In memory of two of the Shore’s all-time greats

“He was a superstar and a regular guy,” Jimmy Bennett, the owner of Sea Isle’s Oar House Pub, was telling me the other day about a guy whose loss we all, and by all, I mean maybe an entire generation or two, agreed would leave a vacuum in the way things are down the Shore.

He was talking about Jerry Blavat, whose funeral took place last weekend at no less a venue than the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, but it made me think of another couple guys who could teach you something about how to live your life, especially at the Shore.

Bobby Perloff was a regular guy and a superstar.

Chris Ford was a superstar and a regular guy.

They both knew the value of showing up, getting involved with the lives of other people. They were guys who were not in a rush, who seemed to have time for you, and for your kids and family.

Their love of people and sports, for the joy of rooting for triumph, at any level, of any kind, the pure appreciation and endless appetite for the pursuit of sport, of life, of keeping up with how other people were doing, just brimmed over.

» READ MORE: Chris Ford's big basketball life remembered by Villanova teammates

Chris Ford, the NBA great and Atlantic City hero, brought an intensity to his love of sports whether it was with the Boston Celtics, where he scored the first recorded three-point shot in NBA history, or the Villanova Wildcats or from the bleachers of an A.C. High Lady Vikings game. This is where I met him, as he watched and fretted as his son, Chris Ford Jr., coached the team and I cheered for the girls, including my daughter.

Bobby Perloff, who died Jan. 8 at the age of 90, had a career in Philly’s music business as a distributor, bringing the records of a generation of musicians from the national labels to the mom and pop stores of his day in Philly. He was an innovator and a mentor who once sat down with Steve Jobs to talk over the music business. I’m guessing Jobs got some ideas.

I always say Bobby Perloff is the only person who ever came up to me and said, I have a terrific story for you about something I do, and it turned out it really was a terrific story. It was his regular reunions at the Tiffany Diner on the Boulevard in Northeast Philly, with his old colleagues from the music business. They were funny and nostalgic and recreated a time that no longer existed. They had outlived their own business, in an upset. It was Curb Your Enthusiasm come to life, but the truth was, Bobby’s enthusiasm was never curbed. The story wrote itself, and, of course, the Tiffany is where everyone gathered after the funeral.

» READ MORE: Bobby Perloff, retired manager of Universal Record Distributing Corp. and mentor to many, dies at 90

But it was during Bobby’s final years when you knew you could reliably find him on the Ventnor boardwalk bench outside the Oxford where he lived that will remain so indelibly in people’s minds.

He talked to everyone. He cheered you on when you ran by him, and there was no better way to end a walk or bike ride than circling back to break it down with Bobby on the bench, his legs stretched out, arms folded, usually wearing his beloved Eagles or Phillies cap, ready with a laugh and an analysis. “Tremendous,” he would say. He thought the Shore newsletter should be newsier, break stories. Fair enough.

On Facebook, one person remembered passing Bobby so many times as he rode his bike on the boardwalk, seeing him singing along to his music. When that was no longer possible, he told me he rode his exercise bike for two hours every morning: 40 songs, three minutes each. He kept up with the latest music, too.

Chris Ford, of course, was a legend way beyond the borders of Atlantic City’s Ducktown neighborhood where he was born or in Margate, where he was living when he passed away at age 74 on Jan. 17.

But so many people down here remember him as the guy in the bleachers cheering on kids at Atlantic High or Holy Spirit, and, of course, always his Villanova Wildcats, even from the hospital.

I loved seeing this NBA superstar and local hero occasionally coaching from the stands, trying not to get in his own kid’s lane, groaning over a missed free throw or a bad call, cheering on a great play. He knew all the girls by name. Like so many of us, he just loved the game of basketball so much, and revered the sport, at any level. It was a wonderful reminder of the best way to be in all things: enthusiastic, joyful, involved, intense, passionate, devoted, ready for the agony and the ecstasy at any level. Find that thing and stick with it.

The Shore will teach you that, of course, and also make you contemplate death over and over, whether it’s the sobering yet magnificent sight of a humpback whale washed up on the beach or the mysteriously thrilling appearance of a beach suddenly full of conch shells. Or the absence of those whom you’d come to rely on as regulars.

At the Shore, it’s a lesson I learn over and over from the GOATs down here, be they Blavat, Ford, or Perloff, or some of our living legends, like Ralph Hunter, the great historian of Atlantic City’s Black history, relentlessly championing the cause over at the African American Heritage Museum in the same Ducktown neighborhood where Chris Ford was born. Or those people I pass regularly on the Boardwalk, or on the beach, day after day, who have learned, as I have, that the secret might be this: The same things done over and over again are never really the same. There’s an ocean of possibility in the day to day, in appreciating the joy of seeing a smiling Bobby Perloff sitting on his bench, or Chris Ford leaning forward in the bleachers, cheering on the Atlantic City girls basketball team, while you still could.