Darren Arms: The Fan For All Seasons

Residents of all ages were in shock and utter disbelief on Sunday because one of the biggest beating hearts in our community stopped too soon. A drive down Bridge Avenue will never be the same for some because a little part of a lot of people who loved Darren Arms died with him this week. I know because it happened to me. There are no words to describe this moment or mood in our town, so allow me to describe this amazing friend to Pt. Pleasant. 50-year old Darren Arms showed us by example what the definition of a real "FAN" is. This husband, father, brother, son, friend, successful local businessman, fan of local kids and "his" New York Giants would say, "Your day, week & year can only get better if you make it your business to be a fan of someone or something! Who are we celebrating today?!" Darren didn't just say it; he lived this tenet by simply being himself. The "Darren Stories" getting shared block-by-block right now are fantastic and humbling! One memory seems more remarkable than the next including the Jan 14th post on the Pt. Pleasant Patch that mentions the quiet generosity Darren showed residents in Sunshine Harbor when he arrived with a truck full of cooked food during Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts. Yes - this one singular example does a great job describing the Darren so many of us knew for decades. Many thanks to the neighbor who shared it! Darren's gorgeous and gifted wife Lisa grew up east of the railroad tracks on Forman Avenue right up the street from where I lived during my teenage years in Pt. Beach. She would become my younger sister's best friend. It was Lisa who led me to Colonial Ranch Market 28 years ago! I'd show up with my own bowls and pans in hand in a hysterical attempt to fool my then-boyfriend Harry into thinking I was a really great cook! I couldn't cook or bake to save my life and so Darren & our families would scream with laughter over what happened next. He, his beautiful late mother Mary & wonderful dad Lenny filled my pans to the rim with the special of the day & everybody's favorite red potato salad. Before I left the store I'd pull out a sliced egg, parsley and some paprika so I could claim Darren's delicious creations as my own at my next destination. One day the gig was up! We were all at an Elk's event catered in part by Colonial Market and the secret was out - Darren Arms' potato salad tasted just like Aunt Tish Ferguson's! LOL - I was caught! Fortunately what I learned from this experience is that talented entrepreneurs who love to cater love customers who cannot cook so it was easy for me to become a loyal repeat customer of Colonial Ranch Market & Darren Arms for the rest of my life!! Darren affectionately dubbed me "Tish-the-Catered Dish"; the Arms children would adopt me as their honorary "Aunt" - and I'd dance through life with two titles to cherish. Oh and I'm happy to report Harry Ferguson married me AND Darren Arms' cooking in 1986 and we all lived happily ever after. That was until Sunday… For 28 years every single engagement, christening, anniversary, birthday, fundraiser, Irish Celebration on the Pt. Beach Boardwalk, house warming party, retirement celebration, motorized float party, Halloween salute, multi-state bus trip, & Idle Hour Giants Road trip was bolstered by Darren's positive energy and unforgettable feasts created & shared with perfection. Every effort represented the highest form of love of family, friends, sports & community which made every event more enjoyable. How do we plan another celebration or gathering without the big guy on Bridge Avenue who taught us how to leverage food to help people recover, see light in the middle of darkness, enhance their celebration and raise awareness to important causes? Darren grew up knowing that a focus on the stomach could leave any heart feeling full. Between 1995 and 1998 when my husband & I moved our family to Bayonne NJ to be closer to our jobs in New York City, Darren Arms packed up trays of his homemade Colonial Ranch specials and delivered them to us 50 miles away during the Christmas Holiday. This man took time from a business high season to make sure a homesick friend wouldn't feel too far removed from the wonders of Pt. Pleasant - that place we all called home no matter where our lives had taken us. With tears flowing freely this week, I can tell you that this one act-of-kindness was the most precious & thoughtful Christmas gift I ever received. I'll never forget it. Former Pt. Boro football players who are now grown men cried Sunday for Darren Arms and for his family and for a very good reason. They respected Darren because he worked to keep them motivated and inspired at every turn when they were kids. For more than two decades these student athletes started their Thanksgiving and Championship Game Weekends @ the business Darren and the Arms Family built. A barbeque celebrating excellence was on the menu every time! The definition of community spirit & caring lived inside this guy with the tough exterior, rip-roaring sense of humor, and heart of gold. Darren was a hard-driving community servant with a remarkable old-school work ethic who insisted on no headlines, no billing or recognition or credit or mention of his name as he stood quietly & firmly & consistently behind Pt. Pleasant Borough High School All-Sport Boosters, Black & Gold events, graduation awards ceremonies, homecoming parades, the Elk's, sports fundraisers in all forms... He was that man - the fan for all seasons with respect for people of all ages. You knew he loved his family, local kids, football, his community, country and life itself because those messages were etched in his glorious smile and hardy laugh; only to be outdone by the magnificent sparkle in his eyes! That's the man we knew behind our meat counter and the dear friend we're left to miss for the rest of our lives... If you were lucky enough to be part of his inner circle or simply someone who honored his life's work by becoming a regular customer at his store, I can tell you this - Darren Arms appreciated you! The ultra-quiet legacy of giving back was Darren's way of thanking all those individuals & local businesses that supported the dreams, goals and successes of his dad former Pt. Pleasant Mayor Lenny Arms, his incredible mother Mary and his entire family. Blessed are the parents who raise a son like Darren who grows up driven to honor his community in their name. No parent or community could ask for more. With respect & sympathy, TishTrek

Staten Island needs AMERICA'S Help! Where are YOU?

Okay - Please HELP THE TRI-STATE AREA!! Please.... As you'll see below, I always try to look at the postive... but there is nothing positive inside the suffering of people all around us who need America's help TODAY! I'm executing this post now because so many thousands of families in the Tri-State region are still in pain & suffering deeply due to the utter physical devastation they endured as a result of Superstorm Sandy that can't be improved with some magic wand. I'm so so sorry & upset that the main visual the nation witnessed for weeks on-end was THAT rollcoaster from Seaside's Boardwalk Playland. I have nothing against the roller coaster itself, but I traveled across the country right after the storm and I know - for a fact - that this specific pic (combined with THAT "City of Sin" impression bolstered by the visual that arrived with THAT MTV's show -Jersey Shore)absolutely turned people off across the nation. It literally translated like this in the minds of some: Big deal - New Jersey's Playland was damaged. Could it be that these visuals consistently distributed digitally around the world led to people thinking maybe NJ actually kind of got what she deserved? I can't possibly go there right now, but read on... What the media forgot to say after showing THAT roller coaster pic every single day for 60+ days is that in a five mile radius of THAT roller coaster & MTV's Jersey Shore Fake Insanity House, 80% of the homes & businesses of people like you & me were completely and utterly destroyed. People are still crying tonight. Please help the Jersey Shore Communities, and if not this area could everyone please find their way to the glorious southern tip of Staten Island where the LACK of TIMELY care, compassion, concern & real-time assistance is a disgraceful moment for the record books for this community that lost more than most in this nation. NOAA reported that it was 32.5 foot waves that hit Sandy Hook and went right over the top of that two-story MAST High School! 14+ foot waves hit Front & Water Street on the East River side of Downtown Manhattan! 10 thousand workers are displaced & thousands of residents are out of their homes in the Wall Street area until March, June, next year & beyond AND they didn't even get the DIRECT HIT State Island took AND NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT either place? Could it be that no one cares? Really? What the heck do any of us think happened to Staten Island? How come no one is paying attention or discussing it? My fellow Americans this event is NOT the equivalent of Twitter - I'm sorry America but Superstorm Sandy cannot be over after 140 characters. If you operate thinking like that, people will die. We know you moved on already, (perhaps because the details are too painful to focus on?) but please, please come back to us to help Staten Island; then find your way to America's Jersey Shore - thousands of people need YOU desperately! Wow - this is what I wrote the day before Thanksgiving: The Sunday before Hurricane Sandy arrived, we raced from THE Ohio State University to secure our Pt. Pleasant NJ home @ the Jersey Shore. After visiting our son Scott, a freshman @ OSU, we found ourselves literally escorted on the Pennsylvania Turnpike by a massive exercise of excellence & precision! We witnessed a remarkable caravan of utility bucket trucks and assorted vehicles driven by hard hats, line crews & support personnel - HEROES ALL - from First Energy's Ohio Edison, The Illuminating Company, Toledo Edison Utilities and other entities. In the name of business continuity & disaster recovery they were all headed east to position themselves before the storm to aid sister utility company Jersey Central Power & Light and the residents of my state. So YES - for 8 awesome hours I was humbled by and focused on the thousands of brave & skilled workers who had left their families in the Midwest to help families in harm's way. As we watched the Weather Channel for updates from Ohio to NJ we grew anxious; but honestly the courage & strength etched on the faces of these mobilized men comforted us. I live one mile from the ocean & Pt. Pleasant was in the dark for many hours before Sandy came ashore. When it actually hit landfall, the earth literally moved underneath us; our two-story home shook violently; windows rattled & squealed as hurricane-force winds raged & utility transformers exploded in the night. With emergency sirens in high gear, boats & trees crashed all around us. As we huddled quietly with candles in the center of our house, the girl who works in the cube next to you in the office (ME!) had no clue until morning that homes up the road had been violently ripped from their foundations & tossed into the Atlantic Ocean & Metedeconk River while others exploded in flames and burned to the ground. We live 60 miles south of New York City, but we felt one million miles away from everything that night. The day after, local emergency personnel, U.S. Coast Guardsmen in helicopters and local residents in boats & wet suits worked 12-hours straight plucking terrified residents from flooded homes delivering them to safety as a strong gaseous smell ruled our air. (there was a local Public Works HERO named Jude Walker who would retrieve fellow residents from the second story balconies of their flooded homes using a giant Front-Loader Tractor for 17 hours straight during & after the storm). Where were YOU? It felt dangerous & the landscape looked like a war zone with snapped telephone poles, hanging wires, battered cars, damaged homes and shattered 'stuff' washed up everywhere.... Like so many other places in NY and NJ, it was the hardest & saddest day in the history of my hometown. I didn't cry until I stood among the devastation hugging neighbors in utter shock who had almost drowned. Six feet of water was still engulfing homes in the neighborhoods to the east, west & south of us, but our home & entire block was somehow dry & safe. Thousands of fellow residents and a few of my family members were not so lucky. As was reported, there was no power, no heat, no stores or restaurants, no cash machines, no gas for generators or cars, no mass transit, no food to purchase - nothing. This went on for days which turned into weeks for some... This storm was bigger than every modern amenity we had ever known. High Tides, air pressure systems, winds, the eye, predictive analytics, full moon = perfect storm? Honestly, we're not focused on any topic except getting the lives of fellow citizens restored right now. We do know the NOAA Wave Buoys reported that 32.5 foot waves (32.5 feet!) had hit our shores contributing to 'that' tidal surge which destroyed a gorgeous landscape rich with memories that had embraced generations of our families. It was a historic & massive amount of water that left friends & strangers alike haunted by their own personal stories of 'swimming-for-survival' with children & pets in tow. Hard to imagine & difficult to hear? Yes. The details nightmares are made of? Yes. Having said all that, we are very thankful in My Little Town that there are ONLY stories of "survival" to tell. Some towns were not so lucky. Thanksgiving stands for so many blessing we are grateful for in 2012! As I celebrate all the brave men, women & volunteers who left the safety and comfort of their own homes to help fellow citizens see light after unimaginable darkness, allow me to salute all the Foundations for contributing so generously to the Red Cross during this difficult time. I offer my thanks to colleagues & friends who are contributing in so many personal, creative & special ways. Finally, we are thankful for everyone who is helping to keep us 'Jersey Strong!' 'Jersey Strong' is not a slogan or tag-line. It's a powerful mindset that inspires meaningful action! Restoring-the-Shore is mostly about providing support & strength to wonderful people who need help recovering from a life interrupted. Weeks & weeks after I wrote all of the above... Today - January 5th - I'm trying to find new ways to keep spirits high... But a talented & cherished family friend of 40 years who lost his home after he & his beautiful wife were rescued by the Coast Guard on the west-side of the Metedeconk was literally crushed by the trunk of a Sandy-damaged tree on Thanksgiving morning as he attempted to remove it by himself from his property where he had built his family home and art studio. This remarkable musician, teacher & coach of 33 years stepped into the hole created @ the root of a downed tree and it crushed him as he tried to cut roots during that morning-of-thanks as his wife, children and neighbors labored helplessly to try to save him. It was not to be so we could no longer say "everyone in our circle survived." I believe in Twitter, but I also believe you can't hide behind 140 characters to ignore the details of the reality around you. Please help the Tri-State Area. People are living in hell & this road is long from OVER. It will never be the same for those of us who grew up along these shore, but you can still help. ~ Any effort to Restore-these-Shores will be appreciated. In the meantime, God help all our fellow citizens who are suffering in confused silence & alone today. Thank you. With respect & gratitude, As TishTrek cries...