Letters

Laurie Anderson’s statement that “I have never met John Leonard” [“A Bully,” Letters, February 6] was about all she got right.

I lived through every moment of John Leonard’s three years on the board of the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center — he’s my husband — and it was ugly.

Nobody pushed Virginia Frati out. She wanted to retire as of November 1, 2022. John singlehandedly found a highly qualified candidate. Frati was installed on the center’s board of directors on October 25, 2022. Her last day as executive director was October 31, 2022.

Frati became livid when an audit of the center’s payroll revealed that she somehow obtained a raise right before retiring and then improperly collected over $2,000 from the center after. Insulted, Frati engaged in a sabotage campaign against the center. She encouraged donors to stop donating, canceled the center’s permits, canceled the center’s medication accounts, helped disgraced employees sue the center on frivolous claims, and maligned the new executive director.

To appease her, she was named director emeritus and chair emeritus, but nothing stopped her. She was eventually stripped of the director emeritus position.

Nor did John bully anyone against Frati. One board member that John allegedly bullied, Jane Gill, is still a member of the board. In an email to the board dated May 26, 2023, Gill wrote of Frati: “I am very disappointed in the way she has presented herself since she stepped down in November. Her behavior is filled with anger, vindictiveness, suspicion … My observation is she is on a mission to make certain that the center fails because she is no longer in charge.

“She has reached out to each and every donor that has generously given us funding as well as advocating for the Wildlife Center, and with each and every person she has spoken negatively about everything that we are trying to do to keep the center open for wildlife. Unfortunately the majority of those people are unaware of the behavior that she has exhibited since she stepped down in November. They are only hearing her side of the story. … She is destroying her own legacy.

“I’m sure that we can all agree that upon speaking to people who have donated to the center we’ve had to give them the other side of the story. I am not sure how we proceed to deal with someone who I believed to be very grounded and communicative and has now become very irrational and childlike.”

Gill repeatedly voted to remove Frati from her board positions. Are these the words of someone bullied into doing that?

Gene Valle

Hampton Bays