Remembering Tom Keasbey

Remembering Tom Keasbey and his contribution to the creation of FrOGS

"It all started with the Dump!"

Edie Keasbey was recently asked how she and her husband Tom first got involved with what was to become Friends of the Great Swamp or FrOGS. "It all started with the dump", Edie recalled, "and it progressed naturally from there to the creation of FrOGS." Both Edie and Tom were activists in the 1989-90 fight to prevent locating a dumpsite within an arms length of the Great Swamp in Patterson. The Great Swamp's notoriety gained the attention of the Regional Plan Association. The RPA conducts studies of the effect of regional growth on open space (green-space) in the Tri-State area. They design reports to provide local, State, and Federal agencies with accurate ecological data and recommendations for protecting their natural resources.

Tom and Edie Keasbey

A loosely organized Great Swamp Advisory Committee worked for two years with the RPA to publish The Great Swamp Conservation Plan in 1991. This was the first written collection of scientific data and conservation strategies for the south flow of the Great Swamp. The Advisory Committee was composed of members from the D.E.C., The Wildlife Conservation Society, Save Open Spaces, the Planning Departments of Putnam and Dutchess, D.E.P., The Nature Conservancy, the State University at Purchase, Ducks Unlimited and local conservation commissions in Putnam and Dutchess. Edie and Tom Keasbey were representatives from the Patterson Conservation Advisory Board.

The Nature Conservancy remained committed to work on the foundation laid by the RPA. After publishing The Grant Swamp: a Watershed Conservation Strategy, a more comprehensive study of both the north and south flow in 1999, there was a need to get serious about shaping the Advisory Committee into a strong "grassroots" organization that would raise public awareness as well as create local governmental support for protecting the Great Swamp. All of the work done by the Advisory Committee, the Regional Plan Association and the Nature Conservancy would flounder without a commit ted local organization willing to act on the recommendations and strategies produced in both reports.

Tom Keasbey volunteered to do whatever was needed to get this new group "Friends of the Great Swamp" or FrOGS, off to a good start. Tom's commitment to protect the Great Swamp and his warm personality helped to pull the group together. He agreed to act as FrOGS' first chairman. Torn organized the meetings and tackled all the paperwork required to incorporate FrOGS as a non-profit organization. Tom also helped create FrOGS first Great Swamp Celebration and Art Show to raise pubic awareness of the Great Swamp as a special place in need of protection.

Always a gentleman, Torn lived his life in concert with his beliefs without pausing to calculate the time or effort involved. The creation of FrOGS is only part of Tom Keasbey's legacy to the land and the people he loved. He will be missed.