Haunted Mansion of Long Branch: Emails

NAME/DATE	CONTENT
6/21/09 Joseph LoBello	Thank you so much for restoring some of my memories of my few years working at Kids World. Very emotional on how the June 8th Fire changed the direction for the rest of my life. I was 17, and days before the fire I had just painted the Romper Room in fun and crazy purple shapes and designs. I had worked at the Water Slide and on the Snake Slide next to the pool. Even saved a little boy in the pool while giving a lifeguard a break! While not working summers at the boardwalk, I had found out I had a unique passion for coaching, and working with kids. Parents, the community, and all those who knew me were telling me how much a difference I was making in those kids of all talent levels, motivating and inspiring everyone. By age 21, I was the recreation director, coaching 3 teams, and working in a after school program. On June 8th riding my bike home at 2:45, I saw the smoke and was one of the first ones there. Never did get many pictures but I do remember the fire was very small at first but those huge cement blocks prevented the fire trucks from getting close to the McDonald's near the fire. Well that day really did change my life, as a well known young coach in Monmouth Beach my neighbor knew I needed a summer job, and got me a job as teller at Monmouth Park. Back then that was a very prestigious job and I went from making $6 hour to $20 hour. What started as a negative I thought turned into a positive getting that job. But five years later gambling took a devastating effect on my life. I had been obsessed with trainers, jockeys, and world of horse racing. My focus changed from college, coaching, and now started chasing the horses, lost bets. My car was repossessed, credit ruined, dreams of coaching and working with the kids was gone. Today I am 10 years clean and have not been back to Monmouth Park since I left in 1995, and have turned everything around. If it had not been for that fire, I probably would have been a legendary coach and teacher. In a weird way, I am going back to where the water slide was in starting a company to handle all the local transportation at the hotels and events in the Long Branch and local shore area. I am incorporating my dream and the history of the boardwalk into my marketing and name of my company. I am looking for some old and current photos of the Long Branch beachfront to use in a brochure. After 20 years of sometimes searching for photos from the fire and before, while looking on the web for some Long Branch beach photos, I stumbled upon your website!!!
6/15/09	I love reading people's memories of the Haunted Mansion because I also used to hang around on the boardwalk and Haunted Mansion with my best homegirl pinky and lots of my friends. I love and miss those days. As a child my family used to live on South Broadway right across the street from the boardwalk and beach. How I loved to go outside and smell the ocean and hear the Haunted Mansion's music. I loved the Puerto Rican festival and the fireworks every Friday. I loved the food on the boardwalk! It's been a real long time since I lived there and I have never forgotten even though I'm married with children. I've told my children all about Long Branch and the happiest times of my life. It just doesn't seem fair that it's all gone and that the future generations can't ever enjoy the fun.
2/18/09 Tony Serra	In 1987 I did my first stage show called Once Upon A Mattress, and as if by luck, one of the leads in the show was a long time employee at the Haunted Mansion; a very talented young guy named Carlo Durland. Well, as a cast of a show rehearses, you become sort of like a family, so Carlo invited us to all go to the Haunted Mansion because he was adding in a new character attraction, an evil wizard that wore a turban and had a huge crystal ball; plus his make up was unbelievable! Very scary! Well, we all went and had a blast. Carlo was incredible! I was so excited to finally be inside the Mansion because I had seen the commercials on TV from when I was a kid. About a week later the mansion burned down. It was very sad for so many people, especially the employees. So, to this very day I owe Carlo my thanks for the awesome experience I had visiting The Haunted Mansion at Long Branch. Cut to the year 2003, I meet an amazing woman full of life named Kim Demeter. We became good friends and one day I was telling her how much I loved Sci-Fi and Horror, and she looked at me as if she was about to give me the greatest gift in the world and said "I used to work at the Haunted Mansion at Long Branch!" Well, as you can imagine I flooded her with questions about it and told her my story of when I went. She told me she was there in the 70's a long time back, and was going to give me a picture of herself in Haunted Mansion makeup! She gave me the picture, and I was amazed at how intense the makeup was. Sadly, Kim passed away in 2006, but, she left me with another Haunted Mansion memory and, the best gift of all, I have become very close friends with her beautiful daughter Tiffany Demeter who also shares my love of horror. We celebrate Halloween like two kids, we just love it. I have enclosed a copy of the picture Kim gave me. She was not married yet so she would have worked at the Mansion under her maiden name Kim Rush. I wish they would build a new Haunted Mansion somewhere along the Jersey shore, and get Carlo to be the artistic director. I know he would bring back all of the original atmosphere and chilling charm that it once had! The late Kim Rush
2/17/09	I have some good memories of the pier, but to see no one saying boo to all this fancy crap they wanna put up… And answer me this, who needs a amphitheater on a pier??? And what the hell is Sandy Hook for???? Come on, really. Since when did the locals give in to all this? I see change and some is good and some is crap. We are a shore community and should have some memories for our children also. There’s more than a beach and stores and clubs we can’t get in to and pay New York prices. The pier gave us a childhood to remember and where is that for all of us to see now? I’ll tell you where, in someone’s living room or the middle of a store we can’t afford to shop in. When are we going to see this all change??? All the politics and none for the locals. All for fancy crap that blocks the view we all loved to see, and places we all loved to play...