Here’s the Scoop: The Avalon Water-Ice Impresario Loves People, And Vice Versa
Jack Quinn makes friends young and old at his water-ice stand.
By Dave Bontempo
Picture elderly kindness, middle-aged energy, sharp business skills, and a storyteller’s instinct, in one person. Add a smile and the backdrop of Surfside Park. Blow up the image to include a large crowd, mostly children, loving their water-ice maestro.
That image describes Jack Quinn, whose homemade recipe and water-ice enterprise became Avalon fixtures the past six years. A couple months shy of 89, this venerable yet sharp Avalon second-homeowner enjoys an encore business, launched on the heels of COVID.
Quinn doesn’t emphasize its finances. Success is measured instead by how well he engages the public.
As a Navy veteran, author, insurance executive, restaurant owner, and now the water-ice impresario, he’s always wanted to be around people. Lots of them. Quinn believes some of that comes from spending time in an orphanage once the death of his father broke up his family at age 10.
This, therefore, represents the latest step in that journey.
“Truthfully, I get a bigger kick out of it than the kids,” he says after another day of work. “Their eyes get as big as silver dollars. These are such wonderful people, too. I love these little kids, 7, 8, and 9 years old, calling me Jack. There’s something fun about kids calling an adult by his first name.
“One girl [whom he identified as Taryn Rose] told me the water ice was different and better than anything she’d ever had,” he recalls. “What does this wonderful 14-year-old girl do? She spends a couple weeks making me a waterproof sign that says Jack’s Home-Made Water Ice. Think of all the work that went into that. I was amazed. I can’t even figure out how to do that myself.”
The sign is on the premises every day.
Quinn says that another young girl, 12-year-old Norah Henny, once picked up the heavy tubs that stored the water ice and brought them to his car, without him knowing.
“These things give you a lot of faith about the future,” he says.
Quinn’s interaction with the kids launches a storytelling journey of his life. About seven months of each year unfold in Haverford, Pa. The other five are here, where he’s had a home for a couple of decades.
Much of his Avalon time is in water-ice mode.
Quinn starts the day by transporting the tubs by car to his spot at the bottom of the boardwalk. Each tub contains a different flavor. He usually brings four.
The water ice becomes more than a transaction. It’s a vehicle for social interaction, his favorite pastime.
“I love being here,” he asserts. “I meet people from my high school in Pennsylvania. I meet people from the Navy. People come up and tell me their stories, which I really love. We talk about baseball. We talk about golf. You know, I teach putting.”
Yes, we do. Quinn says he’s not a good overall golfer but has mastered a unique putting method placing a large emphasis on the shoulders. He self-published a book last year, “So You Think You Can Putt,” and wants to promote it. He’s trying to annex support from Eric Trump, the president’s son and a major player in the family’s international golf operations.
Hawking a book at this time of life?
Everything in Jack Quinn’s life, it appears, sports a twist of panache.
His route to Avalon took many turns, including the orphanage experience. Quinn spent some time at the Girard College orphanage in Philadelphia before being matched up with families.
He joined the Navy after finishing high school. He focused on aviation as an electronic technician. He fixed everything from radios to radar and electronic counter measures. The ECMs were used to disrupt enemy radar via methods like jamming, spoofing, and creating deception. They also could detect the presence of enemy submarines.
Quinn served on the USS Forrestal. It was the first carrier built specifically to handle jet aircraft, pioneering the angled flight deck, optical landing system, and steam catapults.
His Navy tenure stretched from 1956-62. His final rank was AT2 (Aviation Electronics Technician Petty Officer 2nd Class (E-5). He left “because a career in the Navy was a promise of poverty.”
He chose the road to affluence. Quinn would become an insurance executive, want a family, and, married his sweetheart, Vincentia. She grew up wanting to be called “Vinny,” with the male spelling, but her younger brother could not pronounce the V. It morphed into Binny, which she uses today. Jack and Binny are married 51 years, have one daughter and three granddaughters.
People, always people, fill the center of Quinn’s life.
In 1971, he purchased the Lamplighter Tavern in Havertown and employed most of his workers from that town. Consider that impact on the local economy: carpenters, plumbers, electricians, bus boys, dishwashers, bartenders, and waitresses all made and spent money locally. Quinn believes he hired 400-500 employees over the years, spanning three generations. It was a revered community gathering spot and he was right in the middle of it. He said the late heavyweight champion Joe Frazier once sang there.
Along the way, in his New Jersey shore life, Quinn said he opened the esteemed Peter Shields restaurant in Cape May. He later sold it.
Quinn discovered the Avalon charm when visiting his aunt, who was renting a place on 34th Street. He drove down with his grandfather, stayed a couple of days, and became enticed.
“Everybody said ‘Hello” to you,” he recalls. “They weren’t trying to keep up with the Joneses. A lot of people would sit at home, play cards, and go out to bars. Everybody would speak to everybody else. Nobody put on any airs.”
So, Jack and Binny bought an Avalon address. He doesn’t remember the date but figures it was more than two decades ago.
Quinn maintained the Lamplighter establishment for almost 50 years until COVID forced its closure. He was in his early 80s, more than old enough to jump off the treadmill and enjoy a sun-soaked shore retirement, when that life direction hit.
Did he stop? Nope.
He still owned sophisticated machinery, which could make adult water ice (rum, vodka, whiskey, bourbon, etc.). One day, Quinn noticed a vendor selling the regular water ice outside his place by the hundreds. The man suggested Jack enter the water-ice business after the pandemic.
So, he did, right in Avalon, gaining the right permits and launching a business with a big advantage. The machines he already owned (some of which he estimated cost $30,000) saved him an upfront investment and helped produce a water ice with natural ingredients.
Quinn’s machines create the water-ice inventory in Pennsylvania. It is brought here, frozen, and later served. He works primarily from noon-5pm.
Over the course of time, he’s developed other niches. Quinn normally closes the business by Labor Day. But one unexpectedly warm Saturday last October, he drove down from Pennsylvania to see who was here. Turns out he had water-ice product to serve a huge, unexpected demand.
“Five or six buses pull up and they are all kids who had been running cross country,” he says with a smile. “They were dying of thirst, I was told. People asked if I could make a point to be here again. I told them to give me the cross-country schedule and I came back.”
Another yarn concerns a large water-ice company.
“A major executive from that company asked what I thought about their water ice,” he recalls. “I told him it was no good, that it didn’t have the all-natural ingredients mine did. Then he told me he was the CEO! I said I was sorry if I was rude and he said, ‘No problem. Let me try the mango.’ He asked if he could buy the formula. I told him it was not for sale.”
Quinn brought his own life into another anecdote concerning a bragging parent.
“About two months ago, I’m in a doctor’s office and this guy goes on and on about his kids for 45 minutes,” he recalls. “It was nonstop. He told me how advanced they were and everything and how his youngest, 17, was already accepted at college, etc., etc. So, finally I said, ‘Guess how old I was when I was accepted or college?’ He had no idea. I said, ‘10 and a half.’
“He said that couldn’t be possible. I told him it was. I was accepted into Girard College when I was 10-and-a-half. It’s an ORPHANGE!” he adds, bursting into laughter. “The nurse couldn’t stop laughing.”
True. Girard College opened as an orphanage in 1848 and still provides free tuition for Grades 1-12, based on economic need.
So it goes for Quinn, one story, one day, one water ice at a time. He provides a service; customers provide a social lifeline.
He’s broken any mold concerning a sedate, post-work life. Jack Quinn savors his role among the people and that’s why you never know what bonus comes with the water ice.
Order one this summer and maybe a story will come with it.
