A year after his death, Garth Griffin’s memory remains strong among Islanders

Garth Griffin died at home on Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. He was 66 years old. Here is Julie Lane’s story from last January on his life and legacy.

It was mere hours after Garth Griffin’s untimely death that word reached many Islanders who were shocked that a man they had known and loved was gone.

He was hired as Shelter Island Recreation Director in May 1981 and held the post until his retirement in the summer of 2017.

Perhaps Jay Card Jr. captured it best at Mr. Griffin’s funeral Saturday afternoon saying, “I just didn’t know our days were numbered.”

Naming men who have made him a better man, Mr. Card noted several have already passed on. “I regret that I never had the presence of mind to thank them for their love and friendship when I had the chance . . . especially G,” he said. “I believe in my heart that he knows it now. Garth wove himself into this community like a bright red thread in a giant tapestry.” 

Mr. Griffin died on Jan. 27 at home just weeks after his 67th birthday. The lives he touched were well represented at Shelter Island Presbyterian Church, where young, old and everyone in between joined a standing-room-only crowd for a final goodbye.

Mr. Card remembered his friend as “a stable and reliable force in many young lives at an impressionable age, I know this because he was there for me and then there for my kids.”

‘A true Islander’

It was noted that Mr. Griffin wove himself into the hearts of seniors, driving the bus to take them on excursions and ensuring them reliable access to the town-managed FIT Center gym.

That thread wove through the police, ambulance and fire departments as well as his own painting and snowplowing business.

“Although his heart was weak, his love was strong,” Mr. Card said.

In addition to functioning as town recreation director for many years, Mr. Griffin was among those who made the FIT Center a reality.

In a 2014 Reporter column, his friend Bob DeStefano wrote about his years as a student at Kent School in Connecticut. 

“Although a big guy, playing football didn’t interest him, even though he was a manager of the football team for three years,” Mr. DeStefano wrote. Since Kent School had a rule that you had to play something, Garth chose rowing club and squash.

“Rowing became his calling and his senior year at Kent, he was commodore of the Kent School Boat Club, a port oarsman and stroked second boat in an 8-man crew boat with a coxswain,” Mr. DeStefano wrote. 

The team competed in the Henley on the Thames Royal Regatta in England, a world-renowned center for rowing. They won the prestigious Princess Elizabeth Cup in the School Boy Eights Division. In 1972, the Kent School became international champions. So good was this team during those years that a book titled “Men of Kent” was written about them.

Speaking about his friend in a telephone interview Friday, Mr. DeStefano called him “a true Islander” even though he didn’t arrive on Shelter Island from his home in Brooklyn until he left Marietta College in Ohio after Kent. At Marietta he’d joined a nationally ranked college rowing team that went on to win a championship with an all-freshman undefeated team.

But Mr. Griffin’s love of the sport outstripped his attention to academics and he couldn’t maintain the required 2.5 average necessary to continue on the team. He decided to leave college.

Dedicated to service

It wouldn’t be the end of his academic career. After a year’s hiatus, he had relocated from Brooklyn’s Park Slope to Shelter Island and enrolled in a business and public management degree program at Southampton College where he graduated magna cum laude.

While still in college, Mr. Griffin started the Shelter Island School volleyball program and was the high school varsity golf coach for 10 years.

He is remembered as an unassuming man, who tended to the health and well being of Shelter Island. As a member of the Fire Department, he served as chief of the original Heights Fire Department from 1985 to 1987.

Larry Lechmanski, who served as Mr. Griffin’s first assistant chief, said he always willingly took on the hard jobs, including taking a lead role in renovations of the old sections of the upstairs of the Heights Firehouse.

“He was a good chief,” Mr. Lechmanski said, describing Mr. Griffin as “always with the guys” and not just supervising them during his tenure.

For the past several years, he served as treasurer of the Fire Department, taking on a job that Mr. Lechmanski said is difficult.

In the years when the two Island fire departments were separate, the group from the Heights was “tight-knit,” Mr. Lechmanski said.

“It shocked everybody” to hear of Garth’s death, he added.

Mr. Griffin was also an EMT, another volunteer position he took on to serve Islanders, when the ambulance corps was still under the auspices of the Red Cross. Joy Bausman, who was director at the time, described him in three words — “responsive, dependable and knowledgeable.”

‘A true gentleman’

“He was young in every way,” Mr. DeStefano said at the funeral service. “Always approachable, easy to talk to and fun to be around.”  

“His friends knew how big a big man’s heart could be,” he added. “Garth never gave up and he never complained,” Mr. DeStefano noted, referring to recent years when Mr. Griffin wasn’t feeling well.

Brent Haney said Mr. Griffin was “a man I consider my best friend.” They had met in college and remained close throughout their lives.

“He had it all — a true gentleman, confident in his own skin,” Mr. Haney said. As close as the two men were, Mr. Haney said, Mr. Griffin had a special bond with his wife and the Haney children.

“The quintessential Garth was always putting others first,” he said. 

While all the speakers at the service agreed they would miss the joking and fun they had, Mr. Haney said he will miss most the times when the two could just talk.

There were tears shed at Saturday’s service, but there was also much laughter elicited from the stories his friends told. 

They all agreed — Garth would have loved it.