A host of environmental organizations will come together on Sunday at LTV Studios in Wainscott to celebrate the life and work of Larry Penny, the former director of East Hampton Town’s Natural Resources Department and author of the “Nature Notes” column that ran in The Star for about 40 years. Mr. Penny died in December.
“Mr. Natural — a Celebration of Larry Penny” will begin with a bagel brunch and education tables from noon to 1:30 p.m. Speakers will follow and, in the spirit of Mr. Penny’s dedication to the natural world, the gathering will conclude with off-site guided hikes starting at 3. One, of 2.5 miles hosted by the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society and led by Rick Whalen, will cover the Buckskill Woods. Participants have been asked to park at the Clubhouse in Wainscott. The other, a one-mile hike hosted by the Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt and led by Dai Dayton, will start at the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton.
Registration for the celebration has been requested and can be completed by clicking here.
Along with the three organizations mentioned above, those sponsoring the tribute are Group for the East End, Concerned Citizens of Montauk, the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, the Garden Club of East Hampton, the Peconic Land Trust, the Nature Conservancy, the Perfect Earth Project, and the Twomey, Latham, Shea, Kelley, Dubin & Quartararo law firm, along with Rameshwar Das and Kate Rabinowitz, Ms. Dayton, Sandra Ferguson, K.L. Jones, Beverly Kazickas, Karen Keogh, Randall Parsons, Val Schaffner, and former Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.
Mr. Penny “always exuded an amazing energy for the environment around him,” said Bob DeLuca, president of Group for the East End, with which Mr. Penny was active starting in the 1970s, when it was known as Group for America’s South Fork. “He was obviously scientifically proficient and had the proper background, but the passion that Larry applied to every aspect of his work — his writing, his work with the town, or even if you met him on a trail — for someone who had a regulatory role with government, he spoke as someone with a true, heartfelt conviction. I was always impressed by that.”
“One thing we try to do here is express that love of nature and that caring about the earth in the way we present ourselves,” Mr. DeLuca said. “Larry was always a great model of that. In my working with and knowing him, he was a true naturalist.”
Mr. Penny was also active with the Nature Conservancy. These alliances staved off development in Montauk’s Hither Woods and Barcelona Neck in East Hampton — “wherever vacant tracts, scenic views, wildlife protection, and natural beauty were in peril,” according to his obituary in The Star. “He led innumerable nature walks, which were frequently oversubscribed. ‘He was so enthusiastic about them, and everyone wanted to do them with him,’ ” Julie Penny, his wife, said, adding, “ ‘Boy, he really did inspire his students!’ ”
“In my mind the history of East Hampton, and for that matter all of Long Island, is much more interesting than what is happening now,” Mr. Penny wrote in The Star in 2011. “We’ve passed way beyond the age of discovery; we might better describe contemporary life as the age of packaging, marketing, distribution, and bad political theater. There are no Jeffersons, Washingtons, Lincolns, and Franklins to lead and enlighten us, only their poor likenesses recycled over and over to lull us into acquiescing submission.”
“Those of us who do this came up reading Thoreau and these people,” Mr. DeLuca said. “Even though the planet may be in true peril, and it seems there is so much information about so many things happening instantaneously, all the time, the level of knowledge and understanding that someone like Larry had has sometimes gone by the wayside. When he wrote the columns, he really expressed that, as well as the immersive experience” of being in nature. “It’s hard, because we’re separated from nature in a lot of ways. The more people are in built environments, they forget what natural environments are. We rely on people like Larry with historical perspective and deep knowledge to give us insight, which hopefully leads to inquiry.”