A 'Country Lawyer' Loves Local History, Is Civic-Minded

Often found browsing through the Long Island Collection

On most rainy Saturdays for some years now, Thomas Twomey, an attorney whose hobby and passion is local history, can be found browsing through the East Hampton Library's Long Island Collection, a trove of resources that he believes is "probably the finest example of an archival collection in any small town in America."

While the library has given a lot to the lawyer, the lawyer has given at least as much to the library. Mr. Twomey not only headed the capital campaign that raised $3.6 million to renovate the institution and build its new wing, the John M. Olin Centennial Addition, but has taken the lead in acquiring additional materials for the Long Island Collection.

His current cause is East Hampton's Town's 350th anniversary celebration. He serves as vice chairman and counsel to the executive committee coordinating the events, chairman of the finance subcommittee, and co-chairman of the committee organizing the year-long series of lectures which began on Saturday.

During the months since the lecture committee - Mr. Twomey and Averill Geus, John Strong, and Dorothy T. King - began its work, the number of projected lectures has burgeoned from a dozen to twice that.

At the start, said Mr. Twomey, "We identified some of the most prominent scholars in Colonial history here, on Long Island, and in the Northeast."

Some, he noted, were located through the Internet, which is one of Mr. Twomey's newer distractions. (His law firm, Twomey Latham Shea & Kelley, established a Web site a month or two ago.)

In a few cases, Mr. Twomey said, "We had to convince them not only to come to East Hampton, but in some cases to prepare original research."

Twomey, Latham, which has offices in East Hampton and Riverhead, is a major underwriter of the lecture series and was the first sponsor to come forward in its support. Since then, 24 local businesses have pledged $1,000 each to subsidize the entire series.

Mr. Twomey lives in East Hampton with his wife, Judith Hope, a former East Hampton Town Supervisor who is now the chairwoman of the New York State Democratic Committee.

"I've always been active in helping people who wish to make a difference in their community," he said.

He himself is one of them, by any standard. Mr. Twomey's long list of civic credits includes stints as a Long Island Power Authority trustee and as chairman of Gov. Mario Cuomo's East End Economic and Environmental Institute, which under his leadership helped to establish the New York State Farmland Preservation Program.

Closer to home, he is an active member of Guild Hall's board of trustees and the prime mover behind the East Hampton Rare Book and Map Society, which sounds like a scholarly bunch but is in fact a group of local businesses and a few private individuals who help the Long Island Collection to acquire new manuscripts.

"I'm just a country lawyer," Mr. Twomey said this week. His law firm is about to celebrate its 25th year, he noted, and has grown to 19 attorneys, many of them active in the service of their communities. His partner Steven Latham is working to make the East Hampton RECenter a reality, and his partner John Shea serves as chairman of Group for the South Fork.

The firm is noted for its environmental work, among other things. In the 1980s, Twomey, Latham represented the coalition of organizations that fought successfully to stop the operation of the Shoreham and Jamesport nuclear plants, Mr. Twomey said - an effort in which he himself was "very involved."

Audiences at the series of 350th Anniversary lectures will receive programs giving synopses of the talks as well as a bibliography of related reading. At the end of the year, all the talks will be published in a journal - another of Mr. Twomey's lasting contributions to East Hampton's history.