Friday, December 6, 2024
Harry Brandle was living in Jackson Heights with his wife back in the late 1970s. They used to take trips to go scuba diving over at Rockaway Inlet. They had no idea Long Beach really even existed.
Their typical spot started getting somewhat crowded, so they took their little boat around the Atlantic Beach bend, looking for a new spot. They kept traveling east, and began scuba diving off the Long Beach beaches. They started to explore a little, going up the beaches, finding the boardwalk, and learned all about the city.
They fell in love with the area, and moved to the city in 1978, when their first son, Jason, was just one week old.
“I love it here,” Brandle said. “When we found it, we decided that was going to be our forever house.”
Brandle wanted to document his family’s life and his children through the years at their forever house. He recorded videos, highlighting parties, community events, drives down the Long Beach streets and birthdays. He had tons of tapes, all filled with family memories.
Then Hurricane Sandy happened. He lost all of the tapes. Brandle, now 74, thought he lost all of the footage forever. He thought he’d never see those videos of his family again.
Brandle also recorded old photo slides of the houses across Long Beach and donated them to the historical society some years before the storm. Within his donations, unbeknownst to him, were some of his tapes.
The historical society heard of his losses and teamed up with the Long Island Library Resources Council. The LILRC is a non-profit organization chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. The council works as a resource serving academic, hospital, public and school libraries, museums and historical societies across both Nassau and Suffolk County. The goal is to enhance access to information and advocate for these groups.
The LILRC has a program called the “Accessing Archives Program,” where the aforementioned groups can apply online to have the council complete a project for them. The Long Beach Historical Society did that, with Brandle’s tapes.
“This is the kind of documentation you want your historical society to have,” Robert Anen, project archivist for the council, said. “I don’t think Harry realized that he was really catching something that would be considered important 40 years into the future. I think this is really wonderful.”
Brandle’s found tapes show some home videos from 1984. There’s about 20 minutes of old houses, events in Kennedy Plaza and on the boardwalk, and his son, Jason’s, sixth birthday party.
Anen worked on the historical society’s project over the summer. He digitized the tapes for both the council’s New York Heritage website, where all the content they work on is located, and on a flash drive for Brandle to keep, reuniting him with his lost videos.
“It’s a great story,” Anen said. “They lost all of their tapes in Sandy. I’m glad we can give them back.”
Anen and members of the historical society invited Brandle to the museum, at 226 W. Penn St., on Oct. 22. Brandle, with a smile on his face, was able to watch and relive the moments on tape he thought he lost forever.
While watching his son’s sixth birthday party, he heard himself say, “when you see these videos in 20 years, you’ll laugh.” Brandle chuckled, realizing he was right, 40 years later.
