Rehoboth Beach Museum’s newest exhibit is on Storm of ‘62
The Storm of ‘62 battered Delaware’s coast 60 years ago this past weekend. In recognition of this history, the Rehoboth Beach Museum has set up a new exhibit in its second-floor showroom.
The exhibit features a number of the more well-known damage photos from the storm and quotes taken from oral histories on the subject. As part of the exhibit, titled A Storm Like No Other…The Great Storm of 1962, the museum played a 2007 documentary by Michael Oates, “The ’62 Storm: Delaware’s Shared Response.”
Marge LaFond, museum program director, conducted the presentation. For those not familiar with the storm, she began by saying it was like five nor’easters at once, during a full moon that lasted for days.
“It kept coming and coming and coming,” she said.
The documentary features a number of lifelong locals, retired state officials and meteorologists who talk about what it was like during and in the immediate aftermath of the storm. At the time of the storm, Rehoboth Beach, according to the locals in the film, had three movie theaters, a couple of banks, a grocery store and 11 gas stations.
Among the speakers in the movie is Tony Pratt, a former shoreline and waterway management administrator for the state. He said weather forecasts at the time suggested it was going to be a typical winter storm with high winds. That ended up not being the case, he said, adding that the storm stalled off the coast and brought winds that had 1,000 miles of unobstructed travel before bashing Delaware’s coast.
Pratt said one of the biggest issues with structures along the coast is that they had foundations similar to other places in the state, which basically means wooden structures on concrete blocks that were sitting on the ground. The foundations at the time didn’t account for the continued wave action, he said.
When the movie ended, LaFond said it’s good no storm has battered the state’s coast in the 60 years since the Storm of ‘62. However, she said, it’s good to be reminded of what can happen, because it could happen again.
The exhibit opened to the public March 4 and will be available for the public through the month of April. The museum, 511 Rehoboth Ave., plans on showing the movie a few more times while the exhibit is up. For details on movie showings and the exhibit, go to rehobothbeachmuseum.org, call 302-227-7310 or email program@rehobothbeachmuseum.org.
