The Faith Laursen Meroke Preserve on the Bellmore-Merrick border is a woods much like most of Long Island used to be. The Meroke Indians camped by its five streams, and colonists used its tall cedars for ships’ masts. Legend says that during the Revolutionary War British soldiers hid there from marauding colonials. (Most of the area farmers were British sympathizers.)
Part of what is now the preserve was once owned by the New York City Brooklyn waterworks, with the water pumped along Sunrise Highway to the west. Part was owned by the county, part acquired from developers and most recently, an acre donated by Keyspan (now National Grid) in 1999 and declared “forever wild” in 2001 as the rest of the county preserve had been in 1991.
Back in 1973, residents successfully defeated a plan to build a sewer line through the preserve.
In 1993, after the 24-acre preserve was renamed for the late publisher of this newspaper, one of the activists who had fought for it, the late state Senator Norman Levy, obtained a grant that the county used to enact many of the changes proposed by the Friends of the Preserve, including fencing, a bridge over the biggest stream, lighting, dredging, benches, trash receptacles and signage.
Over the years, the Merrick Garden Club, scouts and homeowners groups organized many cleanups. In 1994, Michael Zoccoli and his troop marked trails, installed a trail map sign and put in benches.
Those who have most enjoyed the preserve are its neighbors, one of whom remembers overhearing a little girl visiting the woods saying, “Daddy, we’re in the country!” Longtime residents recall splashing in the streams, which had sandy bottoms and no broken glass then.
But the neighbors are also the ones who are affected most when young people enter the preserve, not to enjoy its peace and beauty, but to drink, build bonfires and carry on. As one neighbor told the parent called by police to come pick up her son: “You need to know where your kids are.”
The preserve has always had its champions. They include state Senator Charles Fuschillo Jr., former County Executives (the late) Ralph Caso and Tom Gulotta and his wife Betsy, former head of the South Shore Audubon Society, county Legislator Dave Denenberg, New York Power Authority chair Richard Kessel, county parks stewards Herb Mills and Carole Ryder, county hydrogeologist Brian Schneider, Frank and Jo Gencorelli, Harold Rosenfeld, Frank Stibritz, Barbara and Bill Wood, Suzanne Johnson, Glen and Jane Hallahan, the late Ragna Murbach, Wendy Murbach, Maude Masucci, Carol Esposito, Connie Purick, the late Evelyn Langer, Jay Pitti and many more.
If you have a name you would like to add to this list, please send it to us at your community newspaper, so we can keep this history alive and growing. We are also pleased to see that monitoring wells near the preserve show no contamination.