It’s almost impossible to recreate what it was like to live and grow up on the Long Island a half-century ago; things have changed so much. But for those who have lived through those times, they remain evergreen.
I first met Bobby at Hoyt Farm Park in Commack. The new ranger-naturalist there, Bob Giffen, had created a program for young people he called the Junior Naturalists. It served for some as an entry point also for part-time summer employment at the park as Bob’s assistants during the busy summer season. Hoyt Farm was a former apple and peach orchard that was donated to the Town of Smithtown by a very generous Hoyt family descendant who wanted to see its 133 acres of morainal hills, deciduous oak-dominated woods, fields and kettle ponds, along with a historic house and outbuildings, preserved in perpetuity for the people and its own sake. It became the largest park and nature preserve in what was an ever-expanding suburban hamlet on the border of two townships, at the end of the Northern State Parkway, and for a time, the Long Island Expressway.
Bobby came as half of a pair, the other half being John Turner. The two of them had grown up in Smithtown and bonded over their shared pursuit of bird watching. John was tall, quiet, and purposeful. Bobby was shorter, and a bundle of gregarious energy. The three of us would bond at the park, and, with the encouragement of Ranger Giffen, become close friends and eventually, collaborators on the biggest project of our lifetimes.
We were within a few years of one another in age, close enough that we were maturing into adults during those early years together. Each of the three of us had different personalities and areas of evolving interests, but they centered broadly on a modern form of general natural history popularized by Henry David Thoreau in this country, back in the early 1800s. The Transcendentalists of that era inspired Theodore Roosevelt to begin a more muscular version at the turn of last century, and that in turn morphed into the activist environmental movement of the 1960s, ignited by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. A 1970 book by Robert Arbib, The Lord’s Woods, mesmerized with its tale of a paradise lost.
By the time the conjoined Sixties protest movements (civil rights, antiwar, feminism, environmentalism and many others) had matured, broken apart, and taken less intertwined paths, local concerns began to rise to the fore. It was in that 70s aftermath that the seeds of what became the Long Island Pine Barrens Society were sown. That is a story yet to be fully told, but what the Society became is vividly recollected in Dick Amper’s memoir, Saving Long Island.
Bobby’s enthusiasm for nature knew no bounds. He was driven to share it with everyone he met. I first began to see that in how he conducted nature walks in the park. Whereas mine were somewhat stilted and academic, his were vibrant, earthy and visceral. He could pull stories and examples out of his hat. I followed him around for a while to up my game. Eventually I realized in-person teaching was not my forte, and retreated into my real strengths at the time, art and making collections, living and dead.
[John’s style on the trails straddled Bobby’s and mine. He became the great synthesizer and aggregator, quietly going about his organized business while the two of us wallowed more in the messiness of the great outdoors.]
Bobby developed early a love of rare plants that complemented his passion for birds. We spent several field trips together searching for Pyxie Moss, Curly Grass Fern, Conrad’s Corema, and many orchids, all over the Island. Bob Giffen took the three of us to Connetquot Park, his former home.
Bob ran a bluebird nest box trail there, and it was there we got our first close-up look at many pine barrens organisms and landscapes, as that park was more than 30 times as large as Hoyt Farm.
Meanwhile, back at our own little park, the three of us were put to work on a long-term project to turn the guest cottage next to Hoyt House into a real, Bona fide nature center with exhibits and programs open to the public. The prior ranger-naturalist, Steve Pradon, had begun that task, but now, with support from Bob Giffen’s long-serving boss, Smithtown Parks Department’s Superintendent, Charles ‘Buster’ Toner, we got the green light, backed with town funding and resources like carpentry assistance.
With Joe Berger, Bob’s full-time assistant, we tore into the task together, and by the late 70s had a fully functioning exhibit space indoors, and a converted dry kettle hole outdoors as an amphitheater with rustic benches for outdoor assembly and teaching, a jumping-off spot for taking groups from schools, scout troops, and other organizations on instructional walks on the trails.
Throughout all of this I got to know Bobby, and John, much better. We each took the measure of the others’ strengths and realized from our wanderings all over what was left of natural Long Island that it was all going fast – being paved over and built over as the wave of postwar suburbia rolled eastward, consuming the land we had come to love.
In my last year of college, we had a series of discussions, Bobby, John and me, about starting a new organization to save what was left of terrestrial Long Island. Thus, in 1977, the Long Island Pine Barrens Society was born.
We could see that many of the natural areas in central Long Island that were left were situated in the former 250,000-plus-acres wilderness derisively called ‘pine barrens’ back in earliest colonial days, due to its forbidding strangeness, scary wildfires, and utter uselessness for farming or even grazing. We knew we had to get out there and reach the public, fast. But how to do it?
Bobby studied to be a teacher, and he was born for this. I have never met anyone more suited to that ancient and august, and now endangered, profession. He pressed for a strong initial effort to educate the public. Both John and I agreed. We quickly put together a ‘pine barrens slide show,’ and began touring around the Island with it. During those early years, we gave hundreds of such shows, and began circulating a newsletter, and later, a journal. We also reached out to the press, and local politicians. John took the lead on the latter, and made it into his profession.
Bobby drew on strong family and professional connections to help launch and grow the Society. Two of the most important were the printing services provided gratis by Bobby’s sweetheart, later to be wife, Denise’s father to get the early editions of our nascent society’s publications out (remember, everything was analog back then), and the after-hours use of various offices for the three of us to meet in. These seemingly small things enabled us to grow a tiny new organization to the cusp of a powerhouse.
As we passed 500, then 1,000 members, we realized we’d have to incorporate the Society. When we did, we began to add new board members. Slowly, the organization grew into what it would become.
That took off on steroids when Dick Amper came onboard in the mid-80s as executive director.
Bobby has left this temporal sphere way too early. But he left an indelible mark on it, and on the people who had the privilege to know and work with him. We have an obligation to carry on and continue his work to honor him and all the others we have lost. And we have an equal obligation to honor, cherish, and perpetuate his and their memories. Rest in peace, my friend.
By John Cryan, Long Island Pine Barrens Society Founder
Photo Credit: John Turner
