Larry Penny, Former East Hampton Town Natural Resources Director, Dies at 89

Larry Penny, who played a key role in the emergence four decades ago of a strong environmental movement on the East End, died on December 15 in Nevada City, California, where he and his wife, Julie, had recently moved to be closer to their sons. He was 89.

Penny served as natural resources director for the Town of East Hampton from 1984 to 2012, and also wrote the “Nature Notes” column, which appeared in The East Hampton Star for many years, and later, “Nature Naturally,” which appeared in The Express News Group papers until last year.

Julie Penny said her husband had been in declining health for some time and his condition worsened after he suffered a fall at the assisted living facility where they had moved, from their longtime home in Noyac, less than a month before.

Penny was born in Mattituck, but moved to California when he served in the U.S. Army in the 1950s. He returned to the East End in the early 1970s to take a position at Southampton College, where he taught field biology.

“To this day, whenever I run into somebody who was a student of his, they just glow, talking about Larry and how he changed their lives,” his wife said. “Everybody loved him and thought it was a real gift to be one of his students.”

After his return to the East End, Penny became involved with The Group for America’s South Fork — now the Group for the East End — in an environmental movement that was just taking root in the area.

Kevin McDonald of The Nature Conservancy said that at the time, those who took a pro-environmental stance were often pilloried as anti-growth and un-American. Penny, he said, had a gift for talking about the natural world in a way that resonated with ordinary people.

“Rather than talk about the environment in a generic way, Larry was able to translate it to the landscapes where we lived and the parks and beaches that we frequented,” he said. “Larry did it with enthusiasm and appreciation for the natural world and its wonders.”

“Larry goes back to the start of the environmental movement and obviously had a tremendous impact on it,” said Rick Whalen, who served for many years as the town’s Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals attorney. He said that Penny brought his expertise to efforts such as the Coalition for Hither Woods, which successfully fought off a major development proposal in Montauk. “You can’t overstate his impact, particularly in East Hampton,” he said.

“Through the years, Larry’s advocacy for wetlands, water quality and endangered species, was legendary and he also played a critical role in the protection of such beloved properties as Shadmoor, the Grace Estate, Hither Woods, Camp Hero, and Barcelona Neck,” said Bob DeLuca, the president of the Group for the East End. “By any measure, Larry stands as a titan of the region’s conservation movement.”

In 1981, the Republican majority on the Town Board briefly eliminated the Planning Department, setting off a reaction that was swift and decisive, as Democrats swept into power in 1983 — rarely losing their majority since — and made environmental protection a centerpiece of their platform.

Lisa Liquori, the town’s planning director, and Russell Stein, the newly appointed town attorney, rewrote the town’s comprehensive plan, providing an environmental justification for a major townwide rezoning.

Penny was named the town’s natural resources director and, among other duties, he oversaw the administration of natural resources permits, flagging wetlands and introducing other measures to safeguard natural features of properties being developed.

“Larry was a teacher to us all,” Liquori said. “He had an incredible depth of knowledge.” She added that he brought a childlike enthusiasm to his work. “I picture him as a little kid with his head in a book or outside exploring nature,” she added.

Colleagues said Penny was also something of an absent-minded professor, who often juggled too many tasks at one time.

“Larry had a lot of wonderful traits, but being organized wasn’t one of them,” Liquori said.

She recounted that Penny would store dead animals he found on the road in an office refrigerator, planning to dissect them, but rarely getting around to it. “He had more ambition than time,” she said.

“When you drove around with Larry in his town truck, he had a clipboard with a gazillion pieces of loose paper on it,” recalled naturalist Mike Bottini. “He was writing down the species of all the road kill he had encountered.” Penny’s goal, he said, was to eventually catalogue the information. “It never went anywhere,” he said, “but it was a good idea.”

One idea that proved to be successful was Penny’s insistence on placing small signs marking turtle crossings along East Hampton Town roads. “A lot of people laughed about it at the beginning,” Bottini said, “but within a couple of years, everyone would stop for a turtle.”

Andy Sabin worked with Penny on the turtle crossing sign initiative and later he helped found the South Fork Natural History Museum in 1989 with Penny and a handful of other like-minded people.

“He was a very good naturalist,” Sabin said. “I really admired him for his work, his writing, and his dedication to stopping development.”

Penny contributed regular columns to local newspapers for decades and enjoyed hearing from readers who would call him to report sightings of rare, and not so rare, species.

“He was very giving of his time,” his wife said. “People would call him up at all hours of the night to say they had a bat in their attic and ask him what to do.”

After retiring from his town position, Penny remained active as an environmental advocate.

“The last conversation I had with him was a couple of years ago about Wainscott commercial development,” said Sara Davison, who was serving at the time as the executive director of the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation and had worked with Penny since 1987 when she was the director of the East End office of The Nature Conservancy. “He was very concerned about the impact on the pond.”

Penny was born on October 21, 1935, at home in Mattituck to Arthur Penny and the former Lucille Slade. He attended local schools before going to Cornell University. His wife said he dropped out and joined the U.S. Army, which sent him to language school in Monterey, California, where he was trained as a Russian translator and later sent to Japan.

After leaving the Army, he enrolled at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he studied ichthyology. He completed his classwork for a doctoral degree, but did not complete his dissertation, his wife said.

On a visit back to New York in 1969, Penny, had been planning to attend the Woodstock rock festival, but thought better of the idea and decided instead to visit his parents in Mattituck. He met his future wife, Julie Migliorati, who was traveling east with a friend, on the Long Island Rail Road.

Although they were together for 55 years, they did not make their union official until November 1, 1987, when they were married by a justice of the peace on a visit to Salem, Oregon.

Penny was predeceased by Mary Angela Penny, his daughter from a previous marriage. Besides his wife, he is survived by a son and daughter-in-law, Jim and Vicki Penny and their two sons, Matthew and Kevin of San Franciso; and a stepson and daughter-in-law, Christopher and Julie Neumann, and their son, Max, of Nevada City.

The family has requested that memorial donations be made to The Group for the East End, the National Audubon Society, Earth Justice, and the Autism Research Institute.

A celebration of Penny’s life will be held on the East End on August 15, 2025, the 56th anniversary of the day he and his wife met.