For many people, a Fire Island house is more than a summer place. It has a name, a story, and, often, a hand-painted sign that becomes part of the home’s identity.
For Lauren Pineda Jones, finding the sign from her childhood home meant reconnecting with a piece of family history she never expected to see again.
Pineda Jones spent much of her childhood at her father’s small yellow cottage, the Ditty Box, on Surfview Walk, near the border of Seaview and Ocean Beach. After her parents separated when she was three years old, she spent nearly every weekend and several weeks each summer on Fire Island while her father, David Jones, lived there year-round.
Like many Fire Island homes, the Ditty Box had a name and a sign to mark its identity. The name came from the traditional sailor’s container used to store personal belongings, a fitting connection to the home’s origins as a structure built by a sailor.
Jones, a lawyer-turned-landscaper and gardener, spent many years at the Ditty Box. He was known around the island through his landscaping work and his involvement in the Fire Island community. He had a passion for growing orchids and maintained a greenhouse at the property filled with flowers, including orchids and hibiscus.
When Jones sold the home in 2018 and moved back to Colorado, Pineda Jones continued to follow what happened to the place that had been such an important part of her childhood. She knew her father had hoped it would remain standing, and she kept track as ownership changed over the years.
While looking into possibly spending time on Fire Island again this summer, Pineda Jones searched for the home and discovered it had become an Airbnb. During that process, she noticed the familiar Ditty Box sign was no longer displayed on the house.
The sign had been there for as long as she could remember. To Pineda Jones, it represented more than a piece of decoration; it was a connection to her childhood, her father, and the home where so many family memories were made.
Pineda Jones reached out to the current owner of the home who helped try to locate the missing sign but did not know where it had gone.
“I was just feeling nostalgic for him and myself because he really loved Fire Island,” Pineda Jones said. “It was his favorite place.”
With no clear answers, Pineda Jones turned to several Fire Island Facebook groups and shared her search, hoping someone in the community might recognize the sign or know its whereabouts.
She did not expect much to come from the effort.
Instead, the Fire Island community responded quickly. People shared memories of Jones and helped spread the word.
“Through this Facebook post, someone was able to locate it,” Pineda Jones said. “The person who has it, who was one of the realtors for the house, still has it, and that’s how I was able to find it.”
For Pineda Jones, finding the sign felt like recovering a small but meaningful piece of her past.
Her memories of the Ditty Box extend far beyond the sign itself. She remembers having her own bedroom there, spending time outdoors, and enjoying the freedom of growing up in a close-knit community.
“It was just like a really fun place to grow up as a kid,” Pineda Jones said. “I was always barefoot, and my dad’s backyard was really fun because he kept it kind of wild and rough, and we had these … fun willow trees back there, and the outdoor shower was always one of my favorite things, but it just always felt really cozy and felt like home.”
The home was also filled with family memories. Pineda Jones remembers the many animals that lived there, including an iguana, as well as the time she spent with her father and her younger half-brother on Fire Island. Sadly, her half-brother, David Andrew Jones III, born in 2004, died of cancer in 2016.
Fire Island was a place where her father built strong connections. Pineda Jones remembers riding around the island with him as he greeted friends and neighbors, visiting homes where he worked and seeing how many people knew and appreciated him. He was also involved with the Fire Island Poet Society, at one point serving as its president.
Today, he lives in Colorado and is navigating Alzheimer’s disease. For Pineda Jones, recovering the sign became a way to hold onto a meaningful part of their shared history and the place her father loved so deeply.
The response from the Fire Island community also reminded Pineda Jones of what made the island so special to her family. People who knew her father, along with those who had never met her, came together to help recover something that could easily have been lost.
The search for the Ditty Box sign became more than the recovery of an old house marker. It became a reminder of the lasting connections created on Fire Island, where homes often carry names as proudly as boats and where those names can hold decades of memories.
Thanks to the help of the Fire Island community, the Ditty Box sign found its way back to someone who always considered the little yellow house home.
All photos courtesy of Lauren V. Pineda MBS, MS, except where otherwise noted.
Editor’s Note: The August 14, 2026 print edition of this article misidentified the picture of Brian Alt as David Andrew Jones, III. The electronic version of the article has been corrected.
