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SEA BRIGHT — As the final meeting of Dina Long's 17-year career in public service got underway Dec. 17, residents stood up one by one and made it clear: The town was still standing, thanks to her.
Long could breathe easy. She had feared her last night on the dais would give people a chance to settle scores. But now there were no more battles to fight, and that was a good thing, because for all of the leadership qualities she brought to the job, she never learned how to develop a thick skin.
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'I don’t want to get to a place where I don’t care what people are saying,' Long had said a few days earlier. 'If you get to the point where it doesn’t bother you, you've lost an essential part of your humanity.'
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Long, 50, is stepping aside as mayor of Sea Bright when her term is done at the end of 2019, ostensibly concluding a momentous career in local politics. When she was first elected, she thought she would spend 15 hours a week or so leading the tiny beach-side borough, only to be thrust into the national spotlight after Superstorm Sandy decimated her town.
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What followed was on-the-job training that had no road map. Long leaned on the organizational skills she developed as a political fund-raiser. She overcame her stage fright with the help of public speaking experts. And she reached across the political aisle, knowing it could cost her any chance of running for higher office.
Long leaves office battered and bruised, tired of the brutal partisanship that is filtering down to local politics, tired of trying to tamp down unfounded rumors spread on Facebook, tired of trying to stay out of Twitter fights.
But she leaves this as a legacy: 'Sea Bright would not be in the condition it is today, seven years after Sandy, if it wasn’t for Dina Long,' former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who teamed up after Sandy with the then-Democratic mayor, recently told the Asbury Park Press.
'It’s just that simple. She deserves the most credit in Sea Bright of anybody for what happened there. It wouldn’t have happened as quickly or as well if it hadn’t been for Dina Long’s relentlessness and her leadership and her charm.' You can hear Long discuss her career in the video below.
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Set between the Atlantic Ocean and Shrewsbury River, Sea Bright is less than five miles long and ¼-mile wide with a year-round population of about 1,400 who believe the benefits of living in a such a beautiful spot outweigh the risk of coastal storms and floods.
The rebuilding from Sandy isn't complete, but the borough under Long received some $40 million or more in state and federal aid — money that went to fill in a gap in the seawall, build two sparkling municipal buildings, spruce up the business district, and help residents raise their homes.
Now, property values are at an all-time high. And Long is certain Sea Bright can better withstand another Sandy-type storm.
As a steady drizzle fell the night of council meeting, the governing body and residents gathered in one of the buildings constructed after the storm. It houses the library, the beach pavilion and meeting room, now named after Long.
Among them were Chris and Sonya Cappillo, both 56. They moved to Sea Bright almost 20 years ago, living in a home on Ocean Avenue that gave them a view of the river and the ocean — along with the dolphins, seals and humpback whales that swam in them.
Their home, however, was just five feet above sea level, leaving it defenseless against Sandy. And in the immediate aftermath, they were directionless, unable to get back home to a town that was decimated.
They gathered with other residents at a meeting at Rumson-Fair Haven High School's football field, where Long was straight with them. It was really bad. It would take years to recover. But if they stuck together, she told them, they would make it.
The Cappillos eventually decided to return, rebuilding their home 19-feet above sea level and buying the home next door.
'I’ve been here 20 years, and I couldn’t imagine all that was on your shoulders,' Chris Cappillo told Long at last week's gathering.
'I would like to thank you, truly. Bravo.' You can hear Long discuss her immediate reaction to seeing the damage in Sea Bright after Sandy in the video below.
In another life, Long, 50, is an English professor at Brookdale Community College in Middletown. Her husband, Robert, a member of the Murphy administration, is deputy commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs.
The couple have a 16-year-old son, Sam, and a mixed-breed dog named Bo.
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Born in Lakewood, Long was just 6 years old and living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when her father, Donald Safran, a real estate executive, died at age 45 of a heart attack, while flying home.
Long remembers only that he had a doll for her in his suitcase that she still has.
It wasn't until she was in her 20s that Long learned her father was under indictment at the time, accused of being part of a scheme with Robert Schmerz, the owner of the Boston Celtics, to bribe Manchester Mayor Joseph Portash in return for support of the Leisure Village housing development.
Long's mother, Lee, married Shore golf pro Ted Graygor, and they moved to Neptune.
Long said she set out to save the world. She went to St. Rose High School in Belmar and then to Rutgers, where she studied journalism and environmental science, determined to hold polluters accountable.
She landed a job before she graduated in Gov. Jim Florio's public affairs office, and then she jumped into his re-election campaign, where she met her husband.
'I was on fire to make the world better from a very young age,' Long said. 'I always thought, what better way? If you want to make a difference in the world, government is it.'
Long always planned to stay behind the scenes.
She returned to Rutgers, got a master's in fine arts at the New School in New York, and began teaching at community colleges. And she kept a foot in politics, becoming director of fund-raising for James McGreevey's successful gubernatorial campaign in 2001 and raising $32 million.
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Rob became a minister and the next year was assigned to Sea Bright United Methodist Church.
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When one of Rob's parishioners, Councilwoman Liz Smith, was moving out of Sea Bright, she asked Rob if he would replace her. He volunteered Dina instead.
The job was unpaid. But Dina thought the chance to serve the community was appealing. She watched and listened and learned the ropes. And when the next election came around in 2003 and no one else was stepping up, she ran for a full term.
'First of all, she was the other party, and that didn’t bother her,' said C. Read Murphy, who was a Republican councilman in Sea Bright for 28 years. 'She worked with everybody, which is something I really appreciated, because I’m not a big fan of the party system.'
Long delved into the nuts and bolts, working to lower the speed limit to 35 mph and sponsoring the borough's first pay-to-play law.
In 2011, Mayor Maria Fernandez, Long's friend and mentor, became too sick to run for re-election and urged her to take her place. Long defeated two challengers, getting 54% of the vote.
Long's mayoral agenda sounds mundane in retrospect: foster better relations between the local government and the business community; expand public access to the beach; figure out how to thrive without enough tax revenue.
But all those plans would have to wait.
As Superstorm Sandy approached in October 2012, Long and her family evacuated to her mother's house in Neptune. Her phone rang at 5 a.m. the morning after the storm. And Dan Drogin, the emergency management coordinator, was on the line with troubling news: Sea Bright was gone.
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Dina and Rob got into their Toyota Avalon, rode up Route 18, wound their way through Oceanport and Little Silver and made it to the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge. They walked across it, and, sure enough, Sea Bright was decimated.
Borough reports would later summarize the damage: A 30-foot wave had swamped the firehouse. Some 53,000 cubic yards of sand were in the streets. More than 800 homes — two-thirds of the borough's total — sustained at least some damage. You could hear the hiss of leaking natural gas all over town.
'We get the gas company on the phone and they’re like, 'Get us to the gas line and we’ll get our crews out to get busy,' Long said. 'We were, like, 'Where’s the gas line? There’s eight feet of sand and debris in the highway. I don’t even know where the road is. And where are we getting a bulldozer?'”
Long's own home, six feet above the ground, was damaged beyond repair. But as she looked around at the surreal scene, she could see beach club owners on heavy equipment starting to dig out.
It was a hint that people wanted to return, even if the decision was irrational.
'I was brought up across the river,' said Chris Wood, the owner of Woody's Ocean Grille, who helped create Sea Bright Rising, a recovery group. 'I spent every waking moment in Sea Bright. It's not just me. It's tons of people.'
'Sea Bright is part of people’s fabric in Monmouth County. People spend some of the happiest days of their life in Sea Bright.'
In the aftermath of the storm, Long came across the 'Do' part of a sign from the landmark beach bar Donovan's Reef and considered it a message from the universe.
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But the initial days were frustrating. She watched the news keep showing the roller coaster from Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, sitting in the ocean. And she said, to no one in particular, 'Oh, your boardwalk got wrecked? Well, my whole town got wrecked.'
She was put in touch with Tommy Longo, the mayor of Waveland, Mississippi, a town that had recovered from Hurricane Katrina, who gave her a crash course in leadership after a natural disaster.
His advice? Get on television.
She cringed at her first television interviews and turned to Dan Leyes, a public speaking instructor at Brookdale, for tips: On television, he told her, don't emote so much. Don't inflect. Don't move around.
But other skills that were second-nature to her — bipartisanship, fund-raising, humility — were coming together for this moment.
A week after the storm, Christie came to town, and Long prepared. She took out a yellow legal pad and jotted down 21 items Sea Bright needed, including re-opening Route 36 and, of course, money, and presented them to the governor.
Long appreciated Christie's candor. She appreciated him simply showing up. And they formed a partnership; Christie said Long was relentless in following up.
It could have been seen as excessive, given the desperate needs of other, much larger towns. But Christie was on board with Sea Bright's recovery, and he quickly considered Long to be an example of strong leadership in a crisis.
'It was never about anything she was asking for personally,' Christie said. 'It was always for the people she represented.'
Politics eventually got in the way. Christie was running for re-election in 2013 against Democrat Barbara Buono, and his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, asked for her endorsement.
Long agreed. She tried to walk a tightrope in her announcement by saying her endorsement wasn't meant as a slight to Buono. But the fallout was intense.
The county's Democratic Party chairman, Vin Gopal, asked her to resign her post as chair of the Sea Bright Democrats. Long said she thought it was a steep price to pay given the unusual circumstances, and she decided to leave the party outright and become an independent.
Asked if he regretted the decision, Gopal, now a state senator, said, yes.
'Dina was always a strong Democrat,' Gopal said. 'She did what was in the best interest of her town and she taught me (a valuable lesson) by always putting Sea Bright first. Her priority was not county politics. It wasn’t state politics. It was Sea Bright.'
Long won re-election in 2015, running unopposed.
By the middle of Long's second term as mayor, Sea Bright was coming back. Restaurants and bars were re-opening. The beach clubs were full.
With it came a new set of problems. Construction on the Mad Hatter, a major restaurant project Long supported over the objections of a local homeowner, stalled when owners needed more money. There was not enough parking. The climate was changing, and the streets flooded in storms.
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But mostly, Long said, she got tired of the breakdown in civility. Americans no longer trust the government or each other, a trend born out in a Pew Research Center report. And they have taken to Facebook and Twitter to lodge their grievances, sometimes anonymously, often without filter.
'It takes a toll,' Long said.
Long's mother died in March. Tommy Longo, the Mississippi mayor who guided her through Sandy, died a month later. And with her second term coming to an end, Long decided she'd had enough.
She declined to run for re-election and began to talk about going to other storm-ravaged areas, like Puerto Rico, to build homes. She occasionally thought twice about whether the journey was worth it before deciding in the end that it was.
'Families in the community were confident that Dina consistently put Sea Bright ahead of any parochial and political interests,' former Gov. McGreevey said. 'What's neat and special was Dina did so not because it was expedient, but because she understood it as the right course, the virtuous course.'
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They gathered at the final meeting of the year in the newly named Dina Long Community Room. The Sea Bright police presented Long a bouquet of flowers. The residents thanked her for the sacrifices she made.
And she signed one last ordinance, restricting the use of plastic bags, straws and balloons, finally holding polluters to account.
'There being no other business, we'll take a motion to adjourn,' she said. 'All in favor?'
Michael Diamond is a business reporter who has written about the New Jersey economy for 20 years. He can be reached at 732-643-4038; mdiamond@gannettnj.com; and @mdiamondapp