Ocean Grove, NJ. Fletcher Lake, photo by Paul Goldfinger Posted on November 1, 2012. Click all photos to enlarge
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.net. Update 2025
The huge storm of October 29, 2012 has been such an iconic event for the Jersey Shore that photographs of Superstorm Sandy in Ocean Grove and its aftermath will become a genre of its own, as occurred with Bob Bowné’s now famous image of the surf thundering into shore, demolishing the OG Fishing Pier.
Here is a BF link regarding Bob’s remarkable photo: Bob Bowné iconic Sandy photo Oct. 29, 2012.
You can use our search box (top right) to see some of our Sandy photographs and posts of OG which have been published on Blogfinger.
We were lucky that we did not have devastating destruction, but we did have some. The Great Auditorium roof was seriously damaged. And the boardwalk was also partly ruined.
Sandy was a turning point for our town—a momentous event.
The storm showed us our physical vulnerability. Luckily, we were not hit as hard as other places at the Shore.
Sandy revealed the potential of OG to come together as a community and it showed how much this town means to people all over the world. As some of you may recall, the day after Sandy hit, Blogfinger.com received 25,000 hits from everywhere. Ocean Grove is a very special place with many interested in its fate.
Volunteers from all over, up to New England, arrived and went to work. The Camp Meeting set up facilities for them, and in the Community Room they offered Wi-Fi access and information about assistance for victims. The Red Cross came to help.
Ordinary citizens drove into town and found ways to help at the beach front.
Neptune Township failed to help at the damaged Ocean Avenue-boardwalk-beach zone. They did not show over a technicality, ie that they have no jurisdiction over those privately owned locations.
Other towns along the Jersey Shore have also been changing since Sandy, but this town, with its definition as a historic residential community, should have grabbed that momentum and run with it. But no, as we see with the North End situation, we are still failing to define ourselves as a special and unified small town with everyone caring about the Grove’s future. Factions continue to divide us.
And now, on October 12, 2025, as a Nor’easter begins to roll in, we are reminded of how we felt that October day in 2012 as Sandy made landfall here.
STUART MATTHEWMAN. From the original movie soundtrack of the film Twin Falls, Idaho–“Amapola”
