Arnold Leo, who died on April 30, a few days after a fall, spent the last 50 years of his life as a defender of both the East Hampton baymen community and the environment of the South Fork.
He had been in poor health for several years.
Mr. Leo’s first career was in publishing. He was a book editor at several New York City firms, and worked with Joan Didion, Rockwell Kent, and Andy Warhol, among others. He stayed longest at Grove Press, where he was proud that Samuel Beckett once borrowed his desk to correct proofs.
Mr. Leo first came to East Hampton in 1966 having been recruited for one of the artist Allan Kaprow’s Happenings. He described waking up outdoors after the event and seeing the sun rise over a pond and the ocean and said he had never seen such a beautiful place. Soon after that, he bought a then-unwinterized cabin on the edge of Accabonac Creek. It was initially a summer place for his growing family. A few years later he left New York City and publishing to move to East Hampton full time.
Mr. Leo worked as a bayman, trap fishing with Bill Schulz in the summer and scalloping in winter. He soon became an active member of the East Hampton Baymen’s Association. The association’s president at the time, Milton Miller Sr., recruited him to become its secretary, an unpaid job Mr. Leo would keep until 2024, guiding the baymen through turbulent years and working closely with its president, Dan King, and Larry Cantwell among others. He developed many deep friendships as a result.
Susan Pollack, who was The East Hampton Star's first fishing correspondent beginning in the mid-1970s and eventually a staff writer for National Fisherman magazine, remembered Mr. Leo as “an inspired and steadfast leader of the baymen and all the causes they fought for, including fair fishing regulations, public access to water, and clean estuaries.”
“As a bayman himself he understood the critical importance of maintaining the health of the salt ponds and estuaries, places like Northwest Harbor, Three Mile and Napeague Harbors, which had traditionally supported rich harvests of mussels, clams, and bay scallops, as well as finfish, all critical to the livelihoods of the baymen and the well-being and economy of East Hampton,” Ms. Pollack wrote. “No one was more aware than Arnold and the baymen of the threats posed by increasing shoreside development and its associated ills. They did not need a warning of such ills, when in the mid-1980s, Long Island suffered the devasting effects of an algal bloom, a brown tide, that took a toll on the celebrated bay scallop fishery.”
As the Baymen’s Association’s secretary, Mr. Leo “assumed leadership of their legendary battle to continue commercial fishing for striped bass, championing the fishermen's cause in Albany. . . . At the time there was a growing call by environmentalists as well as sportfishermen to outlaw commercial netting of striped bass, and a major target was the ocean haul seiners, who had plied the beaches of East Hampton for generations.”
Mr. Leo also served on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission as East Hampton Town’s fisheries representative.
He always linked his advocacy for the baymen with deep concern for the environment. He was one of the original board members of the Group for the South Fork, an environmental group since renamed Group for the East End. He brought the baymen into active opposition of the nuclear power stations proposed for Jamesport and Shoreham and to participation in the Northwest Alliance, which worked successfully to preserve Barcelona Point and the Grace Estate. He always believed and tried to demonstrate that the local fishing community knew and cared more for the long-term health of the local land and waters than anyone else.
He was born in New York City on Dec. 25, 1935, to Arnold G. Leo Jr. and Elinore Wellington. He spent the war years with his grandparents and younger sister in Woodstock, N.Y., while his father, who wrote speeches for General Eisenhower and others, was in Europe with the Army. After moving back to New York City with his parents, Mr. Leo graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. He then attended Antioch College — spending two years in Denmark studying the revolutionary Danish Folk School Movement. There he met and married Peggy Chessington. They returned to New York City together, and Mr. Leo found jobs and finished his B.A. at City College.
They had two children, but the marriage ended in divorce.
He is survived by his children, Erik Leo of Winooski, Vt., and Melissa Leo of Stone Ridge, N.Y., and by three grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and his sister, Christine Roussel of New York City.
A memorial gathering is planned for Sept. 30 at 10:30 a.m. at Ashawagh Hall in Springs.
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Correction: An early version of this obituary misstated the date of Arnold Leo's memorial gathering. It is on Sept. 30.
