Storms That Took Our Sittum

AC Hall design for Ocean Park with
dune front deck, 1967

This first person account by Tom Tempel, who lives across the road from Ocean Park and the sittum, vividly recalls the stormy years of 1996 through 1999. It gives life to the hurricanes and northeasters, the efforts to repair damage and respond to nature’s pounding. Key to it all are the many people Tom introduces who worked to make the Ocean Park sittum the pleasant restful spot it is. The post originally appeared as an article in the June 2016 issue of The Shoreline.

Early Sittum History

The deck at Ocean Park, perched high on the dune overlooking the beach and Atlantic Ocean, has been used for decades as a place to sit and enjoy the day.  The locally coined name “sittum” first appeared in the August 1975 issue of The Shoreline, or “Pine Knoll Shore Line” as it was titled then. According to current Pine Knoll Shores resident Bruce Yaeck, his mother, Cres Yaeck, was first to name this deck "the sittum," and it stuck.  The term would come into common usage in Pine Knoll Shores in reference to similar decks along the beach, but the sittum discussed in this post refers to the one in Ocean Park. While speaking of names, Ocean Park was originally called Mimosa Park or Mimosa Beach Park, but for purposes of simplicity, it will in this article always be Ocean Park.