How did Seaside's carousel survive long enough to be refurbished? Thank the volunteers

Bubba, Dapper, Ruth are thoroughbreds.

Their gait, their jaunty look, their glossy coats of gray, brown and peach — courtesy of oil-based sign paint — would take the prize at any horse show.

Bea, however, is a horse of a different color.

"She's too long, and not deep enough in the middle," lamented Marie deSaules.

She's an on-site volunteer at the new Seaside Heights carousel pavilion. Bea is her problem horse. "I just didn't like the way it looked," she said.

An experienced artist, deSaules is also an experienced horse person. She's ridden them, owned them, shown them. With paint, brush, and sandpaper, she's doing what she can to rectify the shortcomings of a long-ago carousel carver.

"The head and neck don't belong with the body," said deSaules, a Toms River resident. "I've been trying to balance it, balance the color scheme."

Looking good

Makeup can cover a multitude of sins. Sanding, two coats of primer, sanding again, a coat of gloss white, then a base coat of the final color — for starters. Then, lots of details by airbrush.

"I must have gone through close to 100 sheets of sandpaper for all the horses," she said. "This is a labor of love."

For three months, deSaules has been visible inside the circular, many-windowed structure on the north end of the boardwalk — sanding and painting.

And for three months, passers-by have asked the same question.

When, they want to know, will the magnificent 1910 Dentzel-Looff carousel — removed from the boardwalk four years ago for a top-to-bottom overhaul — be up and running in its new location?

"I've been amazed at the amount of people who stop by," she said. "They would see me and stop and chat. They would ask me when? That was the big question. And I would say, 'I don't know.' "

Almost here

In a sense, it's already back.

Two weeks ago, deSaules and her horse-painting operation retreated to a side room. Experts from Carousels and Carvings, the Ohio company that did the refurbishing work, moved into the center space to erect the mast, sweeps and scenery panels. More horses, meanwhile, are making their way from the Bay Boulevard warehouse, where they've been stored since 2019.

Likely, the carousel will be fully installed by the end of July.

But given the number of tests, inspections and safety vettings that have to be gone through, Seaside's carousel will probably not be ready to take its first riders until at least the winter holidays.

Which might not be the worst, said borough administrator Christopher Vaz.

"That would be even more magical than a regular opening," he said.

A public trust

It's the borough, to be technical, that owns the 113-year-old ride.

They're the ones who acquired it, in a complicated land-swap deal, from Casino Pier, which would otherwise have sold it off, most likely horse by horse. And they're the ones who paid over $1 million for restoration of the machine, and another $2.3 million for the new pavilion to house it (in both cases, assisted by grants — $750,000 from Green Acres for the building, and $750,000 in matching grants from the New Jersey Historic Trust for the carousel itself).

But in a larger sense, Seaside's carousel is like the sand, the sea, and the sky. It belongs to everyone.

Especially those who've loved it, fought for it, volunteered to maintain it, and helped save it — more than once, in the last 40 years — from imminent destruction.

People like deSaules, and her friend, carver Skip Tanis — of Haledon's Tanis Hardware — who have been working, gratis, to help spruce up some of the 58 carousel figures (there are 53 horses, plus a lion, tiger, donkey and two camels). "Some of the horses were missing legs, so I made new legs for them," Tanis said.

Most of all, it belongs to Floyd L. Moreland — whose aggressive campaign to save the ride, 40 years ago, is the main reason it survived to this day. Now 80 and dealing with several health issues, he's been monitoring the latest developments, at a distance, from his home in Ortley Beach.

"I'm always going to miss the carousel as I knew it as a little boy," he said. "This is going to be different. Of course, it gives me satisfaction that it's going to be there and have its own building, and that its influence in Seaside Heights will continue. I'm very eager to see it turning again."

New look

It will be the same, but a very different, carousel that opens to the public in December — or whenever it opens.

All the familiar animals will be there — smartened up — with all the familiar names (John, Fella, Mary, Ann, Bunny, Ken, Norma; the lead horse is named "Dr. Moreland"). The band organ will be playing its customary tunes: "Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean," "Glow Worm," "I Never See Molly Alone."

But the scenery panels will be entirely new: colorful images of Seaside's past, freshly painted, and taken from old postcards. An adjacent carousel museum will contain images and artifacts.

Also coming at some point — not for the grand opening — is a thing many have clamored for: a ring-catching mechanism.

Carousels, originally, were as much a game as a ride. Kids on the outer horses would grab at metal rings, from a dispenser, as they went around. The one who got the brass ring got a free ride: hence the expression "catch the brass ring."

It's something that goes all the way back to the carousel's origins: a medieval ring-spearing tournament. And it's something that should greatly enhance the carousel's appeal, and ridership.

"We've ordered one," Vaz said. "I've seen a sketch for the design. It will get here at some point."

Brink of disaster

The community effort to preserve this carousel, in one piece, for all to enjoy, stands in stark contrast to the 1980s antiques craze that nearly doomed it. In this same period, a half dozen other New Jersey merry-go-rounds were destroyed — in Point Pleasant, Keansburg, Clementon, Asbury Park (two of them) and a second Seaside Heights carousel at the south end of the boardwalk.

Antique carousel animals were once a fad. More, they were a speculative bubble.

"It was not only New Jersey, but all across the country," Moreland said. "There was a tremendous value placed on them."

People were willing to pay as much as $100,000 or more to have a carousel horse, lion, or giraffe in their home. Faced with the choice of running their rides for children's nickels, or selling them off piece by piece for a fortune, most ride operators didn't hesitate. "People were just buying them left and right," Moreland said.

That was where things stood in 1983 — when the owners of Casino Pier, home of the ride since 1932 (earlier, it had been in Burlington County) floated the idea of selling it. The news came like a thunderbolt to Moreland.

Originally from Passaic, he had spent his summers at Seaside as a boy. He loved the carousel; as a teenager, he ran the ride off and on for several summers. He approached Casino owner Ken Wynne. What if, instead of selling the carousel, he allowed Moreland and a few volunteers to refurbish it, free of charge? Wynne handed him the building keys.

"I was able and in a position to make the offer," said Moreland, then a classics professor at CUNY NY Graduate School.

Hard work

"What we did in the '80s really saved that carousel," he said. "We had a lot of fun redoing it."

Well, fun is a relative term. For two winters, Moreland and his team worked in the unheated carousel building -— repainting the animals, replacing the light bulbs, redoing the scenic panels. "It was freezing," he recalled. "You'd put your hands around a lightbulb for a while, and it would warm them up."

Working with him, as volunteers, were students from CUNY NY — and some others whose names he still recalls. Mike Adamski, a high school principal from Lacey Township. The late Norma Menghetti, a veterinarian from Pennsylvania.

Also deSaules — on the spot, then as now, paintbrush in hand.

"Floyd showed me how to run the carousel," she recalled. "So say I was working on this horse, and I wanted to get underneath. I could turn the carousel, so the horse went all the way up."

Better than new

The result was so splendid that the Floyd L. Moreland Carousel, as it was renamed, continued its career on the boardwalk for another 40 years. "This carousel is identified with Seaside Heights," Vaz said. "The carousel horse is part of our logo. It's part of our DNA."

By the time the owners again floated the idea of selling, in 2014, the whole community was ready to rally behind it.

"Lots of carousels are not as fortunate as this one," said Todd W. Goings, CEO of Carousels and Carvings, who was on-site last week to supervise the installation.

His is one of several companies that sprang up in the 1990s, in Ohio, to stem the tide of carousel extinction. The merry-go-renaissance was short-lived — Goings' company, based in Marion, is the only one that's survived. For 26 years, they've been doing their best to re-seed the land with hand-carved, wooden merry-go-rounds — refurbishing old ones, carving new ones.

In so doing, they're consciously following in the footsteps of William H. Dentzel and Charles I.D. Looff — creators of Seaside's machine — and a dozen other 19th-century manufacturers that turned carousel carving into a folk art. Immigrant carvers from Germany and Italy fashioned the lifelike steeds that prance and rear and strain at the bit.

"They did a wonderful job with the horses," deSaules said. "Where the muscles are, they got that right. The bodies are a little more narrow. The person who took the tickets had to be able to get between the horses."

Then there were three

Some 120 hand-carved carousels whirled in the Garden State at various times. As late as 1973, there were 15.

Now only three remain: one in Ocean City, another at Soupy Island, Gloucester County, and this one.

Which, with luck, will spin for another 100 years. Thanks to the goodwill of the borough, and the good work of volunteers. And the persistence of one man — determined to save a piece of his childhood for the next generation to enjoy.

"I wanted to make the public appreciate that this is not just a ride on a boardwalk, it's a piece of history," Moreland said. "That worked. And now it's working even more."

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Seaside's carousel owes everything to the people who love it