When my grandma Mary Lou Parsells Falco talks about Asbury Park, she doesn’t begin with the landmarks visitors know today. She doesn't start with Convention Hall or the beach, the Stone Pony or the city's celebrated revival. Instead, her memories return to ordinary places that, over the course of 95 years, became extraordinary simply because they belonged to her.
She remembers the walk from her family's home at 1201 Sunset Avenue to Bradley Grammar School, a journey that required crossing Fifth Avenue, then Fourth and then Third before reaching the building at Third and Pine Street. To an adult, it was only a few blocks. To a kindergartner, it felt like independence.
"I think walking back and forth to Bradley School for kindergarten was one of my earliest memories," she recalled. "To me, that was a big deal."
The route remains as vivid in her memory today as it was nearly nine decades ago. She can still picture the intersections she crossed, the neighborhood surrounding her family's home and Deal Lake stretching behind the property. Time has altered the city in countless ways, but not the mental map she carries with her.
Mention a childhood summer and she can tell you exactly where her grandfather stepped off the train at North Asbury Station before taking her to the boardwalk. Mention the Paramount Theatre and she remembers not only the movies she watched there but climbing onto the roof with her father after afternoon matinees. She recalls the inexpensive price of ice cream, riding her bike to the massive Monte Carlo Pool and the smell of fresh bread from her husband's family’s Italian bakery.
Mary Lou was born on May 25, 1931, at Ann May Memorial Homeopathic Hospital in Spring Lake, but by then her family's story in Asbury Park was already well underway.
Her father, John Parsells, born in 1891, served in the New Jersey Cavalry before being sent to France, where he served under General John J. Pershing during World War I. After returning home, he resumed civilian life in Asbury Park, where he met Louise DeRose, a gifted pianist whose musical talent earned her a reputation as a prodigy. Their meeting took place at the Paramount Theatre, the beginning of a family story that would become deeply intertwined with the city.
Long before Mary Lou was born, John and Louise experienced a serious loss. After Louise's sister and her husband both died, they adopted the late couple’s young son, Dana, and raised him as their own. Mary Lou arrived eight years later.
John and Louise had built their home on Sunset Avenue in 1924, seven years before Mary Lou's birth. Asbury remained her world until she married and moved to neighboring Ocean Township years later.
"My parents lost everything," she said of the Great Depression, which struck just two years before Mary Lou was born. "They had all this money in the Savings and Loan. It closed, and they lost all their savings.”
Yet even in telling the story, she doesn't dwell on bitterness. Her father continued working, Louise found occasional work as a pianist and the family kept its home.
"Everybody loved FDR when he was elected," she said. "Herbert Hoover was president when I was born."
Mary Lou was 10 when the United States entered World War II.
"I think I was too young to realize what was going on," she said.
Instead, she remembers the routines of wartime childhood.
"We had to hide under our desks when they had the alarm go off."
But the war became deeply personal through Dana.
After graduating from Asbury Park High School in 1942, he joined the Army Air Forces and became the pilot of a B-17 bomber. At just 21 years old, his aircraft was shot down over Europe. Captured by German forces, he spent months as a prisoner of war before being released in May 1945.
"I always think back to when my brother got shot down during World War II,” she remembered. “My mother took it really hard.”
Summer, meanwhile, meant long afternoons with her mother at what is now Loch Arbour.
"I used to get burned so bad," she laughed. "And then after, you couldn't go to the beach because your sunburn was so bad."
Her father, meanwhile, created many of the memories she still cherishes most.
John worked as a projectionist at the Paramount Theatre. During the summer, Mary Lou and her mother often met him for the final Saturday evening show before walking to Tompkins Double Decker for ice cream.
"It was five cents for two dips," she said, still amused by the price.
Sometimes, after afternoon matinees, she and her father climbed onto the roof of the Paramount before heading home.
On Sundays, her grandfather traveled from Elizabeth by train, stepping off at North Asbury Station before collecting his granddaughter..
"He would come down and get me, put me in the carriage and take me to the boardwalk every Sunday," she said. "Put me on the little kiddie rides."
She paused before adding, "Those are all just great memories I have."
In 1941, when an indoor roller-skating rink opened inside the Casino at the southern end of the boardwalk, Mary Lou became a regular. During the winter, when Deal Lake froze, roller skates gave way to ice skates.
By the time she entered Asbury Park High School in 1944, she had become a cheerleader.
There she met football player Joseph Falco Jr, whose family maintained its own connection to the city through Falco's Bakery at 1504 Bangs Avenue.
Although the two went on a handful of dates to the movies and a school formal, their real love story didn’t begin until a bus ride two years later.
Mary Lou was traveling with the cheerleading squad to an away game. Joe was aboard with the football team. Somewhere between Asbury Park and their destination, the pair picked up where they had left off.
By 1948, both had begun stepping into adulthood. Mary Lou accepted a position at Steinbach, the beloved Cookman Avenue department store that stood at the heart of downtown Asbury Park for decades, while Joe started working at the Coca-Cola distribution plant on the Asbury Park Circle in Neptune.
On Christmas Day 1949, Joe asked Mary Lou to marry him.
Eight months later, on Aug. 6, 1950, family and friends gathered inside Mount Carmel Church as the couple exchanged vows in the city where they had both grown up and fallen in love.
The following year, they welcomed their first son, Joseph.
A second son, John, followed in 1953. Soon afterward, they moved across Deal Lake to the Wanamassa section of Ocean Township. Over the next 17 years, James, Garry, Jessica, Janet, Joy and Gaye completed the family, filling the Falco household with the joyful commotion that comes with raising eight children.
Summer almost always brought the family back to Asbury Park.
The beaches and boardwalk that had shaped Mary Lou's childhood became part of her children's childhood, too. Days were spent at Seventh Avenue Beach and the Seventh Avenue Pool, where neighborhood families gathered from morning until evening.
"My kids all learned to swim," Mary Lou said. "Janet and Joy were great divers. They could dive like crazy. They were into gymnastics and all of that, so they were really clever."
One story still makes her laugh. Her son Jimmy climbed to the roof of the pool deck and jumped into the water.
While Mary Lou raised eight children, Joe spent nearly 50 years at the Coca-Cola distribution plant. Together, they built a life defined by steady work, family and an appreciation for simple things.
Ask Mary Lou what life has taught her, and she doesn't hesitate.
"Appreciate what you have," she said. "I've never been one who worried about material things. I figured that if we had food on the table and my kids were all healthy, that's all that mattered to me."
When she looks back now, her greatest source of pride isn't difficult to identify.
"They've all grown up to be great, responsible, independent adults," she said of her children. "Which I am thankful for."
After more than six decades of marriage, Mary Lou faced one of life's greatest heartbreaks.
Joe passed away on Sept. 12, 2014, following a heartbreaking battle with dementia. They had been married for 64 years and 37 days. He was loved by all and is still so dearly missed.
In April 2015, Mary Lou returned to Asbury Park.
She moved into Asbury Towers on Ocean Avenue, across the street from the beach and only blocks from many of the places that had shaped her childhood. It was a return to the city where nearly every chapter of her life had begun.
This past May, the life she and Joe built was on full display.
For her 95th birthday, Mary Lou's eight children gathered nearly 100 family members and friends from across the country to celebrate and watch as Mayor John Moor presented her with a Proclamation from the City of Asbury Park. Almost all of her 29 grandchildren attended, joined by more than 40 great-grandchildren.
The room was filled with four generations of a family that began with two teenagers who met at Asbury Park High School.
At 95, Mary Lou still drives. She still goes to the pool. She still finds joy in the routines that have anchored her life for decades.
Asked what the best part of being 95 is, she smiled.
"That I'm still alive. That I'm still able to move and go to the pool and drive. And, of course, having a wonderful family helps."
Nearly a century has passed since the little girl from Sunset Avenue first walked to Bradley Grammar School. She has lived through the Great Depression, watched her brother survive World War II, raised eight children, mourned the loss of her husband and returned to the city where it all started.
Asbury Park may have changed almost beyond recognition in that time, but Mary Lou's connection to it never really did.
For her, home has never simply been the place where she was born. It is where her parents met, where she met the boy who became her husband, where she learned resilience from her family, where she raised children who would one day raise children of their own, and where, after a lifetime of memories, she chose to return.
Asked where she belongs, Mary Lou's answer is as certain today as it has always been.
"My story began in Asbury Park," she declared. "And it's going to end in Asbury Park.”
My story began in Asbury Park.
Mary Lou Parsells Falco is an example of an Asbury Park lifer. The beloved grandmother was born and raised in the Asbury Park area nearly a century ago. Asbury Park is a much different place than it was during the 1930s but there are some key common denominators. Asbury Park post-depression was a premier, glittering resort destination. That's the same today as folks flock to Cookman Avenue to visit some of the finest restaurants in the state of New Jersey. The beach is the place to be for the summer and then there's the Stone Pony. Convention Hall and the Paramount Theatre opened in 1930 and attracted many seeking fun away from the sun. Parsells Falco is still buoyed by her memories of a glorious Asbury Park and she is spending her twilight years in Asbury Park. Who can blame her? It's a wise choice by a wise woman.