a competition, dinner and slide show honored him for his 52 years as a town employee and member of the Beach Patrol. Thousands knew Craig from his years guiding the Beach Patrol and taking it from a small, relatively unskilled group of young men to a large group of highly skilled young men and women. Capt. Butch Arbin, the current head of the...

OCEAN CITY – Ocean City lost a treasured icon this week when Captain Robert S. Craig, who shepherded the Beach Patrol through decades of change and inspired his young charges for half a century passed away at the age of 90. Captain Craig, as he was known for decades not only by the thousands of lifeguards who worked with him and for him but also by the countless millions of local residents and visitors to the resort area, passed away last Saturday at the Coastal Hospice in Salisbury at the age of 90. A former schoolteacher and coach, Captain Craig...

New Jersey's most popular beach town is about to make a decision that has been unpopular with environmentalists around the world -- using wood cut from the Amazon rainforests to repair a section of its boardwalk. Wildwood, voted the state's best beach last summer by vacationers and others, will become the latest of several New Jersey communities opting to use the more durable rainforest wood to build or fix boardwalks. Environmental groups contend the world's tropical rainforests are being wiped out by logging to satisfy demand for this kind of wood. Mayor Ernest Troiano Jr. said Wildwood reluctantly turned to...

Kemah Boardwalk partially reopens. The Boardwalk Bullet is up and running! Check it out!One of Kemah's greatest assets is its location on Galveston Bay. The Bay and Kemah waterfront draw visitors to Kemah from throughout the world. Hurricane Ike’s storm surge caused roughly $450 million in damage to Kemah homes, businesses and city infrastructure, this does not include the Kemah Boardwalk or Marina. Many restaurants and business have already re-opened and the Boardwalk is opening a few restaurants at a time should be in full swing well before spring break "Better than ever"!

The world's first boardwalk was nailed down at the Jersey Shore in 1870 to solve the nuisance of sand being tracked into hotels. Now boardwalks themselves are the problem in some Shore towns. Plans to redo the fabled boards of Wildwood and Ocean City this fall have environmentalists and activists fighting local officials over the wood for the projects. In bid specifications for the work, both Cape May County towns have requested wood from the ipe, a tropical tree that grows in Central and South American rainforests, fragile regions some environmental groups argue are being ravaged by unscrupulous loggers. The...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - A Bergen County woman was charged with driving under the influence after police said she mistook the landmark Boardwalk for a road. Captain Bill McKnight said he was on patrol when the vehicle sped by him Wednesday night. McKnight gave chase with lights and siren, when he said the vehicle made a U-turn and nearly hit his patrol car. McKnight broke off the chase when speeds reached 40 mph because he feared for the safety of the few pedestrians who were on the wood

Construction at Kandahar Airfield looks to futureBoardwalk, runway extensions in the works at growing base By Kent Harris, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Monday, March 6, 2006 KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — So what if the nearest ocean is hundreds of miles away? That doesn’t mean coalition troops and civilians stationed at the largest military base in southern Afghanistan can’t enjoy a (sometimes bouncy) walk on the boardwalk, and grab some American fast food while they’re at it. The wooden structure, located near the geographic center of the base, was a pet project of Lt. Col. Jim Hardy, the recently departed...

ASBURY PARK — The owner of the Stone Pony, who once said waterfront developers would get control of it only “over my dead body,” has agreed to sell to them, putting the famed shore nightclub’s future in jeopardy — again. Domenic Santana will sell the building and transfer its liquor license to Asbury Partners, a company overseeing a $1.2 billion makeover of the city’s decrepit waterfront. Under the sale agreement, Asbury Partners could demolish the building, build a new club elsewhere in the city and call it the Stone Pony, while Santana would be allowed to use the name to...

"Thou shalt not place Bibles in our casino hotel rooms." Such is the commandment from the flashy, new Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, home of the Borgata Babe cocktail waitress and shower-stall-for-two. Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, N.J. The Press of Atlantic City reports the $1.1 billion resort opening this summer is breaking ranks with all other casinos, and is refusing to allow the Gideons to place a Bible in any of its 2,002 hotel rooms. "What we've found is there's such a diversity of gaming customers that visit Atlantic City, by putting one generic publication in there you're not...

Eastern European wave filling Shore jobs Published in the Home News Tribune 7/07/02 By JOHN LOFTUS STAFF WRITER [Ocean City, N.J. --]  There are plenty of jobs in Bulgaria. But Ana Ivanova says the money isn't good. So for the second summer in a row, she has come to Ocean City, N.J., to work for the kind of pay college kids earn in an American resort town. That would be about four times, maybe more, she said, than she could get back in her hometown, Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Trouble is, as of late June, she had not found a...