New London — Thousands of people packed the beach and boardwalk of Ocean Beach Park on Friday evening to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the park.

The celebration included a trapeze act, band, laser show and fireworks, and on a perfect summer day, the beach.

“I think this is the biggest crowd Ocean Beach has had in 75 years, and that’s saying something,” said Dave Sugrue, general manager of the park, who estimated the crowd at 10,000 people. After the fireworks, Sugrue planned to have the band lead the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to the park, then hand out 6,000 pieces of birthday cake.

As evening neared, cars jammed up streets around the beach and crowds filled the stands around the stage in the center of the boardwalk, awaiting the band.

A man juggled hats and a woman hung upside down from a trapeze. Inside a tent near the stage Lauren Grover, owner of Paisley Peacock Body Arts, applied henna and painted glitter on beachgoers.

Steve Smith, lead singer of the rhythm and blues group "Steve Smith and the Nakeds," said he didn't have a set of specific songs prepared.

"We just do it on the fly, we just go," Smith said. "Whatever the mood calls for." The band has played every summer at the beach for 15 years, he said.

Mike Jenkins of Westbrook waited in a line at least 50 people deep outside the Sandbar Café. He and his wife chose the occasion for a double date to see the fireworks.

"It was a nice idea for a date night," Jenkins' friend, Corey Bartlett, said. They figured the wait for food was 30 minutes, but that was OK, he said.

"If you want to eat, it's got to be OK," Jenkins said.

Sarah Holt of Colchester, who brought her daughter, 8, and son, 10, said every time she pulls into the park she feels like she’s 10 years old again. Holt said her mother was a single parent of four and couldn’t afford a family vacation, so she brought her children to the beach every weekend.

“This was our vacation,” Holt said. “We took everybody from the neighborhood, and this is where we’d come, with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

She said she can still see her mother, who died four years ago, pulling into the park with “5,000 kids in the car, a blanket…She loved the ocean,” Holt said. Her daughter, Caitryn Holt, said she spent the first two hours Friday looking for sea glass, playing in the sand and eating lunch.

Nearby on Friday, Justin Duverge waited with five cousins and two friends for a turn at a beach volleyball nets.

"I didn't even know how old this beach was," said Duverge, who said he'd been coming here since he moved to New London 14 years ago from Puerto Rico. He finds it a friendly place where it's easy to pull together a pick-up volleyball game, even among strangers.

"Even if you don't know them, they'll hop in a game," he said. "It's a close-knit community."

Marie Gravell recalled the beach decades ago. She’s lived in New London all her life, and worked at the rides as a high school and college student, back when a miniature train ran from one end of the beach to the other.

The entertainment was different too; they had elephants, monkeys and clowns, she said. Sometimes, if you knew someone in charge, they’d let you see the animal up close.

“Everybody knew each other,” she said, and that went for the out-of-towners as well. In front of the arcade, a group from Hartford and West Hartford regularly gathered, and for reasons she doesn’t know, their gathering place was called “the jungle.”

The New London area has changed since then, with more people moving in and out with Electric Boat, U.S. Naval Submarine Base New London and all of the colleges, she said. But the park continues to do well, said Gravell, a member of the board of directors for Save Ocean Beach, a nonprofit group of volunteers who support the park.

“The view is the best,” she said. “You could never get a view like this.”

d.straszheim@theday.com

Twitter:@DStraszheim