6. Who you calling a hippy?
An email from Stephen Kappesser of Joppa, Maryland:

I really enjoyed reading the Sandy Pond section of the Major-Smolinski website. In one area it says:

The way I heard it (and this may be as inaccurate as a five-day weather forecast), Sandy Island Beach was a victim of the era, ruined by “hippies” who moved into a small trailer park that opened up at the end of the lower parking lot.

One of the beach owners died and his widow, with help from one of the trailer park residents, tried to carry on, but vandalism became a problem. The woman sold it to another couple, who discovered the beach was more trouble than they were able to handle.

Just who those “hippies” were, I don’t know. In those days people were so labeled for lots of silly reasons. Their live-in ended the night someone torched the motel, the restaurant and a building that housed a dressing area and restrooms.

When the firemen left that evening, Sandy Island Beach was pronounced dead.

Yes, the information you heard about the rise and fall of Sandy Island Beach is about as inaccurate as a five-day weather forecast! My name is Stephen Kappesser and I lived at Sandy Pond from the day I was born in 1954 until I joined the Navy in 1980. I grew up in my Dad's house on the Franklin Tract on Marion Avenue, located about halfway between The Comfort and the Bayview Hotel. In the '70s and '80s you may have remembered a sign that said 'Kappy's Boats' on Route 15 across from the Sandy Pond Sportsman's Clubhouse. That was my family. We inherited what used to be Scotty's Boats. Not a summer would go by that our family and friends did not enjoy Sandy Island Beach at least once or twice a week.

A BUSINESSMAN named Le Grande Smith and his wife (the "troll" you refer to, which is funny) bought the beach in the late 1940s and slowly developed it in the '50s and '60s. My parents knew them. My Dad, Ed Kappesser, was a state trooper until 1961, when he retired. Later he was elected the Sandy Creek Town Justice. Dad would naturally keep an eye on things for Mr. Smith because of all the crowds and alcohol and accidents associated with the city youth "invading" the area on weekends.

In the late 1960s Mr. Smith passed away and Mrs. Smith tried to run the business, but the two men she hired to run it for her took advantage of her. These two men lived in that trailer park. I forget their names, but they didn't bathe, wore pistols like cowboys, were bad men, and nobody liked them.

My older brother, Kip (also a teen then), was hired by these two men one summer to collect fares at the ticket booth and do miscellaneous maintenance. Kip recognized pretty quickly that Mrs. Smith was not getting all the money collected and that things were mismanaged and wrong, so he never went back to work there again.

FINALLY, Mrs. Smith suffered ill health, fired the men, and moved to Florida so her family could take care of her. I think her son or a relative put the beach up for sale, but it took a few years to find a buyer. During that time the beach was "dormant" and Mrs. Smith had nobody taking care of it.

That would be in the early 1970s. I was in high school. My friends and I enjoyed the beach, but the crowds of teenagers from Syracuse and the metro area would use the free beach on the weekends and "party hardy" and get into drunken mischief. It became very popular because it was far from home and did not close at night. The parties would rage until the sun came up. These youths would leave their trash behind, littering the beach with bottles and cans, food scraps, even human excrement, in the sand dunes and on the floors of the dressing rooms.

Nothing was ever "torched" on this property. During one of these party weekends in the cool spring, eyewitnesses reported that a handful of "city kids" broke into the main building and tried to start a fire to keep warm, but they didn't know what they were doing. They let it get out of control and the building burned down. The main building was composed of a snack bar, living quarters (Mr. and Mrs. Smith used to live there in the summer), and a storage area for maintenance equipment. The motel and dressing rooms weren't destroyed by fire; they were simply dismantled and taken away by the next owner.

In those days some of us local Sandy Pond/Sandy Creek-area teens had long hair which was the style then, but I don't think we were really "hippies", whatever the definition of them is. A couple of our friends owned trailers in the trailer park – maybe that's how the story evolved into what you heard.

ANYWAY, we enjoyed and respected the beach, so during this "dormant" period between owners we organized several volunteer events to clean up the beach and keep it fairly nice for people to enjoy. One of our clean-up events was covered by (Syracuse) Channel 5 News – all of us "hippies" were on TV!

Yes, we partied at the beach, too, but we always took our trash home with us and left the beach the way we found it. Invariably, though, summer weekends continued to bring the rowdy teens up from the metro area of Syracuse and they would party and misbehave and deface the property and leave. It was also popular for city school fraternities and sororities to rent cottages in the late spring and use the beach for their spring "mating rituals".

Mrs. Smith (or one of her relatives) finally sold it to the other couple you refer to who did not have the resources to keep it viable as a business. They eventually sold it to the government.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Many months after I received this email I once again heard from Stephen Kappesser who had noticed what I consider an amazing coincidence in the top photo I had selected from snapshots I had taken at Sandy Pond over several years. Turns out our paths had crossed way back in 1973,

"I like the photo you posted above my 'What Really Happened' email," Kappesser wrote. "Of those sitting, I am the third person from the left! I believe the left-most person sitting in the sand is Joe Hammond, former proprietor of The Lodge and later the Brokedown Palace. The girl sitting on the far right is Sue Blount. Her dad was Tom Blount, a co-owner of the Blount Lumber Company in Lacona (now shut down). Brenda Maas is the girl in the white blouse facing away from the camera. Next to me is Don MacDougal, talking to his girl friend (but I forgot her name). Sure brings back memories! Thanks."

And my thanks to you, Stephen.

PS: Stephen Kappesser has his own fine site, sandypondmemories, that you can access in the listings of other Sandy Pond websites (above, left).