News
A Farewell To The Sea Sage
Friends remember environmentalist Dery Bennett
By John Burton
RED BANK - The wind was frigid and the snow was beginning to fall in earnest on Saturday afternoon as friends, family, colleagues and others who shared his passions began filing into Thompson Memorial Home, on Broad Street, to express their lose at the passing last week of Dery Bennett.
The weather certainly didn't seem conducive to it, but a couple of those in attendance at the gathering shed their shoes and socks.
"I left them in the car," said Bob Reid, as he stood barefooted, waiting in the receiving line to offer his condolences to Bennett's widow, Barbara. Bennett, 79, a Fair Haven resident, died last Tuesday, after a long illness, said close friend Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, an organization that Bennett, a stalwart environmental activist, helped found.
Reid, who is retired from the Sandy Hook Laboratory, said he met Bennett shortly after beginning work at the lab in 1971. "The one thing that you would remember about him is the bare feet," as he would go much of the time without shoes, Reid said.
Bennett, among his many works and accomplishments, had served for 35 years as executive director the American Littoral Society, headquartered at Gateway National Recreation Area at Sandy Hook.
At the lab, "We were a little bit more formal," Reid recalled, meaning Bennett would have to don his shoes before entering and visiting with Reid.
Brett Thompson, a 20-yearold Rumson resident decided to take off his shoes as well, in honor of Bennett. "I had to not wear the shoes," he said. "One of my great memories is if you saw Dery,"
Thompson said, "it was probably without shoes." Brett and his brother, Tyler, who is 26, had known Bennett, "Since we were running around in diapers," Tyler said (he was wearing shoes - Converse sneakers, which Bennett would wear when he had to wear shoes.)
"He probably inspired a whole generation of environmental advocates," Tyler said. "He inspired me to educate people after working with him for one day," when Bennett conducted a student seminar when Tyler was in high school, he said.
Bennett was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, graduating from Amherst College and going on to serve in the U.S. Navy. Over the course of his varied career he had worked as a newspaper reporter, a semi-pro basketball player, and was assistant president of Corning Community College, in Corning, N.Y., where is also taught English, according to his obituary. But it was his work on environmental issues that most talked about when they talked about Bennett. In addition to working with the littoral society, he laid the groundwork for other organizations and nurtured them, as those groups, such as Clean Ocean Action, where he served as president for 25 years, the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper, and others, gained momentum.
"I counted him as a friend and mentor," said Andy Willner, former NY/NJ baykeeper. "Dery was really a wise man," Willner said. "That's not a word you use often. He was extraordinarily thoughtful." He also espoused a style that Willner called "hardnosed advocacy," meaning being passionate but also well informed in defense of his positions. "He was also extraordinarily stubborn," Willner said. "He'd take that position when governors would call, when vice presidents would call. That's how he accomplished so much in his life."
U.S. Representative Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) said he had worked with Bennett for many years on many issues. "He was just an inspiration," the congressman said. "He really believed in environmental issues." Bennett would, "look at everything long term," seeing the big picture, sometimes studying issues for many years, Pallone said.
Bennett was instrumental in working in his hometown to help establish a natural area in the town's Fair Haven fields, sports fields.
"You know what's great?" offered Fair Haven Mayor Michael Halfacre. "He was a Fair Haven guy."
"The vast majority of people in Fair Haven and Monmouth County will never know what he did for us," Halfacre said. "He will be missed."
"He gave no quarter to a developer or anyone who was against his principles," noted Bill Schultz, a Perth Amboy resident who is the Raritan River keeper and had been friends with Bennett for more than 20 years.
"He wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty," added friend Lorraine McCarthy, also of Perth Amboy. "He was a doer, not a watcher."
That was evident in a slide show that ran on a laptop computer during the gathering, showing Bennett in all sorts of outdoor activities and work. "He did all the spadework," for so many organizations, and literally the spadework, going out in the field, observed Gene Geer, Hazlet, who worked with the Littoral Society and Bennett since the 1960s.
"He encouraged people," Geer said.
"I was always struck by how much of a hands-on environmentalist he was," said Ben Forest, Red Bank, who served on Clean Ocean Action's board with Bennett for 20 years. "We didn't always win all of our battles," Forest acknowledged. "But he kept us moving forward."
"He inspired, formed and shaped national and regional organizations that have improved and protected our watery world and the critters that depend on it," Zipf said in an e-mail last week.
Bennett is survived by his wife, Barbara, two daughters and three grandchildren. Plans are in the works to conduct a memorial service for Bennett out at Sandy Hook in February.
