I Love You Long Beach Island

"...because I think it is important to say what you love in this life...
especially if what you love is vulnerable.
And Long Beach Island is that.
It’s just a beautiful accident of tide and
currents, a moment of grace amid storm." — from the book

When Superstorm Sandy devastated Long Beach Island, residents and businesses handled the crisis each in their own way, but nearly everyone came together to support each other, emotionally and physically, and an extraordinary community bond was formed.


For most, a realization took place. It was an awakening. It was both individual and collective. We discovered, or re-discovered, how much we love this place, its people, its familiar rituals, and how important it is in our lives.


Sandy Gingras, the prolific author and owner of the “How To Live” gift shops in Beach Haven, felt and thought all of this and her immediate instinct was to write. She distilled those powerful, raw emotions into a prose-poem-letter and called it "A Love Song for Long Beach Island." It celebrated shared qualities of the Island that are deeply-felt.


She had ridden out the storm in Holgate and Beach Haven, and was then displaced for weeks. When allowed back on the island, she painted her words on a big piece of plywood. She propped it up in the window of her Beach Haven store, a flooded mess, and went about the hard work of cleaning, repairing, and and re-opening.


People stood in front of that store window, reading, sometimes crying, sometimes taking pictures of the “love song.” It struck a chord, true and soulful, and resonated with Long Beach Islanders.


This illustrated gift book, I Love You Long Beach Island, was derived from that simple spontaneously-painted plywood board, and the book breathes more life into these words. Like all of her gift books, it is sweet and touching and filled with charming watercolors and also spiritual and prayerful. It begins, “My old friend…”