By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Bill Carapucci has been living in Sea Isle City for 27 years. As much as he enjoys the shore, he says he hasn’t been on the beach in the last three years.
The 75-year-old retiree uses a cane and a walker to help with his mobility. But as a disabled person, he is unable to trudge through the thick, powdery sand to get to the beach, he noted.
“For people with disabilities, it’s almost impossible to get down to the beach,” he said in an interview.
Hoping to improve access to the beaches, Carapucci appeared at a City Council meeting on Tuesday to urge Sea Isle officials to develop some type of service to transport senior citizens and people with disabilities across the sand.
“That’s all I’m requesting,” he said in remarks to the Council members and Mayor Leonard Desiderio during the meeting.
In response, Desiderio promised that the city would work out some arrangement to help Carapucci and other disabled people have more access to the beaches.
“Bill, we can work on this and get this done for you,” said Desiderio, who knows Carapucci.
The mayor, though, stressed that he does not intend for the city to use the Sea Isle Beach Patrol to transport senior citizens or disabled people across the beach because the lifeguards are busy protecting swimmers.
Carapucci’s own idea is for Sea Isle to use specially designed beach wheelchairs that it already has to give seniors and disabled people a lift onto the beach.
He suggested that people could call ahead, perhaps to the Sea Isle City Beach Patrol headquarters, to arrange for someone to meet them with a wheelchair at a beach entrance. They could call again for a ride back to the beach entrance after they are done for the day.
Carapucci’s wife, Terri, has tried pushing her husband in a beach wheelchair, but says it is simply too difficult for her to navigate through the deep sand.
“They are impossible to push,” she said of the beach wheelchairs, which are equipped with oversized rubber wheels designed to make it easier to cross the sand.
“The only way to get him on the beach is by having the neighbors push him,” Terri Carapucci said of her husband.
Bill Carapucci pointed out that other shore communities in Atlantic and Cape May counties have a transport service to help seniors and disabled people get on and off the beaches.
He believes that Sea Isle would need only a few seasonal employees to run a similar service. The city could charge a daily or seasonal fee to help defray the operating costs, he suggested.
“You could have preregistration. You would have to be on the list,” he said of people signing up for such a service.
Carapucci lives on 79th Street in Sea Isle. He is a retired commissioner for the Philadelphia Recreation Department and a former high school teacher in Philadelphia.
He has been soliciting suggestions from the public on a Facebook forum for more ways for Sea Isle to improve access to the beaches.
Sea Isle already has a free beach wheelchair program to help seniors and disabled people enjoy the shore.
People may reserve the beach wheelchairs for anywhere from one day to two weeks through the city’s Recreation Office. For details, see Beach Wheelchairs | Sea Isle City (visitsicnj.com).
The specially designed wheelchairs are lightweight and equipped with giant wheels that allow easier navigation of the sand.
City spokeswoman Katherine Custer said Sea Isle has more than 15 beach wheelchairs available for public use. One is kept in reserve in case of mechanical problems with any of the others.
“They are popular and go fast. They are most commonly used in summer, but they are also available in the spring and fall,” Custer said, urging people to make reservations for a chair as soon as possible.
Sea Isle has also improved access to the beaches by installing more of the popular mobility mats at the entranceways. Made of plastic, the handicap-accessible mats lie on top of the sand and make it easier for everyone – especially senior citizens and people with disabilities – to traverse the beaches.
