Esther Delgado

Esther Delgado (née Scarlino), 88, recalls living in a bungalow on West Eighth Street in Gravesend when she was a child in the 1940s.  In 1929 her maternal grandparents first rented the bungalow for $33 a month because they thought they could walk to Coney Island beach.  After spending summer weekends at the bungalow, her parents moved in year round in the '40s to stay with her widowed grandmother. Delgado recalls days at the beach with her aunt and evenings in the poker arcade on the boardwalk. "But Coney Island has always been a part of my life and it's always been a happy place to go," says Delgado. "I got married in 1959 and raised my three kids close to my mother's home, which of course I live in that home right now. I'm still on West Eighth Street and happy to be here."