Family celebrates 100 years on Rehoboth Beach’s Hickman Street

A family that originally hailed from Pittsburgh, Pa., but now lives all over the country recently celebrated 100 years of memories on Hickman Street in Rehoboth Beach.

“This is my happy place,” said Suzanne Siney, 83, granddaughter of Emmanuel and Ada Dibert, who purchased two 25-foot-wide lots on Hickman Street in 1924, and then built a beach cottage in 1925.

The Diberts, who lived in Pittsburgh, purchased the lots at the urging of their aunt Hazel Dibert after she spent a week in Rehoboth Beach in 1923. They visited a year later and purchased the lots that now make up 101 Hickman St. for $225 each. A year after that, the cottage was built for $2,500. Less than a quarter-mile from the Boardwalk, the house is affectionately known as Sea Rest.

Siney and her sister Carolyn Portanova, 80, who grew up in Bedford, Pa., have been coming to Rehoboth Beach since they were babies. Each sister can count on one hand the number of summers they missed coming to Rehoboth Beach. 

Growing up, they would spend about six weeks of the summer in Rehoboth Beach with family members, said Portanova, who now lives in Rochester, N.Y.

“We love this place,” she said.

Siney has lived in California for years, raising her sons there. It takes a lot to get to Rehoboth nowadays, but it’s worth it, she said, adding that her California friends who have made the trip over the years love it.

The sisters now own the property with Siney’s two sons, Todd and Scott Siney. They were also in town from California for the celebration. Like their mom, they grew up coming to Rehoboth Beach on vacations.

Going to Funland and then eating all the food on the Boardwalk was the best, said Todd. This is an awesome little city, he said.

It’s not just friends and family who enjoy Sea Rest, as the sisters also rent the property.

The guestbook is filled with comments from people who love the old-school beach charm of the house, said Portanova. 

The house has been expanded, but much of the original structure, including the living room and porch, still stands. When it was first built, there was no hot water, and for a long time, there was a swing on the porch, said Siney.

According to a recounting of the property’s history prepared in 1989 by Elizabeth Dibert Amick, the mom of Siney and Portanova, the house had running water and electricity by the late 1920s. Besides the location, Amick said another reason to purchase the property was because there were a number of families from Pittsburgh on the same street.

Amick also touches on life in Rehoboth Beach over years. There are businesses from the past that haven’t existed in years.

“At first, we had no sidewalk. Pine needles [shats] were used for the path,” said Amick in one passage. In another, she wrote, “It was all woods from Hickman Street to Silver Lake. At dusk every evening, hundreds of toads or frogs would go up the middle of our street, possibly headed for the lake.”

And while life in Rehoboth has changed, not everything has. In another passage, Amick touched on the similarities connecting the generations.

“As there was no air conditioning in the cars when Suzanne and Carolyn were small, they got very weary until we got here. They would keep saying, ‘How much farther?’ We finally would say, ‘You can soon see the sand along the road and taste the saltwater on your lips.”