After His Home Was Flooded and His Music Lost, the Maestro Returns

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times Irwin Meyer, 93, the conductor of the Kings County American Legion Headquarters Band, this week returned to his Brooklyn home, which was flooded by Hurricane Sandy.

Irwin Meyer was never afraid of the sea. He joined the Navy and was on a combat-crippled destroyer off Omaha Beach on D-Day for the invasion of Normandy, and on three subsequent invasions in Europe.

So when Hurricane Sandy approached, Mr. Meyer, 93, scoffed at friends' entreaties that he heed flood warnings and abandon his one-bedroom apartment on East 21 st Street in Sheepshead Bay.

“I thought maybe the electricity might go out, but never that the water would come in,” he recalled. “Who ever heard of a hurricane flooding Brooklyn?”

He finally agreed to stay with friends farther inland in Brooklyn, just before the seawater surged through Manhattan Beach, past the Belt Parkway and up his street. It flooded his ground-level apartment waist-high, claiming his furniture and most of his belongings.

“The whole neighborhood looked like a war zone, including my apartment,” said Mr. Meyer, whose losses included photographs of his childhood growing up in the Bronx, and others of his wife, Minnie, who died 11 years ago, and his son, Stewart, 65, a writer. The water floated his fridge across the kitchen and ruined his three trombones as well as the large collection of obscure sheet music that included roughly 100 hard-to-find band charts â€" as varied as Mozart and Irving Berlin â€" that formed most of the repertory of the Kings County American Legion Headquarters Band, which Mr. Meyer has conducted for the past 35 years.

“I cried when I saw the music was ruined,” Mr. Meyer said. “I can't replace it. I'm too old. It's hard to even find people who want to play this stuff.”

His “old” claim is an exaggeration. Mr. Meyer still drives a 1994 Toyota and drinks three glasses of wine a day. His dejection was short-lived.

“I finally said, ‘Hey, I've seen worse than this,'” said Mr. Meyer, who as a member of the Floyd Bennett American Legion Post in nearby Old Mill Basin, has spent decades visiting veterans in hospitals. When his home was devastated, his good deeds were returned by relatives and friends, who cleaned out, renovated and refurnished his apartment for free.

He moved back in this week and picked through a few still soggy piles of sheet music not yet thrown out, including an 1893 march by John Philip Sousa called “Manhattan Beach.”

Mr. Meyer, who retired about 15 years ago from his electrolysis practice, always played in semiprofessional symphony orchestras, including the Brooklyn Doctors' Symphony. The American Legion concert band has an 85-year history. When Mr. Meyer took it over in the 1970s, most members were military veterans, and there were a few old-timers who had played in Sousa's own band.

South Brooklyn is still recovering from the hurricane, and there are few things as reassuring as this spry 93-year-old, who lives independently alone, moving back into his home and, as he did Thursday night, hopping into his Toyota and driving to the American Legion post to lead his band in its holiday concert.

The band, which rehearses regularly and plays nearly a dozen concerts a year, has about 32 current members, including students, retirees, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, teachers and police officers. There are only a few veterans now, including the manage r, Jim Buchanan. Several band members were flooded out by the hurricane, including Frank Manfredi, an alto saxophonist whose Breezy Point house was damaged.

Mr. Buchanan introduced Mr. Meyer and noted to the 25 or so listeners that “the maestro” was back in his apartment.

“When you're 93 and you've lost everything you have in life, it's hard to imagine,” said Mr. Buchanan, who said he believed Mr. Meyer was the oldest conductor with his own band in New York City.

Mr. Meyer gave a spirited performance, leading his band through standards, marches and Sousa favorites, and ended with a medley of military tunes.

Afterward, he said he was happy to be back in his apartment, even with few belongings.

“As long as I got a bed to sleep in and clean underwear, a shower,” he said, “everything falls into place.”