Over the years I have written articles in the SandPaper that mention how my maternal Italian grandparents, Virginia Gargani and Giuseppe De Sanctis, came to this country, marriedand eventually found their way by train to Long Beach Island. There they saw an opportunity to buy two plots ofcheap land side by side in the humble town of Beach Haven. This was years before my parents, Mary and Nick Cipollini, were married in 1939 and my twin brother, Danny, and I were born in 1940. So I am guessing thatit must have been during the Great Depression when almost everything was undervalued.
My grandparents, who were skilled custom shoemakers, always found work even then, so they had capital to invest.
Subscribe to keep reading
This story is from our archive. Get your SandPaper Annual Pass for access to our digital archive, plus everything else a pass includes. Details below.
Annual Pass — $18 Details
365-day access to:
- The complete SandPaper digital archive (stories date back to 2012).
- Full photo galleries from our photographers.
- The entire catalog of SandPaper games, puzzles and quizzes.
How it works
- Enter your email below and click to pay the one-time $18. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure page.
- You’re in straight away — no password to create, and nothing to set up or manage.
- You stay signed in. If you’re ever signed out, or you read on a new phone or computer, we’ll email you a code to get you back in.
- Never auto-renews. Your pass is good for one year. We will email you when it expires so you can renew if you’d like.
See our site policies for more information.
Already a subscriber? We’ll email a code to get you back in.
