Island profile: Town Board ‘watchdog’ wants a seat at the table

Emory Breiner has vivid memories of his first trip to Shelter Island in 1956.

Now a long-time Island resident and candidate for the Town Board in November, during his first ride from the ferry dock at Preston’s to Shelter Island, seven-year-old Emory thought the boat was like the cruise ships he had seen docked on the West Side of Manhattan. “In my mind the ferry was like an ocean liner.”

That first summer, with radios abuzz with word of the maritime disaster that sunk the Andrea Doria, an Italian ocean liner off Nantucket, Emory was ready to send his toy fleet to respond. “I’ll have to send my boats to save people,” he reportedly said.

It was a time when a trip from the city to Shelter Island was an expedition, not a commute. There was no Long Island Expressway and no room in the packed car for Emory and his brother, Laurence, so his parents made their way out by automobile with little sister Nanette in a car seat equipped with horn and steering wheel, stopping in Smithtown for lunch and dessert in Riverhead, while the boys came by train with a woman they called “Aunt Julie.”

Emory said his parents brought the family to Shelter Island for safety and quiet and the Island’s bay beaches fit both bills. “Back in those years, parents were afraid of swimming in the ocean, afraid the children would drown,” he said. “Growing up, we were always told, ‘Don’t let anyone know where we go, we don’t want anyone to come.’”
After 10 years in a rented cottage, Emory’s parents built a house in Hilo Shores in 1965. “In the cottage, we had no TV and no phone,” Emory remembered. “That was our big decision when we built the house, ‘Do we have a phone?’” They did.

Like many generations of summer kids, Emory learned to swim at Louis Beach in a class led by master instructor, Jack Wroble. Emory said, “He wasn’t mean, but if you put your foot down, he would catch that.”

Emory learned sailing at the Shelter Island Yacht Club as a kid but concluded he didn’t have the competitive spirit that some people had. “Once you’ve sailed, you’ve sailed,” he used to say. “What do you get out of dragging it out?”

As he grew up, he gravitated to speedboats.

In his teens, Emory dubbed himself, “Roy,” “because I needed a nickname,” and threw large parties at his Hilo Shores home. In those days, he said, they had no neighbors, fortunate because, “If you came to one of my parties, you would know it.”

Emory went to school in the city and then on to Adelphi College, where he started out as a physics major, but switched majors when he unsuccessfully “stood at the blackboard trying to get the space shuttle to Mars.”

His mother, Anamarie Breiner, a computer teacher in the early days of computing, helped out. “When I was in college, she had to do my homework.” Emory said.

After college, Emory lived at home in the city, Massapequa and West Islip. He moved to Shelter Island full time in 2002. “I’m a Long Island boy,” he said.

Emory said frankly that employment and marriage are not part of his life story. “There is no work history here,” he said. “Not married.”

His parents have both passed away. Emory’s sister Nanette lives on Shelter Island and is executive director of the Shelter Island Historical Society. His brother, Laurence, teaches comparative literature at Boston University.

About 10 years ago, Emory started serving on the Shelter Island Planning Board. He is so frequently found in the audience at Town Board meetings, that Councilman Peter Reich referred to him as “a watchdog of the board.”

”I don’t really think of myself as a personality,” Emory said. “If you didn’t know me when I was a kid here, a new resident would have no reason to know me unless they had dealings with Town Hall.”

If Emory is elected to the Town Board in November it will be a seamless transition, he said. “If they elect me, I’m already a town official. I’m actually going to sit in the same seat I sit in on the Planning Board.”

“I know the town code and its ramifications as well as anybody. Probably better,” he added.

He emphasized the importance of the institutional knowledge — information and experience accumulated and held over time — that he has accrued over the years. “If you want to know about the town code and its ramifications you’ll see me,” he said. “You won’t see me at social events, but I’m being elected to the Town Board, and that’s what I know.”

Emory doesn’t see the current rate of development on Shelter Island as a problem. “Are there more people? Yes, but you still have the summer people who go away. Even if they have a big house, they go away and they still pay taxes,” he said.

He also feels that some attempts by the Town Board to control the size of new homes is misguided. “It’s basically, ‘That house is bigger than mine, why should they have it?’ That sort of bothers me. What is a big house?”

He sees Shelter Island’s identity as being more closely tied with the Hamptons, especially since the Island’s representation moved from the Assembly’s North Fork First District to a South Fork district in 2012.

“Nobody was opposed to it, but it definitely makes you a Hampton.” Emory said.