News
An Honor Befitting
The Man
Fair Haven pond named
after staunch environmentalist
By John Burton
FAIR HAVEN - Set back from busy Ridge Road is about 40 acres of undisturbed wooded splendor, with a manmade pond that, as of Tuesday afternoon, bears the name of a former resident and environmental activist Dery Bennett.
But just don't call it the Dery Bennett Memorial Pond, officials advised as they officially named the pond.
A group of borough officials, Bennett's family and colleagues and long standing environmental allies came together to honor the memory of Bennett, a longtime borough resident and something of a legend for those in the environmental advocacy movement, and to acknowledge his work by the placing of a granite marker and with the official naming of the small body of water.
Bennett, 79, died last Dec. 15, after spending 35 years as executive director of the American Littoral Society, an environmental organization headquartered at Fort Hancock, located at Gateway National Recreational Area at Sandy Hook. Bennett had spent his life working on environmental causes, especially as it related to the state's waterways, lobbying elected officials and getting his message out, and was instrumental in founding other environmental groups in addition to the littoral society, including Clean Ocean Action and the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper.
"Dery walked by this pond virtually every day," recalled Dick Fuller, chairman of the Fair Haven Fields Advisory Committee. "He came because he wanted to be in an area with nature acting upon its own."
"Many people in Fair Haven may not realize the giant we had who walked among us," said Mayor Michael Halfacre, referring to Bennett.
With the placement of the granite marker overlooking the pond, Halfacre, while acknowledging to not knowing Bennett extremely well, he thought, "This tribute is probably the kind of memorial Dery would have wanted." By most accounts, Bennett, despite often finding himself in the halls of power, meeting with elected officials, from local up to Capitol Hill, was a rather plainspoken and unpretentious man, given to going barefoot whenever he could.
And that was why the pond dedication and accompanying borough council resolution indicated it would be officially called Dery's Pond, as opposed to something more staid and formal.
"It's Dery's Pond because he knew how to enjoy it," Fuller said.
"This was one of Dery's favorite places," said Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, who was very close to Bennett and his family.
Zipf agreed that simply calling it Dery's Pond was the appropriate choice. "Dery was never about big titles," she explained. "It was never about him it was about the message he came to deliver: that is it is about the natural world."
The pond is located in the heart of Fair Haven Fields, an approximately 77-acre tract that includes the 40 acres of undeveloped wooded grounds, and the 37-acre recreational portion, which includes sports fields.
The pond, Halfacre explained, was a manmade ditch dug for irrigation, back when the property was part of the Lovett Nursery property.
With funding from the state's Green Acres program and from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the borough was able to purchase the land back in 1973, for about $700,000, from a developer, Lester Genser, who had bought it from the Lovett family, explained James Ingle, who was the original chair of the Fair Haven Fields Advisory Committee. Bennett was an original member of that committee and worked tirelessly to get the funding for the tract.
