“There are days the ocean spits beautiful shells, and the next day, just sand.” Larry Bryant

And so with this sea of life, some days joy, some days—not so much.

But there is always beauty at the shore; it just varies in kind.

Larry is the shell guy of the Long Beach boards. You can find him in front of Gregg LaPenna’s boardwalk shack almost daily. As I said, it seems all old souls orbit Gregg at Lazar’s Glizzy—at one time or another.

Larry started collecting shells from our shore right after his sister, Theresa, died last January. He was feeling down, he said, and he walked our Long Beach shore, sometimes in tears.

Then, he began collecting shells.

A retired Athletic Director at Hicksville High for twenty-six years, Larry’s home is now in Chautauqua Lake, NY. But he’s been in Long Beach for four years, “off and on, he said, mostly on,” he said, picking up his grandson after school. His son, also a Phys Ed teacher, can’t be home when his nine-year-old son gets out of school, so Larry pitches in.

Larry was close with his younger sister; he admired her grit. Theresa Barnak lost all but 20% of her hearing as a child, but that did not deter her from success. She became an art teacher in Buffalo and later became a successful jewelry maker; her work appeared in Buffalo’s Albright-Knox art gallery. Theresa intended to teach Larry how to make jewelry out of sea shells, but she died of Lou Gehrig’s disease before she could.

Larry had a hip replacement near her passing, and his doctor recommended exercise. So, the shell search worked in two ways: It was good exercise, and he said, “I found it cathartic.”

The first shells Larry found he brought to Gregg’s LaPenna’s boardwalk shack to add a bit of shore decor. Gregg thought they added a nice touch and invited Larry to bring more.

Larry noticed people admiring some of them, so he offered to make necklaces for them.

He put holes in the shells and bought ribbons to thread through them. He had fun giving the shell necklaces. Soon, he was in full swing of it, buying spools of colored ribbons and, sometimes matching the ribbons’ colors for specific teams: orange and blue for the Mets and red and blue for the Giants and the Bills.

Larry said low tide was best for shell hunting, but there was no guarantee. He said, “There are days the ocean spits beautiful shells, and the next day, just sand; there’s not a shell to be found.”

As he told me about his shell hunts, I could see his eyes light up and hear his passion for what he does.

Larry wears a necklace made from the core of a conch shell smoothed by the sea and sand. He pointed out to me the beauty of the core, its color, its smoothness. He said, “I found it just like this, all smooth and shiny.”

He said of finding broken conch shells, “I can break off the outer edges,” for the core and machine sand it, “but there is nothing like it rolling on the sand on its own” to make it so finely smooth.

For many of us, loss eases a bit only through time. So to reduce the suffering, we try to keep moving one day at a time. Larry does this, and so does Gregg.

I believe there’s something primal in humans who suffer loss, something in their core that tells them to be active, to do something to bear the hurt. As you no doubt recall, Gregg LaPenna suffered the greatest of agonies, the loss of a young child.

He lost his ten-year-old boy, Lazar last year. So he keeps very busy working at his shack, hour after hour, day after day. The jagged edges of Gregg’s pain have yet to smooth much after a year and a half of life’s grinding. But he has to keep moving, moving to fill his mind with busyness, bringing more goodness into life, but just moving as a shark needs to keep moving—to live.

Larry said, “The real fun is giving somebody something. I won’t take money for them.” He said sometimes people leave money behind anyway, but he puts it in the shack’s tip-jar college fund.

There is something in most of us that resonates when Larry speaks of the fun of “giving somebody something.”

I often take photos of people on the beach or the boards and email the pics to them, just so they can enjoy them, as I enjoy doing it for them.

Doing something for another, simply to do it, is not only good for both, it’s good for humankind.

Larry has another sister, Anita, an artist in France, who is soon coming to the U.S. She knows about Theresa’s plan to help Larry make jewelry from shells. She told Larry, “Save the shells, we’ll figure it out.” I’m sure they will. Anita sounds like a good sister, as was Theresa. These sibs have a good core that only shines more brilliantly through the years and the sands of time.

Larry feels good about his shell work; he’s glad Gregg invited him to use his shack’s front. I think his being active also brings a feeling of purpose to his day.

Positivity emerges from Gregg LaPenna to many at his boardwalk shack. Larry said, “Without him letting me do this?” He paused, swallowed, then said, “I don’t know. I think it’s from heaven.”

Be well,

Leebythesea.