Saving Fire Island Citizens and conservationists win fight to preserve beautiful ocean reef as a national sanctuary site.

By LAWRENCE ELLIOTT”

IRE Island is a fragile strand of F b e a c h and dune strung into the Atlantic Ocean a few miles off the south shore of Long Island. Over the years, little weather-beaten com- munities of summer cottages have grown up on its western end, hardly more than an hour’s drive and a 25-minute ferry ride from New York City. But for most of the island’s 32-mile length, the long lonely reaches of sand and swaying dune grass remain untouched, and the only tracks are those of the gulls, migrat- ing geese and an occasional white- tailed deer. A remarkable natural sanctuary in the heart of a metropoli- tan crush of seventeen million people, Fire Island has been called one of the ten most beautiful beaches in all the world.

Then, in March 1962, a great storm blew up in the northeast and pounded the slender sandspit with fierce winds and tides. In three devastating days, the furious sea breached the island, flattened dunes and tore away millions of square feet of beach. Dozens of battered, under- mined homes slid into the ocean.

With the first calm, summer resi- dents renewed long-standing pleas for effective erosion control, a pro-

* Mr. Elliott, formerly an associate editor of Coronet, is a free-lance writer with numerous articles to his credit. They have appeared in the Reader’s Digest, American Weekly and other periodicals of national arculation.

gram often promised but always scuttled by political wrangling and official lethargy. This time, though, Fire Islanders were joined by ex- perts, who warned that one more violent storm and the sea might well come crashing over the barrier beach to overwhelm the towns and villages of southern Long Island.

This time it seemed that the cry for help was to be heeded. New York’s Governor Nelson A. Rocke- feller named a special commission to survey the state’s shoreline and de- vise a comprehensive plan for its protection. Among the distinguished members was Robert Moses, builder of more parks, roads, bridges and tunnels than any man in history, and now prime mover of a whole clutch of state and city councils, committees and authorities, includ- ing the Long Island State Park Com- mission.

The Commission’s recommenda- tions were released in June 1964 and horrified all who cherished Fire Is- land as a quiet unspoiled haven. The proposal included plans for a four-lane highway down the length of the island, from a small state park on the western tip to a smaller county park and bridge twenty miles to the east. Anchored atop 2 5 feet of fill, this road, said Moses, would serve as “a staunch bulwark against the sea and at the same time pro- vide a scenic drive of unparalleled beauty.’’

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In vain did Fire Islanders point out that the island, only two thou- sand feet a t its widest point, could barely accommodate such a road and its right of way. Where would there be room for anything else? What would happen to their homes? And if there was any beauty left when the paving crews were done, how much of it would be seen from cars speed- ing by at 50 miles an hour?

Nor were the islanders alone. Vis- itors who sought solace and a peace- ful afternoon in the sun there shud- dered a t the vision of an endless procession of autos belching exhaust fumes at them. Conservationists were dismayed by the threatened loss of still another wilderness legacy, ma- rine biologists appalled by what a road, locking in the Great South Bay, would do to the ecology of the entire south shore. But their protests were drowned in a rising chorus of approval as, one by one, local politi- cians and newspapers fell in line with the commission’s plan. As if to em- phasize the road’s imminence, a sec- ond bridge linking Fire Island to the mainland neared completion. No force, it seemed, could now halt the inexorable march of the bulldozers.

And yet the road was never built. In what Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall hailed as a modern miracle with meaning for all Ameri- cans who care about the quality of their environment, Fire Island was saved by a little band of ordinary citizens, not alone for those who live there but for all the people. This is the story of how it was done.

What came to be known as the Battle of Fire Island was touched off by merest chance. On a summer

day in 1962, four Long Islanders, meeting for lunch in the village of Babylon, discovered over the soup course that they shared a mutual antipathy to Commissioner Moses’s ocean highway. For a while they were just four irate citizens express- ing their anger at arbitrary and al- mighty officialdom. But somehow, by the time coffee came around, they found themselves plotting anti-road strategy on the table linen.

* * * The four were attorney Irving

Like, realtor Robert Snyder, news- paper editor John hlaher and builder Maurice Barbash. Barbash, who was to become the group’s unofficial leader, put their feelings this way:

Our beaches are an escape valve. They attract all sorts of people, provide all sorts of recreation. Come out any Sunday and you’ll see fishermen, sailors, swimmers, bikers, clammers. Now along comes the state commission with its concrete mixers and its stamped-out facilities, wanting to change the very nature of the environment, and saying, “Drive! This is the way you must enjoy your day off.” It made us angry. We decided we couldn’t just roll over and play dead for them.

By the time the luncheon ended, each of the four had a list of similar- minded people to summon to an or- ganizational meeting in Like’s office. At the meeting, no time was wasted on rules, protocol or election of offi- cers. Instead, some fifteen men and women, most of whom were only occasional visitors to Fire Island, sat around a table earnestly searching for a way to save it.

It was immediately clear that they were no match for the official weight already thrown in on the side of the

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road-builders. Opposition alone, no matter how vocal, would be an ex- ercise in futility. They needed an al- ternative. And so, not yet even aware of it, the determined little group had formulated the first principle in what Secretary Udall was to call a case history of how citizen action can be marshaled to save our remaining wilderness areas.

The first principle: You can’t fight something with nothing. Simply be- ing against the highway, the group decided, would be an exercise in futility. They needed something to be for.

As they groped for their idea, slowly it dawned on them that they had had it all the time. It was Fire Island itself. For it did not belong to Long Islanders alone nor to those who summered there; it was an ir- replaceable heritage and belonged to everyone who found strength and restoration in the wonderwork of nature. If the federal government could be persuaded to establish a national seashore along the unsettled stretches of the island, its unspoiled loveliness would be preserved for all the people and their children for gen- erations to come.

Heartened, the group voted itself a name: the Citizens’ Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore. They set about collecting signatures on a petition and learning all they could about the formidable task they had undertaken. What are the cri- teria for national parks? Did Fire Island qualify? What was the status of seashore recreational areas in the east? And in the perspective of what they found, Fire Island suddenly

loomed, not as just a local pride but as a national treasure.

In 1935, the National Park Ser- vice had surveyed the 3,700 miles of shore along the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, finding immense stretches of untouched beach. Just twenty years later, it bleakly re- ported that, “Almost every attractive seashore area from Maine to Mexico that is accessible by road has been developed.” For in the intervening period, the seashore had become big business. The road-builders-pro- moters and developers-had moved in and the beaches were subdivided, built up and overrun. The coastline had turned into a big urban sprawl, with less than 7 per cent of the shore in public ownership for recreation. Only a meager few pockets of un- touched oceanfront were left, the last remaining hope for preservation. Among them: Fire Island.

* * * In 1960, Regional Plan Associa-

tion, a New York civic group which had targeted park requirements for the region since the 192Os, called for public acquisition of Fire Island as one of ten major recreational areas needed. RPA added its support and counsel to the citizens’ committee.

The still-feeble voice of the com- mittee was soon fortified by confed- eration with others who had been fighting the Fire Island battle. Pool- ing their efforts, in a single weekend, the groups collected more than 2,500 signatures for their petition, which they sent off to Secretary Udall, urg- ing that the Department of the In- terior initiate procedures for bringing Fire Island into the national parks systems.

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To their delight, Udall promptly arranged for a helicopter inspection of the island. But the committee’s joy lasted only until they learned who his companion would b e R o b e r t Moses. And as the two flew back and forth over the barrier beach, the eloquent parks commissioner made his case. It was twenty years too late for a national park, he said. Only a protective dike of high fill could save the island, and to justify its cost the entire area would have to be made accessible to the public. In the long run, Mr. Moses held, this would prove a great saving over piecemeal annual appropriations for erosion control. His final crushing argument: Every state and local official favored his plan.

* 8 *

Back in Washington, Secretary Udall wrote to Mr. Barbash that, although he thought nothing would be more fitting than to preserve part of Fire Island in its natural state, the realities of the situation would make it “quixotic of me to oppose what appears to be the prevailing political climate.” More to the point, he said, though the secretary might recommend a site for a national park, only Congress could create one. What was badly needed, he said, was a local congressman willing to intro- duce and back a Fire Island bill.

The committee promptly swung its attention to Otis Pike, the United States Representative from the First District, within the borders of which nearly all of Fire Island lay. Would he sponsor a bill for a national sea- shore there? Congressman Pike firmly declined, pointing out that such a

bill advanced by his predecessor had died in committee for lack of politi- cal support.

If the amateur advocates were dis- couraged, they refused to show it. Directing a drumfire of letters, tele- grams and telephone calls at news- papers and officials, they countered Moses’s claims point by point. And they had done their homework. From the Army Engineers, they produced a flat denial that a road on Fire Island would act as a stabilizing fac- tor and they presented the engineers’ plan for erosion control.

For all their persistence, the com- mittee seemed to be functioning in a vacuum. They received politely evasive replies from public officials but no one really seemed to be listen- ing to them. Meanwhile, precious weeks were slipping by. The bull- dozers were already lining up at the state park and once they rolled west it would be too late for exhortation and debate. There had to be some way to get results-now!

At this critical point, an entirely new light was cast on the Battle of Fire Island. Late one night, as a small group of committee members discussed their latest setback, they came face to face with the second principle of winning a public fight: Instead of working on the politicians, go after the people who have the vote.

Fighting time now as we11 as the twin specters of the eroding sea and the highway-builders, the committee shifted the focus of their efforts away from those who could make the de- cision and concentrated on those who couId force it: the people. As a first step, they organized a tour of

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Fire Island for some 40 Long Island civic leaders early in October. Groups ranging from the Suffolk County Taxpayers Association to Conserva- tionists United were represented and, from the moment they stepped off the ferry at Fire Island Pines, the lovely autumn beach was its own most eloquent advocate. The visitors walked on sand as fine and clear as table salt, a graceful strand curving away until it was lost in the haze of the surf and the sharp blue of the sea. They crossed the dunes to the bay side where beachgrass and wild cherry grew and giant reeds silvered by the sun.

“At this point, the island is only three hundred feet wide,” Paul Townsend told them quietly. “A road would cover everything you’ve seen so far.”

There were audible gasps and buzz- ing conversations as they passed natural splendors facing extinction at every side. They moved from the sun’s glare to a still, fern-shaded world of primeval beauty. This was the Sunken Forest Preserve, a vest- pocket wilderness dedicated as a “field for ecological research, a SLtnc- tuary for wildlife and a haven for refreshing the human spirit.”

“What happens to this i f they build the highway?” someone asked.

“About half of it would be buried by artificial fill for the roadbed,” was Townsend’s depressing reply.

So were some of the early converts won. A real breakthrough came later that same month. Charles H. Callison, assistant to the president of the National Audubon Society, invited Barbash to address a meeting of the Natural Resources Council of Amer-

ica at Lake Placid, New York. Some 35 of the nation’s most influential conservation and scientific organiza- tions would be represented. It was a matchless opportunity-and Barbash did it justice.

The answer was a resounding en- dorsement by virtually every group present. From then on, the bulletins of the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the National Parks Association and dozens of similarly dedicated organizations carried news of the Fire Island fight to every city and hamlet in the United States and, further, urged their membership to let Congress know that they sup- ported a national seashore there.

* * * Meanwhile, the citizens’ committee

sought to utilize their newly won backing a t home. They organized a speakers’ bureau, with themselves as speakers, available on an hour’s notice, to address Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis luncheons; they showed slides to evening meetings of civic associations, B’nai B’rith and the Knights of Columbus; they dug into their own pockets to pay for the printing of handbills and brochures- and, when they could dig no deeper, they shamelessly solicited funds from local businessmen and merchants. They handed out bumper stickers, sent tons of question-and-answer lit- erature to conservation groups across the country, issued a steady flow of press releasecand somehow found time for radio and television inter- views. Morning after early morning they waited at Long Island railroad stations to talk to commuters. Week- end after weekend they rode the Fire Island ferries, passing out broadsides

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and beseeching tangible help from those who knew what the stakes were. They asked for active participation in the fight, money, an old mimeo- graph machine-anything that could be put to work spreading their mes- sage.

The net effect was a slowly gather- ing groundswell of opposition to the road, a growing awareness that a national seashore on Fire IsIand was far from a neighborhood issue. Let- ters streamed into Washington from every corner of the country.

Suddenly, it seemed that every- body was talking about Fire Island: conservationists, city and regional planners, sportsmen’s groups, busi- ness organizations-and a multitude of plain citizens. A poll showed over- whelming opposition to the road. The Long Island Association, a regional chamber of commerce representing more than a thousand business firms, came out for a national seashore on Fire Island. The New York Times editorialized that New Yorkers al- ready had “no shortage of four-lane roads for such sightseeing as can be enjoyed bumper-to-bumper.” Gover- nor Rockefeller, asked publicly if he planned to support the Fire Island road, was less than enthusiastic. Commissioner Moses had a heated meeting with the governor, then pe- remptorily resigned from the Long Island State Park Commission and four other posts, Although no one has revealed what was said at the meeting, the Fire Island issue must have come up.

In any case, the road was dead. By early summer, half a dozen Fire

Island bills were in the congressional hoppers. But Congress was not about to move unless the proposed legis- lation had the blessing of Otis Pike, the lawmaker whose district was directly involved. So now the citizens’ committee became virtual commuters to his office.

Congressman Pike hesitated. He had always felt that any park on Fire Island should be locally admin- istered. But, finally, convinced that no local authority was prepared to purchase and maintain a park, he drafted a bill for the creation of a national park on Fire Island and fought with skill and force for its passage. And on September 11, 1964, President Johnson signed the bill. The citizens’ committee had won.

* * * In two and a half years, the com-

mittee had spent less than $11,000. The magic ingredient was effort- directed, exhaustive personal effort -to reach people in great numbers and to make them care, to create the kind of legislative lobby that goes to the heart of the democratic process. On December 2, 1964, the National Audubon Society awarded its Citizen’s Leadership citation to Mr. Barbash “for turning community concern into community action and achieving a notable victory for the public good.”

Barbash responded with his thanks for all who had helped, and by re- minding men of good wiIl that they must never despair. “There are lost causes all over America,” he said, “just waiting to be won.”