Carousel enthusiast part of Seabreeze family

Each summer morning, the Seabreeze carousel comes alive with bobbing, intricately painted basswood horses and squealing staccato music from the band organ's inner maze of valves and pumps.

But before the ride opened this year, a small hunchbacked man would visit the carousel building in the morning to fiddle with the organ's tubing and supervise the repainting of the carousel's ornate decorative carvings.

Matthew Caulfield, 81, first heard the merry-go-round music when he was visiting the park, then called Dreamland, as a wide-eyed Rochester 9-year-old.

"It's just one of those things … why do you fall in love? I just did," he said. "I would ride some rides, but mostly listen to the organ … I was captivated by the sound."

That moment sparked a lifelong love affair with amusement parks and carousels for Caulfield, who's the oldest member of the Seabreeze staff and lives within walking distance of the park in Irondequoit.

"It's more than (the music) … it's the horses and everything, and the fact that it's a center place of any good amusement park," Caulfield said.

While Caulfield loved the park's atmosphere, he wasn't always keen to work there, he said — he needed a summer job while in college and reluctantly applied at Seabreeze. He ended up spending the next nine summers there, climbing the ranks to become food manager — making a killing at $1.15 per hour.

He decided he wanted a change after finishing degrees at the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago studying classics. He learned a bit of library science in Chicago and took a job cataloging books at the Library of Congress in 1962.

When he wasn't keeping track of the nation's books over 35 years, he collected Wurlitzer carousel music rolls — rolls of perforated paper that act as a map to a fairground band organ's air valves, producing a lively tune.

He met his wife Birthe after putting an ad in the Washington Post looking for a native of Denmark to teach him Danish. She responded to his request from Copenhagen, and they've been married for nearly 44 years.

He collected about 125 music rolls in Washington and all the while, he couldn't get the Seabreeze merry-go-round out of his head. He wanted to go back to Rochester.

"That was sort of a shock," Birthe Caulfield said. "Basically he went from $70 dollars an hour to $7 dollars an hour, and I thought that was going backwards."

But after moving her life to Rochester for a carousel, she was able to watch her husband do something he was passionate about every day.

"You can see his love for the park, simply," she said. "You talk about the music rolls, he can tell you what tune it is and what number roll it is. It's amazing to have that kind of memory … other things that are not so important to him, he forgets."

Caulfield was welcomed back to Seabreeze with open arms in 1997, bringing with him his collection of music rolls to replace those that were incinerated in a devastating 1994 fire.

"I told the family, if they would get an organ that would play those rolls, I would give them the organ rolls," he said. Many of his rolls had worn or missing labels, so he didn't know the titles or composers of the organ tunes — Caulfield has since identified all but a handful of tunes on 150 rolls.

The park had an organ built by a renowned Belgian company to the exact parameters of the original Wurlitzer style 165 organ. Thanks to Caulfield, the park has the largest collection of style 165 band organ rolls in the world.

Caulfield ran the merry-go-round and organ from inside the ride's central column for about 14 years, took pictures for smiling families taking children on their first carousel ride, and chased off teenagers goofing off and crying that "the merry-go-round is for babies."

"I wouldn't stand for that," Caulfield said. "When people were happy and behaving and enjoying themselves, that was what I wanted."

A few years ago, Caulfield started having trouble standing at the carousel for long periods of time. Then he got pneumonia — he doesn't remember when. Birthe said it was last year.

"Last year? … Time goes fast," he sighed.

The weakness and illness forced Caulfield to step down from running the carousel. But he hasn't been able to keep away from the park.

He organized vintage park documents and photos in recent years and became the de facto park archivist, "because I know more about the park from the old days than anybody left there," he said.

The park's staff asked him back to fix the organ and retouch the horses — "I couldn't walk away from it … it's hard not to be involved," he said.

Having Caulfield around is inspiring to everyone who knows and loves Seabreeze's history, said Genevieve Norris, daughter of Seabreeze president Rob Norris and great-granddaughter of George Long Jr., who bought the park in 1946 and managed it until his retirement in the 1970s.

"He's really been a nice addition to our adopted family that we have here," she said. "He cares about keeping the tradition alive and keeping everything up to date and clean."

Caulfield is often at the park before it's open, and many employees know him as a man who knows the details about the park's beginnings, she said.

"His memory is very sharp — he knows things that I've never known," she said. "All the employees really respect him for the knowledge he brings to the park."

Working at Seabreeze Park wasn't like the usual, cookie-cutter grind of theme park work, Caulfield said.

"Seabreeze Park is a family-owned park … the family got together and made it the way it used to be," he said.

Video: Take a ride on the Jack Rabbit

Caulfield has ridden the carousel about 20,000 times. After 70 years of attending the park, there are several rides he won't try, including the classic Jack Rabbit roller coaster — he's afraid of heights.

Does Caulfield still ride the carousel? "Oh sure … I have a key to it so I can start it up and ride it whenever I want to," he said.

But he'd much rather ride with a wide-eyed child who just picked out his or her very first carousel steed.

"It would be no fun to ride it all by myself," he said.

STADDEO@DemocratandChronicle.com

The Seabreeze legacy

Seabreeze Park started in the late 1800s as a tract of land owned by the Rochester & Suburban Railway Company that was only accessible by boat or rail. Concession stands were encouraged to set up on the land, and by 1903, it was filled with small amusements and hotels.

Arthur Long of the carousel-building Long family moved to Rochester in the 1890s and opened a carousel at Ontario Beach Park. His brother George then moved his own hand-crafted carousel to Seabreeze in 1904. That carousel later went to Seneca Park and was replaced with a Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel in the 1920s.

George Long's son George Long Jr. bought the park for $85,000 in 1946, renaming it "Dreamland Park" and managing it until his retirement in the 1970s. His family still operates the park today.

In 1994, a fire originating from a tar roofing job at the park destroyed the 1926 carousel, funhouse, arcade, shooting gallery and other attractions. A new carousel and a new band organ — fashioned by a Belgian company as an exact replica of the original Wurlitzer organ — opened in 1996.

SOURCES: Matthew Caulfield, Rob Norris and Genevieve Norris