This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

The Creation of the Udalls Cove Preservation Committee

The Seventh in a Series on the Environment of Northeast Queens

As described in my previous columns, the booming residential and commercial development of northeast Queens during the decades after World War II accelerated the filling and destruction of our last remaining wetlands. 

By the late 1960s, scientists and citizens alike had come to recognize the value of these wetlands as critical habitats for animals and plants. In Douglaston, Aurora Gareiss watched the process with increasing concern. She lived at the edge of the Udalls Cove marsh in her house, named Bit `O Bay, on Douglas Road a few blocks south of Memorial Field. 

From her backyard, she could watch the rich and vibrant bird life that depended on the wetlands and she could also see the many new homes that had recently been built in the area of Little Neck north of the Long Island Rail Road, and mostly on filled marshland. 

Find out what's happening in Bayside-Douglastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In 1969, several newly-proposed projects galvanized her into action. The Village of Great Neck Estates, lying directly east of the Douglaston peninsula across Udalls Cove, proposed to fill in most of the remaining wetlands to build a golf course. 

Around the same time, plans were being made to build a new parking lot for Little Neck’s LIRR station north of the tracks near the east end of the station platform. That lot would be on the Nassau County side of the Queens-Nassau boundary and would be connected by the roadway to Great Neck. Other projects were also proposed for construction in the wetlands on both sides of the peninsula. 

Find out what's happening in Bayside-Douglastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

One day Aurora was lamenting the situation to her neighbor Ralph Kamhi. She urged him, as she had urged others, to write letters to various state and local officials protesting the development plans.

Ralph told her that letters from individuals might be helpful, but what really was needed to get the officials’ attention was an organized preservation campaign. And that meant having an organization. 

On October 20, 1969, Gareiss founded the Udalls Cove Preservation Committee with a few likeminded friends and neighbors. Aurora became president of the fledgling group and Ralph took on the duties of vice president. 

Tom Dent, who also lived near the marsh, was the lawyer who incorporated the group in early 1970. Others on the board of directors included Arthur Kelley, a high school science teacher who had been born in Douglaston in 1924, and Dr. Leo Kellerman, who would later go on to become the Johnny Appleseed of Douglaston, planting hundreds of trees around the community. 

In remarkably short order, every relevant government official came to know Aurora Gareiss, from congressmen and governors to mayors and Parks commissioners. She proselytized, wheedled, harangued, preached, begged and pleaded for help and support in her mission to preserve the few remnant acres of wetlands and woodlands in the Udalls Cove watershed. 

Her remarkable gift was that she could do this with passion, fervor, even zeal, but never with rancor or unpleasantness. Every official knew and respected her and, perhaps less common in the world of public activism, they liked her.

And she was successful. Within just a few years she had secured commitments from these officials to acquire the land and create the Udalls Cove Park and Preserve. More next time on how she did it.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Bayside-Douglaston