5 Long Islanders share their best summer memories

Memories of a summer past — for some in a time before smartphones, streaming apps and constant deadlines — often evoke feelings of fun, freedom and new experiences.

And despite the passage of time, these cherished remembrances can stay well-preserved in one’s mind, decades after they have happened.

“ ‘I long for the lazy, hazy days of summer’ is a nostalgic refrain that many of us utter when thinking about special summer memories,” said Gayle Berg, a past president of the New York State Psychological Association     and a psychologist with a practice in Roslyn Heights.

With extended daylight to regroup and recharge everywhere from summer camps to water parks, the season can “fill a storehouse of memories to hold on to, particularly if they are extremely positive,” Berg said.

According to Charan Ranganath, a professor at the University of California at Davis Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, as people age, “They are more likely to engage in nostalgia and remember events from their youth, say ages 16 to 30.” And since nostalgia is associated with happy memories, “they might be more likely to pull up summer memories” imbued with standout, positive experiences with some emotional content.

Five Long Islanders revisit a long-ago summer that led to new relationships, discoveries and pursuits, and became an unforgettable time in their lives.

CAMP IN A BODY BRACE

In 1971, at the start of a three-summer Jewish teen program, Shari Sidi, then 15, wore a body brace to treat her scoliosis.

Known as LTC for Leadership Training Camp, the initiative was part of the now long-gone Cejwin Camps in Port Jervis, New York. Its varied classes included Hebrew and Jewish culture, and participants spent their third LTC summer in Israel.

The brace, made of rigid plastic, stretched from her hips to her neck and closed in front with “heavy Velcro,” recalled Sidi, 70, of Plainview.

She was allowed to remove the device four hours a day and used that time for swimming and Israeli dancing.

Sidi said she “accepted the brace,” but it was a fellow camper a year ahead of her who uplifted her spirits and instilled confidence within her that summer. He became her first boyfriend.

“He saw me for me, even though the brace was more obvious in camp than school,” where layered clothing had hidden it, she said. “Because he didn’t seem to have a problem with the brace, I felt wonderful.”

Beyond Sidi having a caring boyfriend, “it was also a summer of serious personal conversations, with people who were also kind and had each other’s trust,” she said.

The following year, Sidi returned to camp — free of the brace — and performed in Cejwin’s annual Israeli folk dance festival.

“LTC was the perfect place for me,” said Sidi, who is married with three children and 12 grandchildren. “Through dance and music, it gave me a sense of community, and I felt comfortable and thrived.”

Because of her LTC summers, Sidi said she remains observant, teaches Hebrew school and continues her Jewish studies.

AN ALMOST CROSS-COUNTRY TRIP

In 1967, Valerie Wilcox took a cross-country road trip with her parents, younger sister and their cat. Throughout the five-week journey, 15-year-old Wilcox kept a travel diary, which helped seal that summer as one of her most memorable.

Her family’s travel plans encompassed driving from their North Babylon home to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, with stops to see landmarks and cultural sites.

But once they hit Las Vegas, they headed home.

“The dealbreaker was the heat. It devastated my mother,” said the North Babylon resident, who is married and has a son and daughter.

Their transportation — a red pickup truck with a cab-over camper — slept six and included two small bunk beds. In her diary, Wilcox called the lodgings “luxurious.” But with their refrigerator broken, “food was constantly spoiling,” said Wilcox, 73, the World Language Department chair at the Long Island School for the Gifted in Syosset.

Plus, a few days into the trip, her father, while pulling into a Stuckey’s gas station in Bean Station, Tennessee, didn’t account for the camper’s height and hit the roof above the gas pumps. The vehicle’s top right corner caved in, and “the bunk bed fell on top of me,” Wilcox recalled. No one was hurt.

In the next town was a camper factory. Although the plant didn’t manufacture the family’s camper, its crew “sent out for everything that matched ours — even the design on the aluminum — so you’d never guess there was an accident,” she said. The workers also stopped the assembly line to concentrate on the family’s camper. The bill for everything — after insurance — amounted to $288.

While their vehicle was undergoing custom repairs, the factory also lent the family a pull trailer to stay in.

After they’d been on the road again for several days, a steep downhill ride — with no guardrails at the cliff’s edge — had them spooked. “It was really scary,” Wilcox said. “My mother couldn’t look and took a tranquilizer.”

With its ups and downs, the trip enabled Wilcox “to see what a gorgeous, diverse country this is, and meet the Tennessean locals, who were so wonderful to us.”

The trip was one of several family vacations through the years, each “interesting in its own way,” Wilcox said. But the cross-country journey was “extra special because we got to see so much of this gorgeous, diverse country and meet wonderful, helpful people along the way, especially the Tennessean locals, who saved our vacation.”

‘I BAPTIZED 21 YOUNG PEOPLE’

A decade ago, Don Armstead, now 59, participated in a mission to the Philippines.

The trip ran from April to early May, regarded as part of the Philippines summer.

“I baptized 21 young people in the China Seas, and it was so cool to see them swim away as soon as they were baptized and then the next person came up,” said Armstead, a pastor and bishop of the Saint Louis-based Global Affairs for Kingdom Destiny Fellowship International. He and his wife live in St. Albans, Queens, and own MRO Palace, a Lynbrook clothing store.

Having regarded himself as “just a country boy,” Armstead said the baptismal experience gave him spiritual confirmation “that being a missionary” was his calling, the Lubbock, Texas, native said.

Thanks to an invitation from an organization called Hope for Youth, Armstead had landed in the Philippines to be the mission’s worship leader. Although he was a guest speaker at different overnight children’s camps, he spent most of his time at one camp, leading services and teaching kids, parents, people who worked at the camp, pastors and others.

“The parents would come to night services, where I would preach,” he said.

The following summer, Armstead returned to the Philippines and laid the groundwork for a medical mission with a Philippine doctor. A year later, he voyaged three hours on a fishing boat — in shark-infested waters — to a remote Philippine island where many camp families had once lived.

With the physician, who was also a worship pastor, Armstead distributed nonperishable food items.

“That was the beginning of the medical mission in the Philippines that we have today,” he said. Although COVID-19 halted the effort, it is to resume next year with his commitment to bringing doctors and medicine to the area.

The baptisms “helped me understand my purpose and what it was to live in my purpose,” he said.

SUMMER OF ROCK

In the summer of 1979, Ed Schaefer, then 24, was intent on a rock and roll career after earning a music degree in college. Two years earlier, he had helped found the eight-person band Onyx.

“Five nights a week we played — on Long Island, upstate New York, New Jersey and Connecticut,” he said.

With a rented truck to transport its instruments, Onyx traveled with two roadies, a light man and a sound man. “Sometimes, they were making more money than us,” recalled Schaefer, 70, of Rocky Point. “We did it for the love of making music, and had tons of fun.”

Part of the excitement was looking into audiences and wondering who had come specifically to hear the band, he said.

During one of those nights, in Huntington at the now-closed Lion’s Cage, Schaefer said Ritchie Blackmore, the guitarist and founding member of the rock band Deep Purple, “showed up with a friend of a friend” and jammed with Onyx to the song “Smoke on the Water.”

“We were 24 years old and performing two years, so it was unbelievable,” he said.

That summer, Schaefer also met Lisa, his future wife, a hairdresser at a Long Island salon that promoted its longish “rock ‘n roll” haircuts. They have three children.

In 1980, Onyx split up. Eight years ago, Schaefer, who holds a master’s in music education, retired as a music and band teacher at Bay Shore High School.

Today, Schaefer has his own record label, Coeur de Corbeau, and a recording studio in his basement, where, this summer, he and his former bandmates created another formidable memory: They recorded a song together.

“It was the coolest thing for me and my buddies,” he said.

BONDING OVER A BOAT

In 1963, with money from summer jobs, chores and his father, Smithtown resident Warren Darress Jr., then 16, purchased his first boat. “The price was only $400,” the Port Washington native said.

 The seller “had just wanted to get rid of” the 16-foot Evinrude motorboat, which required a top-to-bottom restoration, said Darress, 78, who is married and lives in Smithtown.

That summer, he worked with his father in giving the vessel — which he named Anne after his younger sister — a new wooden bottom, deck and seats. His father, a mechanical engineer and skilled craftsman, reinforced Anne with fiberglass, and the younger Darress would skipper the boat into Long Island Sound and Manhasset Bay.

Over the years, Darress, a retired Hewlett Packard computer project manager, said he would tell his three daughters about their paternal grandfather. “He wasn’t a mushy type of person, so we would talk about things like life while sailing or doing projects together.”

Although his father could have bought a brand-new boat for him, Darress said he would have missed out on the “bonding experience” it provided that summer.