Fire Island's preservation effort documented in records donated to Stony Brook University
By Brianne Ledda brianne.ledda@newsday.com@brianne_ledda Updated September 24, 2024 6:20 pm
Susan Barbash, seen here, at the Fire Island Ferries terminal in Bay Shore. Susan and her sister Cathy Barbash were inspired by their parents' fight against Robert Moses’ plan to build a road on Fire Island. Credit: Morgan Campbell
To many Long Islanders, Robert Moses is a name plastered over parks and highways — the legacy of an urban planner who shaped the island through major projects such as Jones Beach State Park and the Long Island Expressway.
But to Susan Barbash, the master builder was her first “villain.”
She was 8 when her parents joined the fight against Moses’ plan to build a four-lane highway on Fire Island. It's a moment she remembers as a sort of “political coming of age” for her and her sister Cathy Barbash, who was 10 at the time.
"When I learned about condemnation” — a way that government seizes property from a private owner — that Moses was infamous for, Cathy said, “I started having nightmares that my own home on Long Island was going to be condemned.”
While their father, Maurice Barbash, helped lead a grassroots community campaign to preserve the barrier island, the Barbash sisters helped by recruiting Fire Island Ferry goers to write letters to Congress in support of the initiative.
Now, 60 years after Fire Island officially became a national seashore, the sisters have played an integral role in efforts to remember that fight by donating documents to Stony Brook University Libraries' Special Collections.
The collection, which includes committee meeting minutes, press releases and correspondence with elected officials, will be available for public view both online and in-person by appointment at Stony Brook University.
A park born from protest
The environmental movement was in its infancy when Maurice Barbash, a Brightwaters developer, joined a campaign to preserve the natural beauty of Fire Island, recalled Susan Barbash, now 70, who lives in Bay Shore.
“Rachel Carson's ‘Silent Spring’ had just been published. And I think people were all of a sudden waking up and saying, ‘Maybe we should press the pause button on all this building,’” she said.
Moses, who was chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission at the time, had supported the idea of a road running through Fire Island for decades. But it wasn’t until 1962 that the proposal for a highway continuing from Ocean Parkway to Westhampton and Quogue was included in a state plan responding to a storm earlier that year.
Proponents believed the road would anchor the island and prevent erosion, as well as provide beach access to the metropolitan area, according to the National Park Service.
The plan, however, was met with resistance from Long Island environmentalists. Maurice Barbash and Irving Like, a Babylon environmental lawyer and Barbash's brother-in-law, formed the Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore to protest the development.
Claire Siegel, 96, an original member of the committee, vividly remembers her first meeting to discuss the proposal.
“As I approach Jones Beach, where the walk is, I see a huge lady … and behind her, a bunch of little kids … They have a sign, and it says, ‘He thinks he's God, but he's only Moses,’” she recalled.
Siegel, a retired teacher who hoped to preserve free beach access for her family and others, added: “My concern personally was that the seashore … would have oceanfront that belonged to every citizen of the United States.”
The Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore later morphed into what is now the Fire Island Association, said organization president Suzy Goldhirsch, who compared the fight against Moses to the biblical confrontation between David and Goliath.
“The citizens,” or David, “prevailed,” she said.
A July hearing that year was packed with protesters against the road, voicing criticism that prompted Moses to walk out. The urban planner quit his position as Long Island State Parks commissioner by 1963 and plans for a road on Fire Island faded into history.
Congress formally established the Fire Island National Seashore on Sept. 11, 1964, with legislation signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Matt Sherman, who owns the ferry service to Davis Park on Fire Island, said his grandfather was recording secretary for the Citizens Committee.
“We were afraid of Robert Moses,” said Sherman, 68, but “it was either Robert Moses or the seashore … We knew what Ocean Parkway looked like and we didn’t want that on Fire Island.”
A historic collection
The Barbash sisters credit Sherman with saving the bulk of the historic records donated to Stony Brook University.
Sherman’s mother had stored several years worth of meeting minutes from the Citizens Committee in their garage, said Cathy Barbash, 72, of Brightwaters.
“People have to be able to see the evidence of this having happened in really, the fairly recent past,” she said.
That led her to Stony Brook University, which has other collections that record the environmental movement on Long Island, including papers from Irving Like.
The depth of the approximately 100-page collection donated by the Barbashes, which formally joined university archives on Sept. 3, “is unmatched,” said Kristen Nyitray, university archivist and director of special collections at Stony Brook.
“It tells a really interesting story about Long Island history,” said Jamie Saragossi, associate dean and librarian at the university.
Stony Brook is in the process of digitizing the records, which will have a dedicated website, according to university librarians. The collection will also be available in-person by appointment.
60 years later
Sixty years later, the national seashore's future is in question as sea levels continue to rise and the barrier island with a population of 777 residents is buffeted by damaging storms that have become increasingly common.
“There's some speculation that the island itself will be nothing more than a sandbar,” said Alexcy Romero, superintendent of the Fire Island National Seashore.
Romero met with National Park Service officials from the other nine national seashores in late September in part to discuss strategies to tackle climate change and sea level rise.
“It’s almost like a community of practice, learning from each other’s successes and perhaps mistakes,” Romero said.
The park is also in the midst of updating driving regulations on Fire Island, including changes to the number of permits issued each year, how permit eligibility is determined and when driving would be permitted, among other things.
Romero expects Congress to approve the new rules in January.
“One thing I can say about Fire Islanders,” Romero added, “is that, regardless of political spectrum, everyone knows and sees that there is climate change and sea level rise.”
But, that hasn't made much of a difference for Siegel, who still visits her family home in Blue Point Beach on Fire Island, purchased after the national park's establishment.
She enjoys sitting on her porch when she is there, where foxes have babies under her deck, deer wander close to the house and she can see the bay.
“I can go to my grave happy,” she said, safe in the knowledge that, thanks to her efforts, the Fire Island National Seashore is still a place that her children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren can enjoy.
WHAT TO KNOW
The Fire Island National Seashore marked its 60th anniversary earlier this month, a milestone that has come despite great odds.
The park exists thanks to Long Islanders who protested a four-lane highway that urban planner Robert Moses intended to build on the barrier island in the early 1960s.
Descendants of those activists recently donated a collection of documents recording those efforts to Stony Brook University, where they will be available for public view.
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