Guenther – 100 Years, Five Generations

It isn’t unusual for the Guenther family to get together every summer, generations of the family coming from states across the nation to celebrate their family, their successes, their events and their history.

But this year, the Guenthers will mark a special occasion as they can trace these annual get-togethers back 100 years.

And the celebration as always, will be held in Highlands where Bruno and Mary Guenther first brought their three children for a summer holiday in 1924. The Guenthers had come from Germany and settled in New York and had taken their family on camping trips every summer. But in 1920, when there was illness in the family, the camping trips had to stop.

However, the family lived between 9^th and 10^th streets in New York and knew about a ferry they knew went to Highlands. So they decided to see what the little New Jersey town was like for a summer.

The couple packed up their young ones and took the ferry to Highlands, staying first at the Blair House on Navesink Avenue, a hotel which was across Route 36 from the current Off the Hook Restaurant.

The family had a boat that first year and knew from the onset that Highlands was where they wanted to spend every summer.

After that first year at the Blair House, the family rented a bungalow in The Grove, a group of bungalows on Portland Road. By 1938, as the youngsters grew and enjoyed swimming in the Shrewsbury River as well as across the bridge in the ocean, the Guenthers bought their first house here. It was obvious they loved Highlands, as they made their purchases three days after the Great Hurricane of 1938.

Five yeas later, the couple moved from that house and purchased another, this one at 4 Marine Place in the Water Witch section of the borough. It was September, 1943, and the Guenthers now owned a “Kit House,” a type of bungalow popular at the time and made by Montgomery Ward or Sears and put together on the site.

Those houses and much of Highlands underwent considerable damage in the next big hurricane that ravaged the area in 1944. Undaunted, sons Arthur and Walter rebuilt their summer home facing the Shrewsbury River and it has survived many storms since then, the most damaging through those years, Hurricane Donna in September, 1960.

But it was the next Guenther generation, the generation of Walter, Kurt, Eric and Janet who once again rebuilt the Guenther Summer residence. Superstorm Sandy ravaged the entire lower level of Highlands in 2010, and the family, still devoted to summers in Highlands, rebuilt the Marine Place sanctuary and raised it in anticipation of possible future storms. Through it all, their motto has always been “Living right on the river is sometimes tough, but always wonderful.”

Nor has the family simply come to town summers and enjoyed all that Highlands has to offer. They became involved not only in the borough but in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church as well, where they are summer parishioners. Walter is recognized as one of the historians of the borough and has given walking tours identifying the families, stores, and other businesses that earlier Guenthers frequented during their summers at the shore.

Now, a century after Bruno and Mary brought their three children for a summer holiday by the sea, there are five generations of the family, together with extended family and the scores of friends the family has met through the years, who have shared memories, laughter, unique experiences, comfort in sad times, and summer recreation and relaxation in Highlands, with plans and hopes to continue the family tradition for another century or more.

Guenther