16 The Queens Courier • October 24, 2013 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com sandy retrospective Ghosts of summers past BY MAGGIE HAYES [email protected] Phil Gilson walked past the now empty lots in his Breezy Point neighborhood, reflecting on how the beach community once was. “That’s the disturbing thing. You look and you say, ‘Who used to live here?’ Even I don’t know where I am because all of the homes on the perimeter are gone, so all of the landmarks are gone,” he said. Gilson said he couldn’t revisit the town destroyed by Sandy for months because “it was depressing.” His own summer home of 43 years was washed away the night of the storm in October, “right off the foundation,” he said. It was torn down completely in April, and he still has no plan to rebuild. Gilson was there the day before it was demolished to collect anything he still needed. “I was anxious about coming down,” he said. After that day, he frequently returned throughout the summer to watch the rebuilding progress, though the “outstanding” Breezy Point summer he knew and loved wasn’t there. “I’d come down over the summer, but I wouldn’t see anybody,” he said. “I would not see towels. I would not see hanging bathing suits.” Gilson’s summer memories include those of a very close, tight-knit neighborhood, where “if you sneezed, somebody next door would say, ‘God Bless you,’” and “if you needed to go to the store 10 minutes away, it would take you an hour because you kept stopping to talk to people.” “You can’t replace the camaraderie of the community,” he said. For his own home, just two blocks past the fire zone where 135 homes were decimated, Gilson said he is waiting to hear if he will receive any city funds from the Build-it-Back program. “It’s going to be a couple of years before we get back here,” he said. Still, he enjoys going to his neighborhood, watching more and more houses pop up in vacant spaces. “It’s very comforting,” he said. Photo courtesy Phil Gilson THE COURIER/Photo by Melissa Chan Phil Gilson points to where his Breezy Point home stood before the storm washed it away. Iconic image BY MELISSA CHAN [email protected] The Mok family will always remember the image of their Breezy Point home knocked off its base and left lopsided for leveling after Sandy. Not because they called it home for 60 years. Not because the last memory of the childhood house was of it teetering on its side. But because the tilted, seaside house, doomed for demolition, became one of the most iconic images of Sandy devastation in the Rockaways. The family said the photo is constantly replayed in media flashbacks. “It was the first house people saw when they came in, and now it’s everybody’s file photo,” said Harry Mok, 62. The faded red house at 102 W. Market Street came close to careening into an adjacent home during the superstorm when rising waters lifted it off the ground. It came to a halt instead on top of a brick barrier between the two residences. “It was like ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” said Mok. “I couldn’t believe it.” The city later condemned and razed the corner home, but it was a fate better than the shoreline house behind it, Mok said, which was completely carried out into the ocean by fierce storm waves. “The old foundations were compromised,” he said. “They just didn’t have the strength.” Mok said summers with his wife and three kids were spent at the beach house, which was in his wife’s family for six decades. The Flushing resident planned to eventually retire there. Now only a plot of sand greets him when he returns once a week to fetch the mail. “It was a total loss,” he said. “But we’re going to rebuild in the same spot.” A slow application process is currently keeping shovels from hitting the ground, Mok said. He doesn’t expect construction to be finished until after next summer, and neighbors anticipate an even later move-in date. “On the bright side,” he said, “from my porch, I’ll have a view of the water for a while.” THE COURIER/Photo by Melissa Chan Harry Mok stands in place of his Breezy Point home, which was tilted on his side after Sandy and later demolished. THE COURIER/Photo by Maggie Hayes
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