Home News Local News Howard Meinke remembered with tears, laughter at celebration of his life

Howard Meinke remembered with tears, laughter at celebration of his life

The sky was a brilliant blue above the Mattituck Yacht Club on Saturday, and just as they had so many, many times before, Howard Meinke’s children gathered on the porch to talk about sailing.

The difference was that on Saturday, a warm, postcard-perfect day, with sunlight glistening on  the bay, they were gathered at the spot to remember their beloved father, who died on September 18 after being hit by a car on Route 48 in Greenport.

But his rich legacy was alive and vibrant as friends and loved ones spoke from the heart about a man whose footprints left a lasting imprint on countless lives. A man who was remembered as a champion of the environment, who spent decades fighting to preserve the North Fork’s waterways and natural beauty for generations to come.

His son Jeff Meinke spoke about the days he and his sisters Nancy Morrell and Janice Dunbar spent with their father and mother Peg at the club, where all the children learned and taught sailing.

Meinke, his son said, took a little “local yokel” regatta to the international canvas.

Smiling through his tears, Meinke said he learned invaluable life lessons in character building as he worked side by side with his father. “I heard people say, ‘Working with your father must be tough,'” he said. “But I never understood that because it wasn’t. I thank him for instilling in me a moral and work ethic,” he said. “I was taught by a master. Thank you, Dad, for teaching me lessons both in and off the seas. Howard was a magnificent estuary who ebbed to and from my life. We will all miss him.”

“When our dad set out to do something, he did it,” Morrell said, laughing — even if it meant sending his children out onto the ski slopes in sub-zero weather. “That was Dad,” she said. “After  a day of sailing at the yacht club, we sailed home to Nassau Point. Why take the car when it was a short trip? he’d say,” she remembered.

Her father earned the name Captain Evil from his grandchildren, after he’d taken them tubing and did “whatever it took to throw them off,” she said. “His and my mother’s enthusiasm for fun and family never wanted,” she said.

Dunbar said her father forwarded her scores of articles about the environment, politics and other issues, and was always willing to listen to a new viewpoint. He spent many hours talking with her  husband Bill — who passed away last year. “I’m pretty sure Bill and Howard are together, having a passionate discussion on Obama,” she said.

As kids, Dunbar and her siblings spent sun-kissed days racing sailboats and nights, sitting around the dinner table, analyzing and discussing strategy.

She agreed that her father took glee in scaring the grandkids on the boat.

“He was a very kind man who became Mr. Hyde behind the wheel of a motorboat,” she laughed. “The higher the kids flew, the more he smiled,” she said.

Dunbar recalled a “sweet” father who always called, to see what was going on in her life and her children’s; he and her mom traveled to her home in California and took trips to Yosemite, Death Valley, and Palm Springs.

Remembering her father’s favorite sayings, Dunbar said, “If you want something done right, do it yourself. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. If you forget which glass is yours, pick the full one. And if there’s a water pollution problem in heaven, God had better get ready to hear about it.  Dad, we love you.”

Bill Toedter, current president of the North Fork Environmental Council, said Meinke was a mentor and friend.  “Howard led the way to make the North Fork a better place and us better people.” Those footsteps, he said, will last forever. “As Dick Amper has said, “Some can follow in his footsteps but no one can fill his shoes.”

Toedter said it was fitting that Saturday was National Public Lands Day, and said the slogan for that organization was, “Take only pictures, leave only footprints.”

Two of Meinke’s granddaughters took the podium for readings, their eyes and voices filled with emotion.

Next, members of the community gave emotional tributes to a man who they said changed their lives. A man who, even when he faced challenges and walked with a cane, made his way to the podium at town board meetings and  Suffolk County Legislature public hearings to advocate for clean, safe drinking water and preservation of the environment, his voice strong and clear as he shared a message he fought to convey, every day of his life.

Quoting Abraham Lincoln, tears in his voice, Dick Amper, executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens, said, “”I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.”

Art Tillman, Southold Town Democratic Party chair, said Meinke’s passion for preserving the environment and the North Fork transcended party lines.

Quoting Winston Churchill’s famous speech, in which three words were repeated three times, Tillman said it may well have been Meinke’s mantra: “Never give up. Never give up. Never give up. God bless you, Howard.”

Gwynn Schroeder, who worked with Meinke at the NFEC for years, sparked a ripple of laughter as she recalled a day when she and her husband bought a 40-foot boot and ran it aground. Howard passed by, not knowing who was in the vessel. “I heard him say, under his breath, ‘Jackass,'” she said.

Schroeder said as she and North Fork colleagues attended the climate change march in New York last week, she felt Meinke by her side. “He just made the most out of his life,” she said.

Dan Durret of the NFEC said each person present represents one of the many letters to the editor Meinke had penned over the years. “Each of you was touched by his life,” he said. “He touched my life.”

Added Ray Huntington, “He was an estuary and always will be, for all of us.”

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