“I’d almost rather be incinerated than have to live down here,” says Suellen Sims, below inspecting her new home’s fallout shelter, built beneath an earthen berm alongside Harris Park. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

It survived the Cold War without so much as a scratch, but a Red Bank fallout shelter is about to prove no match for the great wave of American home renovation.

Sometime in the next few weeks, a backhoe is expected to demolish the underground bunker beside a River Road house recently acquired by Suellen and Jamie Sims, who plan an addition to accommodate her mother.

Suellen Sims in her soon to be demolished bunker. (Click to enlarge)

The Cold War was raging in 1959 or 1960 when Dr. James Clark, a Red Bank eye surgeon, decided like many other Americans that he needed a fallout shelter to protect his family from radiation in the event of a nuclear attack.

But when a manufacturer of mail-order shelters told him there was a two-year backlog, Clark decided to build his own on the Harris Park side of the house, said his son, David Clark.

“He drew it up on paper, dug the hole, designed the hand-cranked air-filtration system,” said Clark, of Fair Haven. “He built wooden platform beds, and loaded it with canned goods.”

The result, on the outside, was a handsome berm of soil, grass and pine trees trimmed with a low brick wall. Inside, about a dozen feet below the surface, was a room off about 12 by 12, set off to the right of the stairwell, because, said Clark, “radiation can’t turn corners.”

Clark, who was about 10 or 12 when the bunker was built, said his father gave him the chore of emptying water containers and refilling them each month, adding three drops of chlorine to each. The elder Clark died suddenly in 1962 of a heart attack, and in the ensuing years, the son and his pals used to occasionally hang out in the bunker.

“They’d ask if they could come down here if the Russians attacked,” he said. “I’d say, ‘sure, you and the 5,000 other people who have asked.’”

The new owners, who have never met Clark, referred to the bunker at a recent planning board hearing as a “bomb shelter,” but Clark says it wasn’t built for that kind of shock. “A bomb hits the top, everybody’s dead,” he said.

Suellen Sims said that when a real estate agent first showed her and her husband the house, the bunker wasn’t included in the listing information. “We said, ‘What are all those pipes sticking up out of the ground?’”

Turns out they’re part of the air filtering system, equipped originally with automotive air filters.

Sims, who said she had to duck under her desk and participate in air raid drills as a schoolgirl and recalls having been “terrified” during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, still finds it “weird that you would build this just for yourself and your family.”

And the shelter itself she finds “dystopian. I’d almost rather be incinerated than have to live down here the rest of my life,” she said.

With the bunker’s days now numbered, Sims says her daughter has suggested a sendoff party, complete with t-shirts bearing the message: “I got bombed in the bomb shelter.”

The Center for World War II Studies and Conflict Resolution at Brookdale Community College presents another in a series of compelling events illuminating the history and legacy of the second World War Monday night.

The event is a public-welcome presentation on the American Volunteer Group, the special squadron that operated in China against the invading Japanese military during WWII, amassing an astounding record of success.

Historian Dan Petach relays the amazing story of the AVG and its induction into the US Army Air force in December 1941, 70 years ago to date.

Displays of vintage photos and period memorabilia will supplement the presentation, inside the Warner Student Life Center on the Lincroft campus. Call (732)224-2315 for more info.

Warner Student Life Center at Brookdale Community College, Newman Springs Road, Lincroft • 7pm/ $12 (BCC students $5)

The 22-year-old Red Bank Catholic grad was treated to an impromptu fire-and-first aider’s parade through town led by the Warriors Watch Riders, who drove up from Camden County for the occasion.

“I’m pretty embarrassed, but it’s definitely awesome to be back,” Dilger told redbankgreen, seen above right with his sister, Grace. (Click to enlarge)

In Fair Haven, Shrewsbury and Middletown on Sunday, they honored residents and all who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Photographer Peter Lindner visited each for redbankgreen. Here’s some of what he saw.

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By MOLLY MULSHINE

A solemn ceremony Sunday evening marked the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center Memorial Gardens in Middletown, the sprawling township that lost 37 of its residents in the terrorist attacks that day.

Among those present was Carmen Devaux, whose family lost a friend and co-worker, Louis J. Minervino.

“I always come [to the memorial service] because of Lou,” she said. “We just think of Lou all the time.”

The memorial ceremony provided Devaux and hundreds of Middletown residents with “a source of comfort,” she said.

Ledger Live video of the Middletown ceremony by Brian Donohue of the Star-Ledger.

Middletown Fire Department Chaplain Rev. Scott Harris addressed the crowd during the service.

“None of us wants to be here,” he said. “We wish September 11 was just another day on the calendar between the end of summer and the beginning of fall. We wish that this was still just the woods behind Banfield [Road], and that no memorial was ever needed.”

After the sun had set, as the families of those killed walked through the gardens together, members of  Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2179 and American Legion Post 338 lit votive candles, one each in memory of the deceased. Afterward, ‘Taps’ played in the distance.

Harris said those left behind should not be considered victims.

“Victims are powerless — objects of pity — but those in our midst are strong like survivors,” he said.

Although the aftermath of the 9/11 in Middletown felt “surreal,” according to resident Robert Rosenbaum, “it was unbelievable the way everybody got together. We never want to forget, and we’re grateful for what we have.”

Ten years to the day after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Red Bankers and others gathered where many were drawn that night: to the esplanade of Riverside Gardens Park, overlooking our beautiful Navesink River, to remember two townsmen who were among the 2,819 killed.

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By JOHN T. WARD

The solemn formalities – the presentation of the colors, the patriotic songs, the speeches and prayer – had ended. Red Bank’s volunteer firefighters, in crisp dress blues, had marched out of Riverside Gardens Park, preceded by the police department and Pipes and Drums of the Atlantic Watch, a bagpipe band, to the sound of a single, snapping drum.

On the promontory overlooking a placid Navesink River in gray twilight, Muriel Hemschoot and her daughter, Carol Hemschoot Bossio, mingled with borough officials who’d known them all their lives, laughing and sharing thoughts about Mark Hemschoot, Muriel’s son and Carol’s brother, a borough fireman who died at the World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

As signified by the large tattoo inked on Bossio’s shoulder, the “permanent tribute” she’ll take to her own grave, there remained a gulf between those who lost loved ones and those whose experience of it was more remote, Bossio said. Still, the hourlong event had a salutary effect, she and her mother agreed.

The Pipes and Drums of the Atlantic Watch lead the Red Bank police and volunteer fire departments (Click to enlarge)

“A lot of people I think don’t understand that the grief never goes away,” Bossio told redbankgreen. “But everybody has their own take on how it affected them; everybody reacted to it so differently.”

Was a ceremony like the one she’d just witnessed, in which Mayor Pasquale Menna and others praised her son, a consolation to Muriel Hemschoot?

“I don’t say ‘consoling.’ You’re never consoled – you’re always mourning,” Muriel said. “You think about it all the time.”

But a memorial like Sunday’s, to mark the tenth anniversary of the atttacks, “makes you realize that everyone has suffered,” she said. “Everyone suffers in a different way, and I’m very happy that people do something like this. It keeps all the people’s memories alive.”

Also in attendance, in addition to members of the Hemschoot family, were survivors of Brendan Lang, who was 30 years old and a new homeowner in town.

Mark Hemschoot, whose last name is pronounced HEM-scott, was 45 years old.