Miss Sea Isle Misses Sea Isle

1972 Was When Everything Changed for Karen Zurcher Martino

Karen Zurcher Martino, when she was crowned Queen of the Baby Parade in 1972.

A recent photo of Karen Zurcher Martino at the beach.

Lucky seven. Those magical years. From the time she was 10 years old, until her 17th year, Karen Zurcher Martino led a charmed, carefree existence.

“There were good times,” says Martino. “And there were sad times. But Sea Isle always feels like home. It’s where I feel I grew up. Even if it wasn’t for very long.”

July 1972. It’s the turning point in Martino’s Sea Isle City memories. That’s when she competed in the annual Miss Sea Isle City contest. If crowned, the title came with the dual role of serving as Queen of the Baby Parade.

“I was nervous. Just like any kid. It wasn’t something I’d planned. Someone dared me,” recalls Martino, who took the challenge and won.

She borrowed the gown, navy blue with a sailor collar, from Debbie Tustin, her co-worker at Laricks Real Estate that summer. The competition was at the bandshell.

“We walked around the stage. There was no bathing suit competition. And then we had to answer questions. I remember looking out and seeing my mom in the Promenade area,” says Martino. “I felt proud in front of my parents.”

Her mother, Marie, had just gotten out of the hospital, and she wasn’t well. But their father, Harold, didn’t tell her, or her brother Steven, just how sick their mother was. Eight months later, Marie Zurcher died of cancer. Martino remembers that her father was bereft.

Her parents each left in their will that they wanted their ashes to be scattered in the ocean by Townsends Inlet Bridge. It was early spring, 1973. Friend Wayne MacMurray rented a little boat, and took Karen, her brother, and their father out to the inlet. “I remember we each said something about my mom before we scattered the ashes. It was very windy.”

Two months later, her father died of a heart attack.

Karen with her court (from left): Nancy Young, Joanne Patricia Kemp, Mary E. Cipressi, Karen, and first runner-up Sallee Ann Willis

Once again, MacMurray got the boat and took them back to the inlet, this time to scatter their father’s ashes. “At that point, I think I was numb,” Martino says. “Your world is upside down and you don’t know what’s happening. It was not a good time.”

Martino never returned for another summer in Sea Isle. But those formative years at the family home on 39th Street will forever hold a special place in her heart.

The Zurchers were a close-knit family. They did everything together. Martino remembers that she and her mother and brother enjoyed all of their days at the shore during the summer, while her father, a senior special technical analyst at Philadelphia Electric, would commute from the family’s Camden County home in Stratford.

During the winter months, the Zurchers spent weekends at the shore. Harold Zurcher was smart, a member of Mensa. And he knew how to fix everything. It was something that came in handy since there were plenty of projects to do at the house.

That work ethic passed down to young Karen, who always had a job.

Participants of the 56th annual Miss Sea Isle City competition in 1972.

“Even from a young age, I used to work down by the docks,” Martino says. “A bunch of us used to go down in the afternoons. The party boats were coming in. And people would have their barrels of fish. We’d clean them and get a few cents a fish. We all had our own tools.”

She would also babysit Bunny Zurawski’s daughter. Zurawski owned The Bunny Shop next to Laricks, and Martino did some modeling there.

Then there was all the fun hanging out with John Conti and Sue Emmanuele, and her first friend from Sea Isle, Valerie Green, whose family bought the house next door to the Martino’s, near the water tower between Central and Landis.

Martino says she’d go out in the morning, and not come home until dark. Freedom. It described her life as a kid in Sea Isle.

“As you passed by the Braca Theatre and walked up the ramp to the boardwalk, there was a brick wall. And that’s where the Donut Bar was,” she recalls. “A lot of us would sit on the wall and watch people dance. They had a big jukebox out front. When the right song came on, we got up and did our line dances.”

At Vince’s Restaurant, friends would hang out, ordering cherry Cokes and french fries.

“There was a pool hall next to Vince’s,” she says, “They had tons of pinball machines. The door was always open. There was an old guy. He sat out front all day and he made change if you needed it. At night older guys played pool, but during the day it was us kids.”

When she first came to Sea Isle, it was in the aftermath of the 1962 nor’easter. She says the beach was mostly dunes. There was a big, old house on Pleasure Avenue. Martino remembers that all the houses in front of it had been lost to the storm. She recalls when the Spinnaker and the Promenade were built. A fun activity was to find conch shells by the jetties. “We were always out there exploring,” she says.

“My friend Wayne’s parents owned a marina on the canal to the right of the bridge,” she adds. “And the Lewises owned a marina on the other side. My parents docked their boat at MacMurray’s. I was always at my friend Betsy Lewis’s house, and she lived at her parents’ marina. We were like 12 or 13 and we would challenge ourselves to swim across the canal.”

But for the teenaged Karen and Steven, their father’s death meant the end of an era.

She and her brother would live at their family home in Stratford. There, they were left to their own devices. While attending high school, Karen worked two jobs and did the cooking. Her mother’s best friend also chipped in.

She says a guardian was appointed to her and her brother, and that individual was also the executor of her parents’ estate. The house was sold in the mid-’70s.

Five years ago, Martino and her cousin paid a visit to Sea Isle. They drove from Townsends Inlet to JFK Boulevard and into Strathmere. They also spent time on the 18th Street beach, where her father used to swim and her mother collected shells. Martino recalls the day was cold, and it started to rain.

“You get sentimental, melancholy about times gone by,” she says. “It’s amazing to see all of the changes that took place, to see how different from when I remembered it.”

For the last 40 years, Martino has lived in Charlestown, R.I., a beach resort town that reminds her of old Sea Isle. Her two adult children live in Pennsylvania. The photo of Karen Zurcher being crowned Miss Sea Isle hangs in her daughter’s house.

“It was just a moment in time,” says Martino. “It was one of the fun things that I did in my teenage years.

“We grew up to be independent. My parents were awesome. They gave me all the tools I needed. Had I not had the confidence, I don’t know what would have happened.”