John Delach

February 2016, Reissued July 2025

Late last year, I found myself driving home from Sunset Park, Brooklyn on a mild Sunday afternoon. The unseasonable weather stirred local residents of Bay Ridge to abandon TV images of NFL football games in favor of enjoying an afternoon of walking, jogging, bicycling or just relaxing on their water front park’s promenade overlooking Gravesend Bay, the Narrows and the Verrazzano Bridge. Driving on the Belt Parkway, I took in the scene then caught sight of the old Parachute Jump in the distance towering over Coney Island. I began to think about this now decommissioned landmark as the Belt Parkway steered me closer to this distinctive tower.

The Parachute Jump was designed to be the centerpiece of the amusement area at the 1939-1940 New York’s World Fair. Conceived by a retired navy commander, James H. Strong, he received a concession from the Fair Committee to build, assemble and operate the tower. The 1939 Fair guidebook described the ride:

Eleven gaily-colored parachutes operated from the top of a 250-foot tower enable visitors to experience all the thrills of “bailing out” without the hazard or discomfort.

Each parachute has a double seat suspended from it. When two passengers have taken their place beneath the chute, a cable pulls it to the summit of the tower. An automatic release starts the drop, and the passengers float gently to the ground. Vertical guide wires prevent swaying, a metal ring keeps the ‘chute open at all times, and shock-absorbers eliminate the impact of the landing. One of the most spectacular features of the

Amusement Area, this is also a type of parachute jump similar to that which armies of the world use in the early stages of actual parachute jumping.

Admission was 40 cents for adults and a quarter for children and the drop down took between 10 and 20 seconds. It was the delight of the fair and my mother and father. Then an engaged couple, they took delight in riding this phenomenon multiple times. Growing up, mom would regale me with stories about the fair and especially tales of this ride that both frightened and excited me. After the fair ended, the Tilyou family, who owned Steeplechase Amusement Park purchased the structure and re-assembled it at the  boardwalk entrance to their Coney Island grounds christening it: Brooklyn’s Eiffel Tower.

By the mid-1950s I began to travel to Coney Island with other local neighborhood kids. We’d venture by subway to swim at the beach or to explore the amusement areas behind the boardwalk. We rode the three roller coasters, the famous and still operational, Cyclone, the Thunderbolt and Tornado. We rode the Bob-Sled, a short-thrill ride that performed just as its name implied, the Wonder Wheel, a gigantic Ferris wheel and a peculiar ride called the Virginia Reel. The Reel featured round cars where about six people sat in a circle facing each other. The car rode a chain to the top of a slope, then spun down a zigzag incline bruising as many parts of bodies as possible.

We visited Steeplechase Park but never got up enough nerve or the price of 75 cents to ride the Parachute Jump. Back then 75 cents was an exorbitant price especially when the Cyclone only cost a quarter. But in my head, I thought, “Someday, I’m going to do it.”

Then one windy day, I looked up to see a couple trapped aloft beneath a parachute entangled in the wires. All they could do was sit there and wait until a hook and ladder arrived and the firemen could raise the main extension ladder high enough to rescue them. I was mesmerized by this spectacle and I don’t know what scared me more; watching them being trapped or their 200 feet climb down the ladder!  

After experiencing the horror of that evacuation, it was beyond my nerve to consider a ride on the jump ever again.

Ironically, Steeplechase and its Parachute Jump closed in 1964, the same year that the successor to the 1939 World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows Park. A popular swell of enthusiasm wanted to bring the jump back to the new fair, but Robert Moses, the Tsar of the 1964-1965 Fair, wanted no part of it or an amusement zone.

To this day it remains derelict yet a stately, well-maintained and freshly painted landmark; Brooklyn’s Eiffel Tower.

September 2013, Revised July 2025

Somewhere into the 90-minute guided tour through the decommissioned Congressional bunker hidden under the Greenbrier Hotel, it struck me: “This facility is awful. What a crude place this is. I would have thought the geniuses who designed it would have been more thoughtful!”

It may have been the cramped mini-dormitories where senators, congressmen and congresswomen were expected to sleep on steel springs supporting thin mattresses set into wooden frame bunk beds; 12 to 24 people per room. The inadequate, rudimentary toilets and bathrooms, or the total lack of privacy.

It may have been the minuscule cafeteria appointed in cheap chrome framed Formica tables and stiff plastic chairs circa 1957. It may have been the cafeteria floor with its starkly painted checker board pattern that caused headaches, nausea and a general feeling of anxiety and discomfort. The furniture and the floor were deliberately designed to keep the “inmates” moving and discourage them from lingering there too long. Why? Because the cafeteria was too small to feed most of Congress at any one time.

Or perhaps the two private bedrooms set aside for the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate; rooms so small they would be considered cruel if designed for an American prison.

It may have been when the guide explained the members of Congress were to be forced into the bunker when Armageddon was declared whether or not they wished to go there. Or it may also have been when the guide explained that family members would be forcefully separated from their congressional spouses, fathers or mothers. The bunker was for Congress only and very few of their staff. Families could stay in the hotel itself which bodes the image of the inmates locked away in the bunker behind blast proof doors making decisions of the greatest importance while thinking about their families directly above them dying from radiation poisoning.

The bunker was designed during the 1950s when many of the cabins on passenger vessels didn’t have private bathrooms and may have been considered within the standard of acceptable accommodations even for VIPs. I wonder just how long it took to start the avalanche of complaints once select members of Congress began to visit the bunker once  it opened in 1962. The bunker’s existence was officially revealed in 1992 when it was decommissioned and opened to the public. However, we can safely speculate that a far more opulent successor opened some time prior to 1992.

Rest assured that our distinguished legislators, be they Democrats or Republicans, never abandoned the priority of saving themselves from a nuclear winter; they just wished to do it in style. One day circumstances will change again and this new and improved Congressional shelter will also be revealed. Until then, we can only take stock of what might have been had the Big Red Bear unleashed its arsenal as we all feared while this was their place of refuge.

How would our esteemed Congress survive this ordeal for as long as the six-months they could have remained in the Greenbrier bunker and what would they be like when they emerged? We can only wonder.

This all came roaring back on Friday, July 11, 2025 by way of The New York Times obituary of Paul Bugas, the former director of the bunker from 1971 until its decommissioning in 1992. Unspoken in the obituary, but nevertheless obvious between the lines, Mr. Bugas treated his position with the care and respect it deserved for the degree of responsibility his position expected of from him.

“For more than 20 years, Mr. Bugas had shown up to work at the Greenbrier, along with 12 to 15 other government employees, wearing clothing that helped them blend in with other resort employees. There was communication equipment that had to be maintained; a six-month supply of food that had to be replenished; and filters designed to remove nuclear, biological and chemical contaminants that had to be kept updated. Secrecy was paramount.

”Mr. Bugas served in military intelligence which gave him the necessary security clearance to become director of the Greenbrier bunker, as well as the training to keep a secret. When the bunker was de-classified, Mr. Bugas helped give guided tours. Having the opportunity to explain the work he had long had to conceal may have been cathartic, his son Paul said in an interview.

“Being the consummate Army man, his orders were to preserve an element of democracy if the big one fell,’ Paul said. “ An that’s exactly what he did.”

So, dear reader, who are you going to believe, my fanciful ramblings or that the way Bugas saw it was the way it really was?

“On the Outside Looking In will not publish next week. I hope to resume on July 30, if possible. Stay tuned.”