Politics & Government

U.S. Lifesaving Station 30 Prepares to Launch Its Own Rescue

A nonprofit organization is ready to raise money to create a living museum at a historic U.S. Life Saving Service station, saved from demolition last year when Ocean City paid $986,000 to purchase it.

A local group is hoping to put on a show on the beach this summer for visiting families.

The spectacle would involve an ocean rescue but not the Ocean City Beach Patrol. Instead, spectators could see a small cannon shoot a line to a cross-tree meant to simulate the rigging of a foundering ship. A breeches buoy would then be rigged to ferry mock sailors to safety over sand or water.

Such a procedure was standard for U.S. Life Saving Station 30 when it operated in Ocean City from 1885 to 1915. And the members of a newly formed nonprofit corporation hope to re-enact it for visitors unfamiliar with the history of the U.S. Life Saving Service, a precursor to the modern Coast Guard.

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Representatives of the group on Thursday reported to City Council on their progress in developing a living history museum at a surviving Life Saving Station at the intersection of Fourth Street and Atlantic Avenue.

The update was requested by the city, which last year completed a rescue of its own—bonding for nearly $1 million to purchase the property and end a decade-long battle to save the station from demolition.

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Ocean City voters had rejected a proposed $3 million purchase of the property at a referendum in 2005, and members of the Save Our Station Coalition have promised to pay the full cost of developing the museum now that the city's purchase is complete.

Local attorney Jeff Sutherland reported to council on Thursday that U.S. Lifesaving Station 30 is now an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Life Saving Station 30 board member Mark Reimet said the new nonprofit is positioned to begin fundraising in earnest but has been frustrated by the temporary suspension of Green Acres and Historic Preservation Trust grants by the administration of Gov. Chris Christie. 

Those grants could help pay for $750,000 worth of work needed to repair the historic building: a new roof, foundation work, windows and a porch repair—projects complicated by requirements for work on a historic place.

Funding for repairs to the Lifesaving Station is included in a long-term capital improvement plan approved by City Council on Thursday. About $300,000 would be appropriated with bonding scheduled for a council vote later this year. Another $450,000 would be designated in 2012.

The nonprofit organization will repay the city for any money it receives for repairs to the building.

City Business Administrator Mike Dattilo said the city has invested enough already in the historic building that it wants to see the effort to create a museum succeed.

Though the station sits two long blocks and a quarter-mile from the beach, it has never moved. In its day, the station was on the beach. The same storms in the early 1900s that eroded 10 blocks of Longport deposited sand on the north end of Ocean City, according to John Loeper, chairman of U.S. Life Saving Station 30.

Loeper described an era when stations up and down the U.S. coast were positioned not only to rescue ships and sailors in distress but to serve as places of shelter and medical clinics on shorelines that were often sparsely inhabited and remote.

The station he hopes to restore as a museum was built in 1885, expanded in 1905 and staffed with men whose motto was, "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back."

Of 480 stations throughout the country, only 25 survive today, Loeper said.

The station was equipped with both surf boats and the Lyle Guns used to fire rescue lines over the surf and onto ships foundering offshore. It was also equipped with beach carts to carry rescue equipment, and it's a restored beach cart that Loeper hopes will be a part of spring events in Ocean City, a sign to the public that the museum is in the works.

Other fundraising opportunities, according to Loeper, include a flagraising and luncheon at the station, summertime demonstrations such as rescue drills and participation in the fall Lighthouse Challenge, an event in which visitors stop at lighthouses and maritime destinations on the New Jersey coast on the same weekend.

The ultimate goal is to have a complete maritime museum become a tourist destination in Ocean City.

The public can help the station raise money by purchasing U.S. Lifesaving Station 30 memberships that range from $25 to $250. For more information, call Loeper at 609-398-5553 or visit: uslifesavingstation30.org


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