Knight at the Museum: Mike Stafford was Dedicated to Preserving Sea Isle’s Past
Mike Stafford with the Veterans Display at the Sea Isle City Historical Museum.
Michael F. Stafford’s family-tied affection for Sea Isle City ran so deep that he labored tirelessly to share it by preserving the town’s history. Stafford, who died in December 2019 at age 90, served as the president of the Sea Isle City Historical Museum for nearly 25 years.
The nonagenarian’s fondness for Sea Isle took root during his toddlerhood in the 1930s at the since-demolished Strand Apartments, 55th Street and the boardwalk.
Stafford’s maternal grandparents, John and Mary Cassidy, purchased the Strand – originally dubbed the “All Saint’s Seashore House” – in 1917, as Stafford details in his book, “Sea Isle City: Images of America.” The pair enlarged the building’s upper level and converted it into a 40-room complex with apartments, a community kitchen and a community dining room. Mary Cassidy kept the Strand Apartments going for the next 30 years. Stafford, a Philadelphia native, spent every summer there. He worked at the Strand and held other seasonal job positions, like SIC lifeguard and summer police officer, over the years.
Sea Isle City’s beloved historian evolved into that role after fully living a variety of others. Stafford served as a petty officer third class and aviation electronic technician aboard the USS Hornet as a member of the U.S. Navy from 1951-55. Back in Sea Isle shortly thereafter, Stafford met the love of his life, Marie Thompson.
“I never indicated this to Marie until much later, but I knew after our first date that she was the girl for me,” Stafford wrote in his autobiography, “I’d Do It All Again … but slower.”
“There was no question in my mind that we would marry if Marie would have me.”
The couple became Mr. and Mrs. Stafford in the summer of 1956.
After graduating from Villanova and Temple with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Stafford first worked as an elementary school teacher and later as a principal at Whitemarsh Elementary School in Pennsylvania’s Colonial School District. After he retired from teaching in 1980, Mike and Marie relocated and made Sea Isle City their home.
Ever the innovator, Stafford operated Mike Stafford General Contracting in Sea Isle from 1979 through the 1990s. In 1987, he founded Stafford’s High and Dry Storage in Clermont, which he and Marie ran for years. Their daughter Patricia Stafford and her husband Pete Stafford, along with their sons Mike and Ben, keep the family business running today.
“Dad taught me to always make the right choices, even when no one is looking…and always be kind,” Patricia says. “He was my mentor, protector, confidant and friend … Dad taught me that I could become anyone that I wished to be. His greatest gift to me was showing me how to be the best parent and grandparent I could be – by example.”
Mike and Marie’s other surviving family members include their daughter Christine Oxenberg, her husband Gary, grandchildren Alexandra Hamilton, Joseph Hamilton and Pam Nebel, as well as their three great-grandchildren.
This husband, dad, grandfather and great-grandfather also applied his considerable talents to generously serve the community. Over time, Stafford was president of the Sea Isle City Chamber of Commerce, commissioner of the Cape May County Park & Zoo and, perhaps his most treasured volunteer role, president of the Sea Isle City Historical Museum from 1990 through 2014.
Everyone connected with the museum, and daughter Patricia, make it clear that not just Stafford, but he and his wife Marie worked together to make Sea Isle’s museum remarkable.
“Mike and Marie were really dedicated, doing careful research with tender, loving care,” recalls former Sea Isle City mayor and museum president Mike McHale, now a museum trustee.
“Mike was a perfectionist,” McHale says. When the Sea Isle City Historical Museum was relocated from Landis Avenue to its more modern headquarters in the Sea Isle City Library building in 2011, “he had everything drawn to scale.”
“Mike and Marie laid the foundation. They did the heart and soul of creating the museum. We’re just adding to their work in carrying on the legacy of Sea Isle.”
Sea Isle City Historical Museum president Abby Powell credits Stafford with preparing her for the position: “Mike taught me organizing and recreating skills and how to design and set up new displays.” Even though Marie had died before she arrived at the museum, Powell knew of the Staffords’ shared accomplishments. Marie, with some assistance from Mike and Patricia, was the main force behind the creation of the museum’s bridal gown display, which features gowns worn by SIC brides dating back to 1880. Exhibits rotate. The popular bridal display will return after the summer season.
Her mentor was “a Renaissance man,” Powell says. “It should also be noted that the widespread local support that we enjoy at the Sea Isle City Historical Museum is because of Mike Stafford.”
“Mike was the guy who would figure out a way to make a difference and then do it,” Jack Cassidy says of his older “big bro cousin” who, along with Marie, “always made time for me.” Stafford was 18 years older than his cousin. So, Jack Cassidy never experienced summertime at the Strand Apartments, but he sure knew about it from Mike and other family members.
“The Strand was a legend to me,” Cassidy says. “Back then, Sea Isle City was heaven to working class Irish from Philadelphia. The Strand was their entryway. It was where they got their start.”
Cassidy recalls having cousins all over town when visiting as a child. So many of the people connected to the Strand and Cassidy “clan” became SIC residents.
Stafford’s entire life was connected to their family’s slice of heaven in Sea Isle, says his cousin. So it made sense that this thoughtful, generous man would share that piece of paradise with others by preserving and passing along Sea Isle City’s history, Cassidy muses.
On a personal level, Cassidy wonders if his cousin and Navy aviator might have influenced his own career path into the U.S. Navy as an aviator for 29 years. Stafford told Cassidy many a story from his younger days aboard the USS Hornet in the early 1950s. Thanks to a U.S. Naval scholarship, Cassidy also followed in Stafford’s footsteps by attending Villanova.
Decades later, Stafford asked Cassidy if he could take possession of the uniform that Cassidy wore on the day he retired from the Navy, and Cassidy obliged by providing his captain’s uniform and a dashing sword. One day during a later visit to Sea Isle by Cassidy, Stafford insisted that he join him briefly to stop by the museum, then on Landis Avenue. Much to Cassidy’s surprise, there stood a mannequin wearing his uniform and bearing his sword as part of a smart military exhibit.
Cassidy’s handsome uniform is now featured in the current exhibit “Home for the Holidays,” complete with Glenn Miller music, now on display at the Sea Isle Historical Museum in the Sea Isle Library building. His historian cousin’s fingerprints are all over it.
“Mike made a quiet contribution to Sea Isle City,” Cassidy says. “It was a labor of love.”
