TOMS RIVER — Brian Garofalo was just a few minutes into his Hurricane Sandy story when the memories started to overwhelm him.
Sitting at his kitchen table, he described how the storm destroyed his business at the Beach Bar in Seaside Heights. Then, he detailed how he and his wife evacuated their Toms River house in the dark, carrying out their sleeping children as the first floor began to flood.
In the aftermath, family members showed up to help clean up the devastated house, which had also caught fire during the storm.
"I don't think I could do it by myself," Garofalo said, fighting back tears.
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Garofalo has told his Hurricane Sandy story multiple times over the last two years -- to friends, neighbors, insurance adjusters and too many government agencies to count.
View of the damage to the Beach Bar in Seaside Heights after Hurricane Sandy in a 2013 file photo. The bar was destroyed in Hurricane Sandy. Brian and Jennifer Garofalo, who owned the food concession at the bar, recounted their story for the College of New Jersey's new Hurricane Sandy oral history archive. (Tony Kurdzuk | The Star-Ledger)
But this time, he was telling it for history.
Garofalo was one of nearly 100 New Jerseyans interviewed about their Hurricane Sandy experiences for a new oral history archive created by the College of New Jersey.
The project, modeled after similar oral histories recorded in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, chronicles the stories of ordinary New Jerseyans, first responders, state officials and others who lived through the 2012 storm.
The idea is to create a permanent record of Sandy's impact on the state for future historians. Hundreds of years from now, scholars may comb through the transcripts to document how the storm impacted New Jersey physically and emotionally.
"It's an event that radically affects the culture and identity of the state," said Matthew Bender, an associate professor of history at the College of New Jersey and the project's coordinator.
Kean University, Monmouth University and the Brooklyn Public Library are among the other schools, museums and libraries creating similar Sandy-focused oral history archives.
Bender expects the College of New Jersey's Sandy archive to be among the largest. The college launched a Hurricane Sandy Oral History Project website earlier this month with plans to post transcripts from the first 100 interviews, along with photos and other materials.
Art of the interview
The transcripts were compiled by 18 students who took Bender's course on oral histories last semester. The students, who were mostly sophomores and juniors, learned the theory and practice of interviewing and recording people who lived through historic events.
Then, the students formed teams and began traveling the state to find people to interview. Some focused on the Shore. Others looked for interview subjects who experience Sandy's flooding in Hoboken or along the Bayshore in Monmouth County.
The students also took oral histories from government officials, National Weather Service forecasters, reporters, park officials and others who had prominent roles during the hurricane.
"There has been tremendous enthusiasm among students," Bender said. "I have them running all over the state and they've never complained once."
The students used small digital voice recorders to interview their subjects. They read pre-written questions to guide the subjects through their stories. But the students mostly stayed silent, letting the Hurricane survivors tell their stories in their own words.
Most of the interviews take between 30 and 90 minutes, Bender said. Then, the students transcribe and edit down the interviews into narratives to post on the website.
'Completely eye opening'
Caileen Fitzpatrick, a senior special education and history major, said the project was a lot of work. But it was fascinating.
Fitzpatrick took the oral histories of several subjects, including a park official from Island Beach State Park, a Seaside Heights police dispatcher trapped on the island for days after the storm and a mother who lived in 13 different hotels with her two young children in the months after Sandy.
"Everyone's had a different story and it's been completely eye opening," said Fitzpatrick, 21. "I was inland in Lakehurst (during the storm). The most I lost was cable and wifi."
Fitzpatrick selected the Garofalo family to interview after hearing about their story from a friend in Seaside Heights.
She interviewed Garofalo and his wife, Jennifer, at their kitchen table in April. Afterward, the student lingered to look over the couple's snapshots of Sandy's destruction of their house and business.
Retelling their storm story from start to finish was more difficult than they expected, the couple said.
"I didn't think it would dredge up so many emotions two-and-a-half years later," said Jennifer Garofalo, 38.
Building something bigger
The hurricane ripped a wall off the Beach Bar in Seaside Heights, the popular boardwalk restaurant where the Garofalos worked and owned the food concession. The owner of the building never rebuilt after the storm and the Garofalos remain involved in an ongoing legal dispute over their business losses.
The family opened a new business, Silver Bay Bagels in Toms River, and are still repairing the storm damage to their house. As they were interviewed for the oral history project, they were preparing to move out temporarily so the house could be lifted six feet and put on stilts, like many in their bayside neighborhood.
The Garofalos said the hardest part of Hurricane Sandy has been dealing with the red tape and bureaucracy as they navigated insurance claims and government programs to find money to rebuild. They said they hope their story shows historians the lasting impact of the storm on ordinary families.
"I knew that our story should get out sometime. There weren't too many people that lost as much as we did," said Brian Garofalo, 42.
Bender said he hopes to continue his class in future semesters and add more oral histories to the archive. New Jerseyans interested in sharing their stories can volunteer to be interviewed through the project's website.
"What I would like is for the 100 histories to be part of something bigger," Bender said. "There are literally millions of stories to be told."
Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find NJ.com on Facebook.