Camden website's founder will be keeping track from Bismarck

At his East Camden home, Phil Cohen was tearing up a floor as part of a kitchen renovation in 1982 when he discovered the old newspapers under the linoleum.

Their stories and ads from February 1942 painted a fascinating picture of a Camden that no longer existed - with movie theaters, new-car dealerships, and major grocery stores.

Cohen was enthralled.

He held on to the papers - copies of the Camden Courier-Post and a weekly shopper - and decided to "do something with them someday."

Ultimately, they became the impetus for a nonprofit website (www.dvrbs.com) in 2002 that mushroomed into a cyber-museum of bygone Camden, used by thousands over the years for research or entertainment.

Cohen, 58, a longtime city resident who relocated to Pennsauken in 2006, plans to move again with his wife, Livia, to Bismarck, N.D. But he says he won't give up his love of Camden's history.

"I'm going to continue working on the website and have enough material to keep me busy until I'm 115," he said. "There's no reason to stop unless my eyes go.

"I've been the cause of sleepless nights for many people," he said with a laugh. "Some tell me they've been up to 4 o'clock in the morning, wandering through the site."

Many reproduced documents on the site have come from the collection of the Camden County Historical Society in the city's Parkside section. Cohen also scours other online sites for pieces of Camden's past.

"The site is amazingly useful," said the society's executive director, Jason Allen, "I use it for things I can't find here.

"Someone may call and ask about a church," he said. "I can go to his site and find what they're looking for."

Keeping Camden's records and "its history alive is important because people don't remember what the city was like," Allen said. "Preservation without purpose is hoarding and [Cohen] is not hoarding.

"He has a purpose," he said. "He gives people access to history that touches their lives."

Cohen grew up in Cherry Hill and graduated from Cherry Hill West High School in 1973. But he spent most of his time from 1975 to 2006 - apart from a few brief stints in suburbia - in Camden. "It was cheap," he said, "and I always felt at home there."

When he moved into a house there three decades ago, Camden was far different from the city described in the newspapers he found. Some parts remained but much had changed.

"I saw an ad for a bar that was still around the corner," said Cohen, who first came to the city as a Rutgers University student. "There were stories about World War II and offers of sands to the public to put out fire, in case there was a German air raid."

Cohen began working as a purchasing expediter for the Camden Housing Authority in 1990, and also played old soul and blues records under the name of Phil Casden in clubs around Camden.

As Casden, he landed a radio show on WNJC-AM (1360) in Sewell in 1997. "I bought time on the station and sold commercials to support the show," he said.

But he gave up his second job as DJ after being promoted at the Housing Authority to purchasing agent and also began spending his spare time on the Internet, where he established the Delaware Valley Rhythm and Blues Society website with a 24-hour webcast.

"I had been playing with computers since the early '80s," Cohen said. "It seemed like fun. I taught myself how to do Web pages."

At the same time, he was thinking about those 1942 newspapers. By 2002, he was posting articles and documents about ordinary Camden residents, veterans, public officials, neighborhoods, businesses, bars, parks, historic sites, and public buildings.

"One day, I was at my American Legion Post on Broadway, looked at a monument there, and took down a list of names of those who died in World War II," said Cohen, a Navy veteran. "I compared them to the name tags on a wall in City Hall."

He found discrepancies between the two and ended up researching veterans not only from World War II - but from the Spanish American War through Vietnam.

"I had to find every monument, so I drove all over the county looking for them," Cohen said. "I even found one under the Betsy Ross Bridge.

"I also went to the historical society and read newspapers. I did everything I could to find out" about the lost service members.

Cohen found more than 200 World War II dead alone and completed Web pages on all but about 25. "There are still some mysteries," he said.

The research of veterans led him into researching the schools they attended, the places they worked, and the streets they lived on."

"It mushroomed out from there," Cohen said. "What started out to be something I did in my spare time became a calling."

Cohen spent up to 30 hours a week on the site in the past and says he'll continue the work - as his health allows - into the future. He usually receives a few hundred dollars in public donations each year.

The site "is a labor of love," he said. "I don't make anything off of it but I've spent considerable time and money.

"It has to be done," he said. "It's strictly about education, spreading information."

Over time, the website has drawn growing numbers of researchers and history buffs.

"There's so much on there," said Jason Allen. "I have used his website for research myself.

"It's amazing, and we're lucky to still have him care about Camden though he'll be halfway across the country," Allen said. "What's he's done is great for people who live, work, and care about Camden."

The website is "not about the rich and famous," said Cohen, who said he is retiring to North Dakota because the cost of living is better there for retirees. "Somebody had to tell the real story of Camden."