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Archive for the ‘Ocean Grove profile’ Category

Ocean Grove Profiles. Roy Pontier: Puppy Raiser for the Blind

Posted in Ocean Grove profile, tagged , on August 16, 2012| 3 Comments »

Roy Pontier (L) and Valor (R) at the Blogfinger headquarters. PG photo

By Eileen and Paul Goldfinger

The Seeing Eye is an organization, based in Morristown, New Jersey, which provides guide dogs for the blind. When we lived in Morris County, we often went to Morristown where we would see trainers walking with their dogs, getting them ready to be turned over to a blind person. It never ceased to be fascinating to watch — the dogs would stop at the curb and check out the traffic before moving ahead. They always seemed so focused and dedicated to the task.

Roy Pontier, 66, has lived in Ocean Grove for 35 years in a house that has been family owned for generations. He lives by himself but he often has a guest. Roy is a puppy raiser for The Seeing Eye. Currently Roy’s houseguest is Valor, a one-year-old German Shepherd, which Roy has had since Valor was 7 weeks old. Valor was bred at the organization’s modern facility in Chester, New Jersey. There they breed Labs, Golden Retrievers, Golden Lab mix and Shepherds. They are bred for intelligence, temperament and size. They tend to be smaller than other dogs of their breed.

Valor at approx. 6 weeks. Photo courtesy of Roy Pontier. Left click left for full image. Then back arrow.

Here is Valor when he was about 6 weeks old. Valor will stay with Roy until October, when he will be returned to the organization, where he will spend a month undergoing a thorough examination including X-Rays. Then he will work with a trainer for 4 months.

After that, if he is one of the 80 percent that are “eligible,” he will move into a Seeing Eye owned apartment with a blind “student.” Valor will be with his prospective owner 24/7 for one month. Then, if all goes well, the new couple will leave for the owner’s home, which could be anywhere in America or Canada. The blind owner pays only $150.00.

Roy and Valor walk 4 miles each day through Ocean Grove. Roy tells us that they have made many friends along the way. Roy trains Valor to understand basic commands such as “come,” “stay,” “forward” and “down.” Roy also concerns himself with house training, and, especially important, with socialization. Roy has gone on field trips with Valor and the Monmouth County Puppy Raisers Club. They take train rides and visit Blue Claws baseball games and the Monmouth Mall. They go to the airport and enter planes, where pilots start the engines for them. Roy has to worry about Valor’s weight. He is told what kind of food to give, and he is reimbursed by the organization for food and vet bills. Valor never eats human food.

The two of them visited us on our porch. Valor was so gentle and well behaved while we interviewed Roy, that we wanted to hug him and keep him. He carefully observed a fly on the ground, but he didn’t bark or react suddenly. Roy says that one command which he may not teach is “heal.” The dog needs to be the leader — the person follows the dog.

Valor is Roy’s 3rd puppy in 5 years. The organization requires that Roy wait for six months or more before offering him another house guest. During that wait, Roy gets to babysit other puppies as needed, and, if Valor doesn’t work out as a guide dog, Roy gets the first chance to adopt him. Roy acknowledges that giving Valor up will be painful, but he is “mentally prepared” to deal with that.

Seeing Eye is a privately funded organization. If you are interested in donating or participating, go to Seeing eye web site link

SOUNDTRACK: Carol King:

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An Ocean Grove Profile: Breaking the Gender Barrier in Little League Baseball

Posted in Feature article, Ocean Grove profile, tagged , on August 15, 2011| 2 Comments »

Janine Cinseruli in her previous life as a child All-Star. The photo is from her scrapbook.

By Yvette Blackman, Blogfinger Contributing Writer

Yellowed newspaper clippings and photographs fall from their plastic sleeves in the tattered scrapbook. They tell of a little girl of indomitable will, who challenged an institution for the right to play baseball with the boys in her tiny Massachusetts town.

Today, Janine Cinseruli is an accomplished businesswoman, the chef and co-owner of SeaGrass, the Ocean Grove restaurant that used to be Captain Jack’s. Cinseruli and her longtime business partner, Kim Perkins, ran Captain Jack’s for three years with co-owner Jack Green’s blessing, before making it their own in 2008. Business has grown consistently each summer, buoyed last month by a glowing review in The New York Times.

Chef Janine today in the dining room of the SeaGrass Restaurant in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. Photo by Paul Goldfinger

But this story is not about Cinseruli’s food. It is about a 10-year-old sports phenom from Peabody (locals say “PEAbiddy”) who picked a fight with the recalcitrant men of  Little League Baseball Inc. and forced them to revise their rules.

“You know, when I was 10 it didn’t seem like that. … It was all completely innocent,” Cinseruli said during a busy afternoon at SeaGrass. “I was this little tomboy in the neighborhood. Someone said let’s all go sign up for Little League … and when I got there the man said you can’t play. I said, ‘Why not?’ And he said, ‘Because you’re a girl.’ ”

It was March 23, 1974, a time when women’s sports were considered of far lesser value, despite passage in 1972 of a federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in education programs or activities that receive federal funding. Two years after the passage of Title IX, as the law is commonly known, girls across America were challenging the status quo.

With her family’s support, Janine filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. It alleged that the Little League’s “no girls” rule violated her civil rights and the state’s public accommodations statute.

Peabody Little League had barred about 18 girls from tryouts for teams in the city’s three divisions, claiming that unless it did so the league’s national headquarters in Williamsport, Pa., would lift its charter. Some people suggested that girls could lose a tooth or develop breast cancer from being hit by a ball. Angry letters to Janine’s mother accused her of taking “women’s lib too far.”

Criticism aside, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Samuel Adams issued a temporary restraining order that postponed tryouts that spring. Little League baseball in Massachusetts stopped while the case was argued. League tryouts also stopped in New Jersey while a similar case went before this state’s Supreme Court.

Peabody Little League caved first. With approval from national, it allowed girls’ tryouts that May. A month later, Janine might have hated the blue gaucho pants, white shirt and clogs her mother made her wear to court more than having to sit through the 10-hour hearing. But Judge Adams ruled in her favor. And on June 12, 1974, the Board of Directors of Little League Baseball Inc. gave in to the “changing social climate.” Girls could play ball with the boys.

Janine Cinseruli, the middle of five children born to Vincent and Marion Cinseruli, had broken through the barrier. The mostly black-and-white newspaper images in her time-worn scrapbook show a little girl with long, straight black hair and dancing eyes, smiling at the camera.

She followed up her court victory by silencing her critics. “Janine Strikes Out 16,” the headline in the Peabody Times read after her first start, and win, for the minor league Braves. Her prowess at shortstop, batting and pitching vaulted her to team captain. She would become the first girl to participate in All-Star competition in the Little League majors.

“She really wanted to play baseball. She had a couple brothers who played baseball and she knew she was better than they were,” said Ruth Budd, one of the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union attorneys who handled the case pro bono. “She knew what she wanted and went after it.”

Budd, now retired, said the case “absolutely” had an impact on women’s sports in Massachusetts.

“I can tell you that my daughter went out for Little League a few years later,” she said, speaking by phone from her vacation home in Maine. Budd remembers rushing from downtown Boston, some years after the Cinseruli ruling, to watch her daughter, Rachel, standing in the outfield, one of only two girls on her Little League team.

“She was a good athlete but nothing like Janine. And I’m sitting there on those cold benches,” Budd recalled with a chuckle, “thinking, ‘What have I done here? But for this case, I wouldn’t be sitting here on this cold bench.’ ”

At SeaGrass, few knew of the chef’s celebrated history. She herself seemed surprised that Blogfinger knew. But she is proud of her accomplishments.

Long before her bartending days with Perkins in Provincetown, Mass., and their years flipping houses in Miami, she was little Janine Cinseruli, All-Star hitter, pitcher and fielder. Recalling that time got her wondering how she might have impacted women’s boxing, which makes its Olympic debut next summer. If only she were born a little later.

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