Events

New Jersey's Lost Piney Culture

Deep within the heart of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, the Piney people have built a vibrant culture and industry from working the natural landscape around them. Foraging skills learned from the local Lenapes were passed down through generations of Piney families who gathered many of the same wild floral products that became staples of the Philadelphia and New York dried flower markets. Important figures such as John Richardson have sought to lift the Pineys from rural poverty by recording and marketing their craftsmanship. As the state government sought to preserve the Pine Barrens and develop the region, Piney culture was frequently threatened and stigmatized. Author and advocate William J. Lewis charts the history of the Pineys, what being a Piney means today and their legacy among the beauty of the Pine Barrens.

William J. Lewis is a lifetime resident of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, as were multiple generations of his family before him. He shares his Piney adventures on social media networks under “Piney Tribe”. He preaches exploration without exploitation and to teach our children to be tomorrow’s environmental stewards. After proudly serving as a U.S. Marine, William went on to graduate from Rider University. He founded an environmental nonprofit to get kids outdoors and has served in leadership roles for both governmental and New Jersey nonprofit organizations. His travel mileage stretches across the globe from many locations in the United States to the Horn of Africa, which has helped in enriching his perspective of our New Jersey Pine Barrens.

To register for this free program, send your name, zip code, email address, and the date of the program to oceancountyhistory.zoom@gmail.com.

Hello Girls Get the Message Through

Join Monmouth University Professor and former US Army Fort Monmouth Command Historian Melissa Ziobro for a talk on how the US Army Signal Corps employed women as telephone switchboard operators during WWI. The “Hello Girls” worked long hours to ensure battlefield communications. Their Chief Operator, Grace Banker, hailed from NJ. After the war, the women fought for veteran status, and they are being considered for a Congressional Gold Medal today.

Melissa Ziobro is the Specialist Professor of Public History in the Monmouth University Department of History and Anthropology and the primary point of contact for the University’s public history minor. She is the current President of Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region, and has served for many years as the editor for New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, a joint venture of the NJ Historical Commission, Rutgers University Libraries, and Monmouth University. She is a trustee of the NJ Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Foundation, the Ocean County Historical Society, the Monmouth County Historical Association, the InfoAge Science and History Museums at the Camp Evans National Historic Landmark, and Preservation NJ, and works regularly with other public history organizations throughout the state.

To register for this free program, send your name, zip code, email address, and the date of the program to oceancountyhistory.zoom@gmail.com.

Project Paperclips Brings German Scientists to New Jersey

Join us on April 16th at 2:00 PM as Fred Carl presents “Project Paperclips Brings German Scientists to NJ.” In the fall of 1944, the United States and its allies launched a secret mission code-named Operation Paperclip. The aim was to find and preserve German weapons, including biological and chemical agents, but American scientific intelligence officers quickly realized the weapons themselves were not enough. They decided the United States needed to bring German scientists themselves to the U.S. Thus began a mission to recruit top German doctors, physicists and chemists — including the famous Wernher von Braun, who went on to design the rockets that took man to the moon. Few know that some of these scientific personnel made their way right here to NJ.

See more at: https://www.npr.org/2014/02/15/275877755/the-secret-operation-to-bring-Nazi-scientists-to-America.

Fred Carl received his B.S. in Science Education and his M.S. in Computer Science from Monmouth University. He also has Teaching Certificates in Comprehensive Science and Computer Science. Carl began the effort to save Camp Evans in Wall Township by transforming it into a Science Education Center in March of 1993 when its closing under the U.S. Army’s 1993 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) was announced. Reaching out to organizations with technology education and historic preservation programs, he built a consortium dedicated to preserving Camp Evans as a Science Center. In 1998 the group incorporated as a not-for-profit named the Information Age Learning Center. Fred then nominated and successfully defended an application to create a 37-acre Camp Evans Historic District and have it added the National Register of Historic Places. Once on the Register, a complex application to the Historic Surplus Property Program was prepared. Once approved by the National Park Service, it paved the way for the transfer of the historic district to Wall Township for the preservation of the site and the creation of the Info Age Science History Center. Under his leadership and with the support of Wall Township and Monmouth County, Info Age has replaced roofs and installed heating and air conditioning to many of the buildings. In 2012, the site was declared a National Historic Landmark.

To register for this free program, send your name, zip code, email address, and the date of the program, (April 16, 2023) to oceancountyhistory.zoom@gmail.com