Long Beach to mark 90th anniversary with celebration

Long Beach will celebrate its 90th anniversary as a city on Sunday, June 3, beginning at 9 a.m. at Kennedy Plaza.

Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg, a lifelong Long Beach resident, said he can recall how different the city was when he was younger compared to now.

“Long Beach was probably the greatest place [to grow up] and at the right time because in the fifties — these were the happy years of everything,” Weisenberg said. “When we went to school … everybody knew everybody and every house, every family looked after every other person’s child. We were like one big family.”

Weisenberg, 78, said while he will always love Long Beach, the world has since changed.

“Now the generations that are coming are going to have a lot more of a difficult time,” he said. “They’re never going to have the wonderment and love that we had in our society from the 1950s to what is happening now in our society, where we have anger and violence and drug-addiction … and people are in crisis.”

Weisenberg will be attending the event next Sunday and will serve as a guest speaker, along with Legis. Denise Ford and City Council President Fran Adelson.

“Everybody in the state of New York knows about Long Beach and they’re all envious of the beauty of our city,” Weisenberg said. “We have a population of about 35,000 people … and we’re a very diverse population and the strength of our city is the fact that everybody cares about each other and they work together and that’s what makes us the beautiful city that we [are].”

Long Beach became an incorporated village in 1912, and was first established as a city on June 1, 1922. Linda McNeill, secretary at the Long Beach Island Landmarks Association (LBILA) said she was so excited about the event that she sent invitations out to everyone — including President Barack Obama.

“It was very brazen,” McNeill said. “I don’t expect him to attend, but I just figured, ‘you know what, I’ll send it anyway!’”