Following in his dad's footsteps, he guards Miss Liberty's backyard
Sunday, June 15, 2008
BY CHRISTINE V. BAIRD
Star-Ledger Staff
Sam Pesin can't help himself.
With a stunning view of the Statue of Liberty less than 2,000 feet across
the harbor this chilly day, he's looking down, analyzing dirt on the
covering of a sign that explains how his dad became known as the "father of
Liberty State Park." He's trying to figure out if the grime is inside or
outside.
"You know what I do? I clean it up on the anniversary of my dad's passing,"
he says. "They have a special cleaning fluid that I get from the maintenance
staff."
Tending his father's legacy has become Pesin's passion, whether that means
cleaning up the park or helping, as president of the Friends of Liberty
State Park, an open-space advocacy group, to slay the next commercial giant
trying to plop a golf course or water park on the public grounds.
It's not unusual for Pesin, a wiry 5-foot-3 with thick reddish hair and
bushy gray beard, to jump the promenade's guard rail onto the rocks to clear
trash that has washed ashore.
His pockets bulging with litter he has collected, Pesin walks through the
park and is quickly recognized. "Hey, Sam, did you see the new plants and
flowers we put on Freedom Way?" calls Dale Cummings, a park worker and Pesin
fan.
"The thing about it is that he really cares. It's not political," says
Cummings, who lives in Jersey City. And the park is "really important
because it's right here in the inner city, right in the 'hood so to speak.
It's needed."
A great story
The need for open space -- something Pesin's father fiercely believed in --
is why the son spends most of his time outside of teaching preschool looking
out for the park. "To me, one of the greatest things about Liberty Park is
that the people fought for a free park, putting democracy into action behind
the Statue of Liberty," says Pesin, 58. "That's a really great story."
The story began 50 years ago, when his father, Morris, a store owner,
paddled a canoe from the Jersey City waterfront of rotting piers and
decaying rail yards to Liberty Island to show how quick a trip it would be.
The time: about eight minutes.
The stunt was the idea of a Jersey Journal editor, to whom Pesin had
complained for a year about a family trip to the Statue of Liberty that was
marred by traffic to and from Manhattan, the only place to catch the ferry.
Pesin also pointed out that New Jersey's waterfront wasteland was a
"shameful" backdrop for Miss Liberty
Ethel Pesin, 93, says her husband asked her if he should get in a boat. She
gave her blessings only after he confirmed his insurance was paid.
On June 13, 1958, Morris Pesin made the voyage that launched a park. That's
when he and a handful of local activists started to get people -- from
Jersey City neighbors to government officials -- excited about the idea.
Their vision was realized on Flag Day 1976, when Liberty State Park opened
as New Jersey's bicentennial gift to the nation.
At the time, it was about 35 acres -- across from Lady Liberty at the end of
a street named Morris Pesin Drive. Today, it's nearly 1,200 acres, with more
than 300 open to the park's 4 million annual visitors.
Yesterday, Sam Pesin and his family were scheduled to re-enact the boat trip
to commemorate the 50th anniversary and to place a wreath in Morris Pesin's
honor on Liberty Island, a fitting Father's Day tribute.
"My father was a visionary leader, and I'm surely blessed to try to do my
best to carry on in his giant footsteps, protecting his great legacy," Pesin
says.
To do so, he spends countless hours writing letters, making phone calls,
attending meetings and organizing rallies about park issues. The letter
writing comes easiest. "You can just use every superlative in the dictionary
and it matches the park," he says in his mellow voice.
Yet, when he's riled, you don't want to be the object of his ire, like the
ice cream truck near the boarding area for the Liberty Island ferry that's
playing a jarring tune nonstop. "They have to change that soundtrack. Maybe
I have to picket it," he says, grinning.
Turning serious, he heads toward the construction site of a planned 9/11
memorial on the waterfront plaza.
"Look through the fence," he says. "Look at the Empire State Building."
A peek shows just its tip visible above the 10-foot hill that will be the
base of a proposed 30-foot-tall monument. The rest of Manhattan, including
Ground Zero, is obscured. The Friends group is suing the state over the
memorial, which Pesin calls "view-blocking."
Feting the Friends
Pesin is anxiously running around the sun-filled second floor of the park's
Liberty House restaurant one April afternoon, hosting a luncheon to honor
volunteers and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Friends and the 50th
anniversary of his dad's trip.
He wants to be sure everyone from the early activists to the current
volunteers are thanked. Soon, a cake will arrive so the group can sing
"Happy Birthday" in honor of the anniversaries.
"There is only one Sam," says his mother's friend, Eleanor Bouer, who
unsuccessfully tries to get Pesin to stop to eat his chicken entree. "This
park is his dream, his hope, his life."
Pesin doesn't accept praise easily, readily sharing it with others,
especially his father, but he gets it anyway.
"It's not often that a son reaches, succeeds and sometimes surpasses his
dad, but Sam has done so much more," says Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy.
When Morris Pesin died in 1992, after 16 years spent keeping amphitheaters,
condominiums and amusement parks out of the state's largest urban park, his
son stepped up.
"My dad would talk to me about the battles and history," says Pesin, who
felt compelled to fight, too, despite a gentle nature better suited to
dancing around with preschoolers.
At the luncheon, a roomful of advocates share memories of battles fought by
the Friends to keep the park free and green.
"I'll tell you what it is, it's politicians riding along the Turnpike, and
they see these beautiful lawns out there and say, 'What can I put there?'"
says John Tichenor, the group's first president. Even a doll museum was
proposed, he says.
The Friends, a member of the state's Liberty State Park advisory committee,
has helped stop, among other things, proposals for a water park and golf
course and helped bring an end to the Liberty State Park Development Corp.,
an entity whose mission was to commercially develop the park.
Those grandiose projects were out of line with the park's master plan, says
Robert Geddes, the architect who designed it. "The great achievement of the
park is the crescent walk and the green park behind it," both of which have
remained untouched by commercial development, he says.
At the luncheon, whistling starts when Charles Hannon, an 81-year-old Jersey
City native, accepts a "byootiful" activist award and urges the crowd to
keep fighting. "The battle is not over, but we will win," yells the World
War II veteran.
Pesin contemplates the battle cry. "We always thought, 'Oh, we've reached a
plateau and no more battles,'" he says wistfully. But another inevitably
comes.
In addition to opposing the 9/11 memorial, an emotional issue for Pesin
because it pits him against the victims' families, whom he respects, the
group is fighting expansion of the private Liberty Landing Marina and the
widening of a footpath into a road that will bring traffic through the park.
Child of the city
He's an unlikely warrior, but plenty tough, says Greg Remaud, conservation
director of NY/NJ Baykeeper, who has worked with Pesin on park issues for 10
years.
"He is without a doubt the purest, most golden-hearted person I have met in
my life," says Remaud, who worried about how Pesin would handle Hudson
County politics. "I get protective sometimes of Sam because he is pure. But
he's tenacious doing what he thinks is right. That is critical as an
advocate."
Born and raised in Jersey City, Pesin lives with his mother in a spacious
apartment in a former industrial laundry near Tonnelle Avenue.
He's quick to offer a tour of his bedroom, a cluttered shrine to his dad,
the walls covered with awards and citations, including Morris Pesin's 1985
award from President Ronald Reagan.
His mother just shakes her head. "Why do you bring people in here?" she
asks.
Pesin comes from a progressive, politically active family. His parents met
at a rally opposing Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
Showmanship was key to Pesin family activism. When World War I ended, his
grandfather delivered soda water in the Jersey City Heights with a coffin
for Kaiser Wilhelm II attached to his horse-drawn carriage.
Morris Pesin, who was trained as a lawyer, won a city council seat by
mounting a doghouse on his car roof, promising over a loudspeaker to be a
watchdog. His campaign logo was a bespectacled German shepherd.
Sam Pesin is just himself. "You know Sam almost immediately," says baykeeper
Remaud, but he's no pushover. "I can see a big, gruff developer saying,
'This is the guy whose gonna stop me?' But the fact of the matter is, he is
exactly who is going to stop you. If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have a
free, open park. His dad would be so proud of what he's done as a man of the
people."
Growing up, Pesin worked as a stock boy in the children's clothing shop his
parents owned. "I never bought a piece of clothing 'til I was 24," he says.
"They wanted me to be a model for the store, but I wanted to wear my jeans
and T-shirts."
He studied political science at Boston University, tried law school and
lived in a cabin in Vermont with no electricity for seven months. Summers
were spent in Jersey City, except in 1969, when he went to Woodstock.
The summer the park opened, Pesin and his father went to the Democratic
National Convention that nominated Jimmy Carter. "Despite our cultural
differences, my liking rock 'n' roll and my father not, we always shared the
same political views as pro-human rights Democrats," he says. "My father is
my hero, though as a child it was Mickey Mantle."
After volunteering for a Head Start program in Boston, Pesin realized he
liked working with kids, which he has done for 33 years. "The inherent
goodness of children" motivates him, he says.
Currently, he's director of Garden Preschool Cooperative, a parent-run
nonprofit in Jersey City. He uses his last name to spell out his educational
philosophy: Physical, Emotional, Social, Intellectual Now.
At home in the park
Back at the park, Pesin stops at its playground, a space the Friends
campaigned for after Pesin consulted the parks departments at Central Park
and Prospect Park.
In this "uplifting" atmosphere, talk of battles ends. He points to trees and
flowers the Friends donated, many planted by its volunteer gardeners. The
group also sponsors concerts, history programs, marsh cleanups and a shuttle
bus connecting the park to the light rail.
The recent news that 234 contaminated acres of the park's interior will be
turned into a wildlife refuge and will be made off limits to developers, a
project he supported, brings him joy.
"It's going to be mindboggling to have such a large natural area with trails
in a metropolitan area," he says.
Pesin climbs to his favorite spot in the park, a landing atop a children's
slide offering views of the park's historic trilogy -- the Central Railroad
of New Jersey terminal, Ellis Island and Ms. Liberty, as Pesin mistakenly
called her in the text he wrote for his dad's sign.
"People are going to think I'm a politically correct idiot," he says.
As he looks out, he gets dreamy. "You know what I'd like, it'll never happen
of course, but if I retired from school, I'd like to live in Liberty Park in
a tent or a cabin for the rest of my life," he says.
With that, the park's caretaker hops the slide back down to earth.