Military uniforms on display at the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Lincroft, where tonight’s recruiting event takes place. (Click to enlarge)

By DANIELLE TEPPER

It’s an easily overlooked branch of the military, but the Civil Air Patrol, founded on the eve of Pearl Harbor, is still keeping its eyes to the ground and sky for the safety of Americans on their home turf.

Tonight, potential cadets aged 12 to 20 are invited to get a taste of Civil Air Patrol life at an open house at the U.S. Armed Forces Reserve Center in Lincroft.

Hosted by the Bayshore Composite Squadron, the event aims to give curious youngsters and their parents insight into the different aspects of what the program offers, from classes in physical training and aviation to search-and-rescue.

Captain Robert Cartwright, squadron commander, says that the program is the perfect way for adolescents to get a feel for the military and decide if it is a life path they want to take in the future.

“They take moral leadership and aerospace classes and essentially decide from here whether or not this is something they’d like to pursue,” Cartwright said. “But we don’t push the military. Moms don’t have to be afraid that we’re going to have their kid enlisted by the time they graduate high school. We simply guide them if they show an interest.”

Cadets do wear Air Force uniforms. CAP is the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, providing emergency response and “diverse aviation and ground services” in support of localities, according to its website. It “handles 90 percent of inland search and rescue missions, with approximately 75 lives saved each year,” its commander writes.

Each cadet starts out as an Airman Basic and takes tests to get promoted all the way to Cadet Colonel, at which point he or she is authorized to teach classes.

“It adds discipline and structure in their lives, and teaches them self-confidence,” said Cartwright. “They learn military customs and courtesies, and it gives them focus. The shyest kids can end up running the show. They just come right out of their shell and it’s really awesome to see how the kids mature when they’re here.

“When you’re in this a long time and you see so many kids come through, you really see how it changes their life,” he said.

Tonight’s open house is the first of its kind, but if it’s successful, there may possibly be more in the future, Cartwright said.

The event is from 6:45 to 9 p.m. at the Armed Forces Recruiting Center at Newman Springs Road and Half Mile Road in Lincroft. And for those who miss it, CAP holds meetings every Wednesday at 7 p.m. that give a brief overview. This open house will be more in-depth, however.

Fun Facts:

The CAP was founded one week before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

CAP pilots flew over a half-million hours, were credited with sinking two enemy submarines, and rescued hundreds of crash survivors during WWII.

Dead Bank brings its Grateful Dead salute to the K of C this Saturday as part of a matinee musicfest in support of the Wounded Warrior Project.

Asbury Park might get the ink as the city “Where Music Lives,” but the bars, parks and sidewalks of the greater Red Bank Green can surely boast their share of bands, balladeers and bluesfolk.

This Saturday afternoon, a shufflemix of top local talent convenes in Fair Haven for a fundraiser showcase that could only be called Tunes for Our Troops.

A benefit for the nonprofit Wounded Warrior Project and its rehabilitative and transitional programs for severely injured service members, the four-hour fest takes place at the Fair Haven hall of the Knights of Columbus – Red Bank Council 3187. Kicking off at 2pm, it’s an event for which active service members will be admitted free of charge.

Among the bands on the bill: the cleverly named and logo’d Grateful Dead tribute project known as Dead Bank, anchored by sole guitarist (and Safe Routes Red Bank co-founder) Jim Willis. He and bandmates (bassist Nash Aliaga, keyboard man Jack Pyrah, drummer Jason LaViola, percussionist Barry Schneider) can be found at borough nitespots like The Dublin House and Jamian’s, where they’re in regular rotation for the weekly Grateful Thursday sessions.

Also slotted is Red Bank’s unofficial Musical Mayor — red-hot guitarist Chuck Lambert, paired here with bluesy chantoozy Susan Haugenes as A Cool Blues Duo.

Another frequent fryer of the fretboard — international champion blues guitarist Matt O’Ree — performs with his band, and the program is completed with Motherboard and Fair Haven’s own contribution to the Shore blues-rock barband scene, The Haven.

Tickets for the December 17 show are priced at $20, and are available at the door or in advance by calling (732) 693-7295. The K of C is at 200 Fair Haven Road.

Two prominent pieces of public infrastructure – one, some 140 years old, the other brand-new – have officially been renamed for Red Bank-area leaders.

Governor Chris Christie has signed bills naming the century-old Red Bank rail station for the late borough mayor and state Supreme Court Justice Daniel O’Hern and dubbing a new bridge across the Shrewsbury River for the late  Joe Azzolina, the longtime state Assemblyman from Middletown.

State Senator Jennifer Beck, who pushed for both, announced the changes Monday.

The rail stop, which O’Hern once helped repaint, is slated for a facelift that NJ Transit officials say could take up to four years to complete and cost $2 million. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

O’Hern served as acting mayor in 1966, and as mayor from 1969 to 1978. He later spent nearly two decades on the state Supreme Court. Red Bank’s Locust Avenue, where O’Hern grew up, was “ceremonially” renamed for him in 2009.

The Route 36 Highlands-Sea Bright bridge, completed early this year, is now the Captain Joseph Azzolina Memorial Bridge, said Beck, who worked on Azzolina’s staff during his long stint in the Assembly. Azzolina grew up in Highlands, served in the Navy in the Korean conflict and eventually achieved the rank of captain, serving on the battleship the USS New Jersey when it was off the shore of Lebanon during the Beirut crisis. A supermarket executive, he served three separate stints as an assemblyman, totaling 22 years in that chamber, as well as a two-year term in the state Senate

O’Hern died in 2009, and Azzolina died in 2010.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

There are certain aspects of sailing through outer space that Hollywood chooses, perhaps wisely, not to include in blockbuster portrayals of life in the ether.

There’s the blistering heat, sometimes reaching temperatures upwards of 350 degrees, which can really put a damper on a six-hour space walk; the food, which Colonel Douglas Wheelock says tastes more like heated plastic; and then there’s the absence of a bathing facility, which, if you’re like Wheelock, who recently returned from a six-month voyage in space, can make the return to Earth all that much sweeter.

“When they popped open the hatch, I said, ‘you guys smell really good,’” said Wheelock, who stopped in at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School Tuesday to talk to students about his astral travels. “They said, ‘it’s called soap.’”

There are obvious perks to being an astronaut, though, Wheelock said.

After all, the closest most people get to experiencing a trip through the cosmos is vicariously, through movies or maybe a trip to the Hayden Planetarium. The view is great, he said, and even though hygiene takes a back seat, technology does not.

Wheelock, also known in the social media galaxy as @astro_wheels, gained media attention last week when he won a Shorty Award for best real-time photo for his tweets from space. And, in one small step for man, one dubious step for mankind, Astro Wheels became the first person to “check-in” from space on Foursquare.

The R-FH students ate up everything Wheelock had to say about his trips to space — he’s made two so far — and pelted him with questions.

What do you do for fun up there? (Read; ham radio; Friday night is movie night)

Do you eat Dippin’ Dots? (No, you get Meals Ready to Eat)

“Eating up there is not a pleasurable experience,” Wheelock, 50, said. “Up there it’s sort of eat to refuel. The stuff up there tastes like warm plastic.”

Do you get a bonus? (No)

“I’m a colonel in the Army, so you can go online and see what I make, and you don’t get any extra for going to space,” he said. “I think I’m overpaid for what I do, but when I’m on that rocket I think, ‘they don’t pay me enough.’ You don’t get extra, but you get one heck of a company car.”

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

For months, Patrick Hussey has looked out from his Catherine Street home and wished for pavement. The asphalt was torn up as part of the Cedar Crossing construction project, he said, and he’s been told by contractors that there’s no plan to repave the section of road until later this year.

“I’m ready to plant a garden right there in the street in front of my house,” Hussey said.

He hasn’t been able to get a straight answer from local officials about when his street will be repaved, he said, so he took his grievance a couple steps higher up the chain Wednesday night, when State Senator Jen Beck visited the Westside Community Group for her first time since serving on the borough council.

There to remind residents that she’s an advocate for them, Beck glossed over some of the work she’s done at the state level and listened to the concerns, both local and statewide, from a group of about a dozen.

One resident, Richard Ashley, challenged Beck on environmental issues, specifically on having more access to the Navesink River. Beck sits on the senate’s environment and energy committee.

Ashley said that Beck should advocate for more access to the river. He’s got a problem that fishing at Marine Park is difficult when you have to check the parking meters to make sure there’s not a ticket on the windshield.

“Have you ever tried to fish with a parking meter?” He asked. “That’s not access to the river. I’m sorry.”

Beck said she’d bring that up to the mayor and council.

“I think most of us don’t like them,” she said. “It does make it difficult to fish.”

While Hussey’s and Ashley’s gripes were at the most local level, most of the issues raised Wednesday night were much broader.

When Beck brought up the specter of shared services and privatization as a potential solution to budget shortfalls, the idea received a tepid response. But she said fears that services will be compromised and towns will lose their identity are premature.

“There are appropriate groups that should be privatized and there are some that don’t work,” Beck said. “But at least we should think outside the box and be trying to save some jobs.”

Speaking of jobs, Oakland Street resident Carl Colmorgen asked Beck how the state feels about the pending closure of Fort Monmouth, and if there is any plan to utilize the property and possibly save, or recreate any of the thousands of jobs that will be lost when the fort moves its operations to Aberdeen, Maryland, in September.

Beck said she’s not optimistic for the near future. A recent plan to reuse a communications center at the fort was voted down because of “some partisan nonsense,” she said. That leaves her and her constituents going back to the drawing board to find ways to best use the property.

“For this year and obviously the coming years, we’ve got a struggle,” Beck said.

Residents were also concerned about the potential lease of Monmouth Park to a private developer.

With four serious candidates interested in the money-losing racetrack, Beck said she’s more hopeful the Oceanport site, a property that runs a $4 million deficit annually, will rebound.

Beck said while the state is tangled in a dismal financial problem, there is hope.

For the first time in three years, she said the state created more jobs than it lost. When the state’s finances are balanced, she said it’s likely residents will see the return of some of the items cut from the state budget, such as school funding and property tax freezes for senior citizens.

“The good news is that we are seeing growth in the economy for the first time,” she said. “That’s good. Really. We’ve been through a tough time.”

Beck’s office is on 32 Monmouth Street. She can be reached via email here, or phoned at 732.933.1591

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The Westside Community Group, for the first time in 14 years, is changing its meeting dates. It will now meet on the third Wednesday of every month, instead of the second Wednesday.

The time and location — 7p at River Street Commons — are the same. The change takes effect in April.

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Red Bank schoolchildren, elected officials and civic groups gathered at Red Bank’s war memorial on Monmouth Street to pay honor to American war veterans. Among the participants were members of the Red Bank Regional High School Choir, right. (Click to enlarge)

By TOM CHESEK

Even though it falls this year on an event-packed late summer Saturday, the approach of September 11 can’t help but spur some moments of reflection for anyone who made their home in and around the Red Bank green on that day in 2001.

It’s impossible not to flash back to where you were on 9/11 — whether it was the newly opened Riverside Gardens, whose walls and walkways became the area’s unofficial town square for makeshift memorials and candlelit vigils. Or the commuter ferry docks of the Bayshore, where scores of dazed and dust-covered escapees from Ground Zero were hosed down and given a chance to get their bearings. Or particularly hard-hit Middletown, where a walk-through monument garden would sprout up adjacent to the township’s train station.

As a First Lieutenant on active duty with the 1st Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, Mike Scotti remembers quite well where he was as the planes hit the towers — and the fact that, as he explains, he was playing craps in a casino in Darwin, Australia, illustrates both the real element of surprise involved and the speed with which the military response was effected.

A native of Colts Neck and a 1994 graduate of Red Bank Catholic High School, Scotti (along with the Weapons Company under his command) was among the first wave of troops into Afghanistan — and would later participate in the front lines of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Along the way, through firefights and roadside ambushes as well as countless hours of tedium, he’d carry with him a crucial piece of equipment that wasn’t exactly standard issue: a Canon Mini DV camera, with which he recorded dozens of hours of first-person battle footage — the basis for the award winning documentary Severe Clear.

Adapted from Scotti’s personal war journals and directed by Kristian Fraga (whose Anytown, USA examined Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan‘s re-election campaign), the doc feature — the title refers to unusually high visibility conditions, not unlike the brilliant blue morning skies of 9/11 — will be the centerpiece of a special screening event at the Count Basie Theatre on the evening of September 11.

The event is a fundraiser for ReserveAid, a nonprofit financial assistance and counseling organization dedicated to helping recently mobilized military Reservists and their families. In addition, the evening is being dedicated to the memory of Beth Quigley, a fellow RBC graduate who was among the Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed in the World Trade Center attacks.

Scotti, who will be joining members of Quigley’s family on the Basie stage, fielded a volley of questions — including a film buff’s lightning round — from redbankgreen.

First Lieutenant Mike Scotti, with the Mini DV camera that furnished much of the footage featured in SEVERE CLEAR.

Take us back to the beginning of the project that would eventually become SEVERE CLEAR — when 9/11 went down, you were already on active duty in the Corps, correct?

I was on routine deployment, where every six months 2,000 Marines on either side of the country would hop on a plane, switch coasts and go on training exercises. I left in August 2001; I was heading to the Seychelles, to Kenya — and I was going to get out right after that.

On 9/11 I was in Darwin, Australia, in a casino playing their version of craps, and watching it all unfold on TV. Within a half hour there were MPs walking through town with bullhorns, telling everybody to get back to the ships.

It became very real at that point. Suddenly I had scores of Marines under my command — it was crazy; we took fire on the way into Afghanistan, and I remember my biggest fear was of getting my guys killed.

At what point did you find out Beth Quigley having been killed at Trade Center?

I’d just found out about it when we were flying over there. It really brought the whole thing into perspective; you know, this person that I went to school with has been taken from us. I thought to myself that I was here to defend her honor.

I know that you and Beth were classmates; was there a deeper family connection there as well?

Our dads went to high school together. And even though Beth was a year older than me, we wound up sitting next to each other in the same Spanish class at RBC. After I came home, I wrote a letter to her older sister Suzanne; I contacted her in 2004, during what I call my ‘dark time,’ and we just had this instant bond. The family agreed to let us include Beth in the film, and to me it brought the film to a higher level.

The family has been really great through all of this, and so has everyone from RBC. I gave the commencement speech at Red Bank Catholic this year — the whole RBC community has been a real beacon of light.

I’m aware that you originally were planning to write a formal book about your experiences, but that it kind of morphed into a film project when you started shooting footage on the scene. At what point did you get the notion to begin documenting your experiences that way — and how were you able to go everywhere with a camera? Was there even any official policy for or against the use of that sort of equipment?

The attitude was that, as long as I never let the camera get in the way of doing my job, it wasn’t a problem to carry it. In my case, the camera substituted for the binoculars that I would otherwise have had with me, and if I wasn’t a forward observer like I was, I never would have been able to get the kind of images that you see in the film.

I told the other guys to go out and buy the kind of mini camera I had — about ten percent of the footage in the film was shot by various other guys who were there with me. I told them that the footage they take will become their most cherished possession.

How do you think your footage stacks up against the sort of coverage that we were exposed to here in the States — that sort of tightly controlled, “embedded journalist” perspective?

I think that my footage shows the true face of war. A look at the human toll of war; one of my best friends was killed over there in 2006. In fact, I thought for a short time about becoming a war correspondent. I wanted to do it right; be in harm’s way, going door to door. But I doubt that CNN and CBS would put it on. It wouldn’t pass the censors.

Obviously there’s a need for the military and the government to control the message — and sometimes the media might have a different take on what the message should be. Back in Vietnam, we crushed the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive — but because a few of their sappers were killed trying to occupy our embassy, Walter Cronkite went on TV and said the war was unwinnable. Once you lose public opinion, you lose the will to win.

Well, now that SEVERE CLEAR is entering into a little bit of a wider release, and with so many troops finishing up their missions in Iraq, do you think the public might have a greater appetite to seek out these sort of unvarnished, personalized scenes of the war?

Probably not. The war’s not part of their world — even though ninety seven percent of the people say they love and support the troops, they don’t want to see the blood, the stink, the death and darkness.

And the more complicated aspects; the sort of questions that hovered over our being in Iraq in the first place?

I told my guys going in that we were looking for WMDs, and whether in fact what we were looking for existed — if it ends up being bullshit, it’s irrelevant to the rest of my life. You want to be proud of what you did over there, in order to live the rest of your life in a healthy and positive way.

You’ve alluded to the fact that you did experience a rough interval upon returning home.

I left active duty in 2003, and I really struggled for about 18 to 20 months after coming home. I spent a summer decompressing in a little mining town called Ouray, Colorado — I started writing my memoir, which would eventually become the voiceover for the film.

And while you were writing about your experiences, you went back to school; got a job on Wall Street. Having been through two very real war fronts, what’s your take on the sort of military metaphors that are often tossed around by the boardroom guys in the business press?

Well, the investment banks actually like to hire military veterans from the top schools. The Reserve Aid organization got started with Wall Street people. In 2005, I got accepted to the NYU Stern Graduate School of Business — where I founded the Military Veterans Club — and I worked for a while with Credit Suisse.

But when I was 32, I left the financial industry to become acting president and CEO of Horizon Foods. It was a situation where I had to shut down two-thirds of the company in order to save it. So there’s a parallel between that and the type of decisions that a company commander has to make in battle.

You mentioned Wall Street people being the driving force behind Reserve Aid, the nonprofit that’s the beneficiary of the fundraiser screening in Red Bank, which kind of runs counter to the image that most Americans have of the financial biz these days.

Wall Street people are not all bad! Of course, they’re not all good either — there’s a lot of arrogance, selfishness, hubris there; all qualities that go totally against what the Corps stands for.

I was on the founding board of directors for Reserve Aid, and we’ve gotten a lot of money from Wall Street. All the directors are volunteers; we have one office that was donated to us by a hedge fund in Dallas, and we have one full-time employee. She’s a former machine gunner who doesn’t take any shit from anybody!

When Reserve Aid started, it was mainly about financial assistance to families of military personnel who were on active duty. It later became about things like medical bills for injuries, and about mental health issues. But every dollar we raise is obviously going to help people directly — each ticket that we sell buys things like diapers for a family in Ohio.

Kristian Fraga, the director of the film, has been quoted as saying that he’d spent some time searching for a subject for his next project, and when he found out about you and your document, he knew that this would be the one. But when did you come to the realization that Kristian was the guy to bring your experiences to the screen?

When I saw his previous film Anytown, USA, I knew he’d be the one. I knew that the film would be a poem.

It seems that you didn’t have any misgivings over entrusting such a personal endeavor to someone else; a filmmaker who’s credited here as writer and director — in fact, it appears that it’s you rather than Fraga who’s become the real public face of this project.

Working with Kristian has been a great experience — I’ve seen this film touch veterans in a way that made them teary eyed; family members have told me ‘your film helped me understand what our loved ones wen through.’ I’ve traveled all over the place on behalf of the film — Boston, San Diego, L.A., Houston, Dallas. I went to Cannes, where we sold the UK rights — and I went to Rome, where we won an award. My parents watched me walk up and accept it!

Alright, as promised, a Lightning Round — your gut reaction, please, to these ten movies…

The Hurt Locker: I loved it. They did a tremendous job capturing the chaos and confusion — when I saw it in the theater, my heart was pounding; I was clutching the seat.

The Blair Witch Project: We get compared to that one a lot. It scared the crap out of me!

84 Charlie MoPic: Haven’t seen it. Sounds good.

Cloverfield: I love that movie! Very, very well done.

The Tillman Story: My mentor’s seen it, and I’m very curious to see it myself. It kind of ties into the whole McChrystal thing; the cover up, the way the situation was presented to the public.

Avatar: I saw it — in fact, I saw it in Vietnam! And it’s obvious that parts of it are about Vietnam in a way; about the Marines — but I don’t think it went too far with the metaphor.

Coming Home: Right, with Jane Fonda — didn’t see it.

District 9: Another one that I’ve been meaning to see — obviously it’s another one of those movies that presents itself like it was a documentary (Scotti laughs when we tell him it plays like a Very Special Episode of The Office).

The Green Berets: You know, I never subscribed to the whole John Wayne ethos — he made all these war movies in Hollywood and never got around to serving.

Three Kings: I had a bad taste in my mouth when I saw that one. I’m a middle of the road guy when it comes to politics, but this one just had this liberal thing all throughout — I felt that the filmmakers weren’t in touch with the veterans. I felt the same way about In the Valley of Elah.  But let me take the opportunity to put in a word for one of my all time classic war movies — Paths Of Glory. That and Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick is The Man!

Tickets for the September 11 screening of Severe Clear are priced from $50 to $100, and can be reserved right here.