A Quest That Brought Lady Liberty Closer

The New York Times
By KEVIN COYNE
Published: June 22, 2008

Jersey City

LEGACY Sam and Judy Pesin celebrated the role their father, Morris, had in a movement to create Liberty State Park.

ANYBODY else sneaking up behind the Statue of Liberty the way Sam Pesin was on this sunny postcard morning ? in a 14-foot rowboat, aiming for a small beach beside the ferry dock crowded with tourists arriving in the sanctioned manner ? would get a stern bullhorn warning to back away, immediately. He got a round of applause instead, and a fireboat spouting arcs of red, white and blue.

Fifty years and one day earlier, his late father made the same short trip in an even smaller craft, a canoe, the first leg of an 18-year quest to transform a decaying industrial waterfront of defunct piers and railyards into a more fitting backdrop for the revered landmark that stands at the front entrance to New Jersey, and America.

?There?s nothing like it in the world, and it?s right here in Jersey City?s backyard,? Sam Pesin said when he reached Liberty Island, quoting his father, Morris, to the group of 65 who had gathered on June 14 to celebrate the anniversary of the eight-minute canoe trip that started the movement to create Liberty State Park, which opened in 1976. ?The waters today were a lot calmer than when my father went on that drizzly, misty day.?

Morris Pesin was among those New Jerseyans who believed their home state deserved better than it got, and could do better than it did. He started off wanting to change the world, and then realized that the best place to start was with his own city.

His parents were immigrant Jews from Russia, and he absorbed the kind of progressive politics that pervaded many such families that sought refuge in the United States from czarist pogroms. He met his wife, Esther, at a meeting at the city?s Jewish Community Center in support of the anti-Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. ?Both my husband and I supported the right people,? said Ethel Pesin, 93, who lives in Journal Square.

He was a lawyer, but so were several of his brothers, and when clients came to the law firm of Pesin Pesin Pesin & Pesin, they tended to ask for the older, more experienced Pesins. After World War II, he and Ethel opened a clothing store to outfit the waves of young baby boomers.

?My husband didn?t care about business, he didn?t care about money,? said Mrs. Pesin, who would buy new shoes and jackets for him because he couldn?t be bothered to buy them for himself. ?He never even looked at the register to see how we were doing that day. I said, ?Let?s open another store,? we were doing so well, and he said, ?No, what would we do with the money?? ?

What he cared about were larger issues: integrating local restaurants; ending racial restrictions at Palisades Amusement Park; pressing for state anti-bias laws; organizing interfaith programs between blacks and Jews. And finding a way to connect his home city more firmly to the Statue of Liberty that had greeted his parents, and that he had such a hard time visiting with his wife and two children one May day in 1957.

?We had to go to New York, and we couldn?t find a parking space, and we had to ride around and around,? Mrs. Pesin said of a trip that took three hours. ?Coming home we were on the Turnpike and my husband looked at me and said, ?Ethel, look how close we are, I could touch it.? ?

It just wasn?t right, Mr. Pesin believed, that the statue wasn?t more accessible from New Jersey. ?I remember him ranting and yelling and being so angry in the car,? said Sam Pesin, who was 7 at the time. ?I don?t remember what he said, except him just really being mad about the whole day.?

He encouraged the city?s newspaper, The Jersey Journal, to take up the cause, and the editor finally suggested the canoe trip as a publicity stunt. ?The son of immigrants paddling out to the statue that greeted the immigrants and all their struggles, and here he had an opportunity now to do something for the country that was doing so much for immigrants ? I know it sounds a little corny,? said Sam Pesin, 58, who has been president of Friends of Liberty State Park since 1995, and who often tells his father?s story to the students at the Jersey City preschool where he teaches. ?He wanted to make the world a better place, and it came from his love of America.?

When Morris Pesin ran as an independent for the City Council in 1969, he covered the loudspeaker atop his car?s roof with a doghouse. He would be the city?s watchdog, he promised, and he won. He closed the store in 1974, rejoiced at the park?s opening in 1976 and then, after leaving the council in 1977, worked ? full time, but declining a salary ? for the city?s cultural arts commission and what was called the City Spirit office. A few weeks before he died in 1992, on his last visit to the park, he watched his 5-year-old granddaughter ride her bicycle on the sidewalk along Freedom Way.

After the anniversary speeches were finished, the friends, family and admirers of Mr. Pesin rode a National Park Service boat back to Jersey City, the gateway now for 800,000 visitors each year who, because of Morris Pesin, no longer have to make the long journey to Lower Manhattan first to get to the Statue of Liberty.

Liberty State Park is the busiest state park in New Jersey, with five million visitors each year, and several hundred of them were gathered in the shade of the sycamores at the picnic grove where the large Pesin clan used to gather for family reunions.

?The last big one was the year before he died,? Sam Pesin said. But other families gather here for their own reunions regularly, and his father, he is sure, would have counted them as part of his own.

E-mail: jersey@nytimes.com

Sam should run for Mayor!!!

Quote:

That is the work of a 70's artist by the name of Charles Simonds.

LINK

Anybody ever check out the mini stone castles in the swamps??

flick here

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Me three. Sam is amazing for holding up his father's vision. Morris' legacy is extraordinarily profound.

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Me too!

I think Sam is amazing.

A NEW CANOE RIDE
Pesin family re-enacts their Dad's famous trip

Monday, June 16, 2008
By PAUL KOEPP
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

As Judy Pesin got ready Saturday morning to re-enact her father Morris's famous 1958 canoe trip from Jersey City to Liberty Island, the foundational moment of Liberty State Park, she portrayed a bit of unease.

Eyeing our 14-foot skiff, which was beached at the end of Pesin Drive in the park, she said, "I see a few motor boats out there I'd prefer to the one we're going on."

She didn't have to worry, I soon learned.

The rowboat that would carry me along with Judy, 56, her brother Sam, 58, and LSP Superintendent Josh Osowski had been safely paddled as far as the Florida Keys by John Tichenor, head of the Friends of Liberty State Park, who built it in his Garfield Avenue basement in 1992.

Morris Pesin, aptly described as the "Father of Liberty State Park," made this trip by canoe to dramatize the proximity of the island to the rotting piers of Jersey City and what the dilapidated waterfront and rail yards could become.

Opened on Flag Day in 1976 with 35 acres, the park is now nearly 1,200 acres and attracts more than 4 million annual visitors.

I was sitting in for former Jersey Journal reporter Tom Durkin, who was on board when Morris Pesin made the original trip. Before we left shore, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy presented the Pesins with a proclamation honoring the re-enactment.

Behind us in a ferry were about 50 friends and well-wishers, including Morris Pesin's widow Ethel, 93. A quick inspection of the Muhheakunnuk (the Lenape word for the Hudson River) revealed two life jackets for four passengers. Sam and Judy strapped theirs on while Osowski told me, "You would just hold on to your seat cushion to stay afloat."

Oh, OK.

Osowski then swung into the captain's seat, grabbed the oars, and we shoved off for a smooth 23-minute ride. That's 15 minutes longer than Morris Pesin took to show how close the city is to the island, though his was a shorter trip from where the South Cove Bridge now stands.

Sam Pesin remembered that the inspiration for his father's publicity seeking journey was a 1957 family trek to Liberty Island that took two and a half hours from their Van Nostrand Avenue home, via the Holland Tunnel and Battery Park.

Under the Statue of Liberty, 100-year-old Frances Oakley, a school friend of Ethel Pesin, led the Pledge of Allegiance and belted out the National Anthem.

Another friend present was Charles Balzer, who was Morris Pesin's partner for three years in the City Spirit Office, organizing cultural events from the old press room in the basement of City Hall.

"He would do anything for the betterment of Jersey City," Balzer said. "He never tolerated idleness."

SAM PESIN: Park protector

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.

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."

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

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.

1. Favorite band: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

2. Last movie seen: "Freedom Writers" with Hilary Swank

3. Guilty pleasure: Chocolate ice cream

4. Hidden talent: Dancing to rock 'n' roll -- "more like a love than a talent"

5. Weakness: "Maybe leaving phone messages that are too long."

6. Person you'd most like to have lunch with: Nelson Mandela

Christine V. Baird may be reached at cbaird@starledger.com.

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