Photo courtesy of Getty Images
For Gina Holden, the Jersey Shore’s salty air and summertime sunshine plays a vital part in her family’s story. From her mother’s youth spent selling fudge in Wildwood to her own childhood summers in Ocean City to bringing her daughters to their maternal grandparents’ Brigantine home almost every weekend once the summer season begins in earnest, seaside gatherings have been a family tradition that generations have joyfully passed down like a cherished heirloom.
“It was my mother’s lifelong dream to one day have the Shore house, so it did all stem from her,” the longtime Evesham Township resident said. “I’ve been taking my girls to the beach literally since they were babies in the Pack ’n Play. I grew up going to the beach and renting a house in Ocean City for a week every summer. We all lived for that week — it was the best week of the year. After all of us kids graduated college, my mom got her own Shore house for the whole family, like she always wanted.”
From her childhood in Eastern Pennsylvania to her young-adult years spent in Philadelphia to starting her own family in the South Jersey region her husband has always called home, her grandmother’s and parents’ Ocean City Shore house has been a comforting constant and familiar getaway that Jacqui Kinney doesn’t hesitate to describe as “her happy place.”
“When you’re home, you follow your schedule: Go to school, go to work, do it all again the next day,” she said. “It’s just different down the Shore, even when my grandmom and my parents were living at the Shore house full-time, even when we went in the winter and it was a ghost town. It was still nice because we got to be there with my grandmom and walk up and down the boardwalk when nobody else was there.”
Both Kinney and Holden agree that the Shore has given their families, both the ones they grew up in and the ones they’ve made for themselves, a strengthened bond that unites generations — one that Holden says she’s even starting to see reflected in her eldest daughter’s creative writing pieces about her own love of the Shore.
“It’s given me a chance to see my parents with my girls and realize that they are such special people and amazing parents who really bend over backward for their kids and our kids,” Holden explained. “Getting to spend so much time with their grandkids gives them something to look forward to, whether we’re going to dinner or my dad’s building sandcastles with my kids like he did with me. I feel like we’ve come full circle, now that they’re doing the same things with my girls that they did with me every single summer since I was born.”
Photo courtesy of Getty Images
The Garden State’s 130 miles of shoreline isn’t the only body of water with an unignorable call beckoning generation after generation to fall in love with a locational constant that’s almost a family member in its own right. For Lawrenceville native Joe Cermele, his most significant childhood milestones were measured in both the watering holes and fishing gear that got bigger as he grew older, a passion he ultimately turned into a career.
Few fishing traditions match the first day of trout season, always a second Saturday in April that arrived with Christmas-morning fanfare heralding those annual excursions to Jersey’s freshwater lakes, rivers and streams he made with his father just as the elder Cermele had done with his own father in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
And after losing his father just days after last year’s trout season kicked off, this year’s opening day was the first of many he plans to share with his own son.
“I lost my dad April 15 — that’s prime trout season, so a week later I was standing at that spot on Stony Brook (a Millstone River tributary in Mercer County) where he would take me and my kids to catch trout, and I just about lost it,” Cermele said. “So, I’ve taken my son trout fishing before, but this was the first year I took him on opening day to really restart that tradition. He’s been asking about it since he caught his first trout.”
Photo courtesy of Getty Images
That’s when the magic of seeing a familiar favorite through the eyes of a child can restore the awestruck wonder that routine sometimes dampens, while also demonstrably underscoring how a passed-down tradition can be a transformative experience for a parent.
“Because of my job, I was blessed to have the opportunity to see really amazing wild-trout water all over this country, and it spoils you,” Cermele explained. “It’s very hard to get excited about going to Stony Brook in Mercer County again — it’s not that I ever looked down on that, it’s just that the bar is higher. But now my son is just a nut about it, and seeing Stony Brook through his eyes, I’m having so much fun again and looking forward to it as much as he does. I put myself in my dad’s shoes and realized he was probably over it all those years ago, but with your kid there, it’s the most magical thing ever.”
And seeing places they love through their children’s eyes is almost as delightful as seeing their parents’ rules relax as they embrace their roles as doting grandparents.
“They didn’t spoil us like they do their grandchildren!” Kinney said with a laugh. “My brother and I talk about this all time time, how our kids are growing up with this place that we did. It’s such an indescribable happiness, and I have to rein myself in a little bit sometimes and remind myself that this is (my son’s) experience, not mine.”
It’s also proof that Mom and Dad still have a thing or two left to teach the younger generations about finding happiness in the occasional splurges.
“When we were growing up, my mom never bought junk food,” Holden recalled. “Now at the Shore house, they spoil the kids, they have the fridge stocked with popsicles and ice cream and cookies and whatever the kids want. But you’re at the Shore, and sometimes it’s OK to just go for it if you want a popsicle with dinner.”
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of Jersey’s Best. Subscribe here for in-depth access to everything that makes the Garden State great.
