2 resorts claim a century - or so - of babies on parade

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - In the world of Jersey Shore baby parades, the kiddie promenade in this clean-scrubbed family resort is the granddaddy of them all. Or maybe not.

For generations, teetotaling Ocean City and its less-straitlaced rival down the coast, Wildwood, have playfully debated which can claim the more historic baby parade.

In a kind of "my kid is better than your kid" kerfuffle, the discussion this year centers on which, if either, resort can legitimately call its boardwalk event this month a 100th anniversary celebration.

Wildwood - whose parade is Thursday night - launched its running of the babies exactly one century ago. But it skipped quite a few years, due to an apparent lack of interest.

"I don't think Wildwood really can make the same claim we can," said Fred Miller, historian of Ocean City. The next edition of his town's parade will be on Aug. 13.

But Ocean City's centennial also comes with an asterisk. World Wars I and II and the polio outbreak of 1916 led to five years without parades. But Miller's calculation includes some similar baby events held prior to 1909, when the parade as it's now known was introduced.

"When you add up the numbers, it comes to exactly 100 years that Ocean City has held a 'parade,' " said Miller, who - with his wife, Susan - is author of Ocean City Baby Parade. The book is new from Arcadia Publishing, producer of the ubiquitous sepia-cover line of local history books and pictorials.

"I don't think there is any other town anywhere that's held a baby parade with the consistency that Ocean City has," Miller said.

Robert E. Scully Jr., curator of the Wildwood Historical Museum, insists that Wildwood has every right to its claim.

"There have been some hiccups over the years, in terms of participation and interest, but the anniversary of the first baby parade in Wildwood is documented as August 1909," Scully said.

Through the years, Ocean City and Wildwood's event organizers have kept close tabs on each other. When one town has come up with a parade gimmick, the other has matched it.

Ocean City has Queen Infanta to oversee its event, and Wildwood has Queen Oceana. In the 1910s, when Ocean City began awarding sterling cups to winners in various categories, Wildwood offered diamond rings. Ocean City said that it attracted 100,000 spectators in 1983, when Joe DiMaggio was grand marshal; the next year, Wildwood bragged that it had 120,000.

The towns' events apparently were inspired after seaside resorts in New York and northern Shore towns, such as Asbury Park, began hosting baby parades in the 1890s to attract more families.

The Cape May County resorts introduced prizes for cutest, prettiest, or best-costumed tyke. Awards for fattest, chubbiest and healthiest baby were retired years ago.

A youngest-baby category also was done away with. Organizers soon feared for the safety of infants, some weeks old, who were outfitted in heavy costumes and fluff in the hot summer sun.

The way Miller and others in Ocean City figure it, an earlier version of their parade - actually more like a baby show - held on a boardwalk pier from 1901 to 1905 adds to the current parade's provenance.

The often-spectacular contemporary pageant - in which hundreds of babies in flower-decorated prams and elaborate floats move south along the boardwalk - has been held continuously since 1946, making it the longest-running event of its kind in the country, Miller said.

Wildwood, better known for attracting much older babes, changed its marketing focus between the 1960s and the 1990s. Instead of quaint traditions, the emphasis was on trendy features, such as the city's entertainment options and doo-wop architecture, Scully said.

He did not know precisely how many years Wildwood skipped its parade, but Scully acknowledged that it was more than Ocean City's five.

"People seemed to lose interest in it, but now it's something the town is behind again," he said.

Leading up to this month's events, officials from each town have relentlessly touted their baby parade as the oldest, the cutest, the largest. Their zeal has recalled the hyperbolic publicity machines of old.

Back then, it was said the parades were the "greatest attraction for summer visitors" and "the summer's not-to-be-missed event." And in that regard, not much has changed.

"It's a fun thing, really, rivalries and everything else aside," said Susan Adelizzi-Schmidt, a spokeswoman for Wildwood.

"Both of these parades are about 100 years of celebrating kids, and that's what the Jersey Shore is all about, whether we're talking about Wildwood or Ocean City."