Shelter Island Reporter Profile: Cathy Kenny

“It’s organized chaos. Everybody grabs something,” Cathy Kenny said, recounting the experience of fighting her first house fire. 

Inspired by the life of her brother Sean, a 25-year veteran of the New York Fire Department who died in 2021, Cathy recently joined the Shelter Island Fire Department (SIFD), completed initial training, and answered the call to a house fire on Smith Street on February 19 . 

“I go where angels fear to tread, to honor Sean,” she added. 

The experience brought her closer to her kid brother who died at the age of 67 after years of battling non-Hodgkins’s lymphoma due to exposure at Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11. 

Cathy hopes Sean’s example and hers will inspire others to join the all-volunteer SIFD. She said firefighters get specific training and are assigned to work either inside or outside a burning structure. “I’m exterior, so I just dragged hoses and drained hoses, and asked if anyone wanted to be relieved.” She stood behind firefighters and supported the hose while they sprayed the fire. She spent the four hours that they fought it on her feet, wearing 45 pounds of boots, jacket, pants, helmet and tools.

“I just wish I were taller, just getting into the truck is very hard,” she said. When the boots (five pounds each) made a running start impractical, fellow firefighter Greg Raymond had to go around and give her a boost up on the rear. “I’ll start using the Stairmaster and add weights to my ankles,” she said.

It’s another pivot in a life full of hard work and accomplishment. Since she retired in 2015, Cathy has been involved in the civics of Shelter Island life as President of the League of Women Voters, as an author of the 2025 book, “This Land is Your Land, The Story of Preservation on Shelter Island,” and as a manager of Gordon Gooding’s campaign for Shelter Island supervisor last fall.

Born in Brooklyn, Cathy was raised in a Catholic family of seven brothers and sisters.  Her dad was a policeman, and her mother was a homemaker until the kids were out of the house. The family moved to a new Cape Cod on Staten Island when Cathy was 8. “It was like Shelter Island in those days,” she remembered. “I could lace up my ice skates on the stoop and go skating right across the street.” 

She was a natural student with a BA at Fordham, a Masters in English at St. Louis University, and a law degree from St. John’s Law School. She went to work as an attorney for the City of New York, worked in campaigns for Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch, and was recruited by National Grid as legislative counsel. In 1990, Cathy went to work for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association for the major oil manufacturers. Fracking, the Clean Air Act, and the Exxon Valdez spill were the issues of the day and became her areas of expertise. Based in NYC, she lobbied 34 congressmen on oil-related issues and was in the job for 24 years before retiring to Shelter Island where she’s owned a home since 1999.

Her work on “This Land is Your Land” started with an exhibit at the Shelter Island History Museum of the documents, maps, deeds and photographs of the preserved properties that now account for about 40% of the land on the Island. Along with Kathy Gooding, Ed Shillingburg, Tim Purtell and many others, she worked for three years to research, gather documents and write the text for the book. With publication deadlines looming, Tim, Ed and Cathy documented all the source notes in sessions of six hours a week at her home. 

“Ed and my dog bonded,” Cathy said.

A lifelong observer and student of local politics, Cathy’s seen a lot of changes on Shelter Island over the years. “There was the old guard here, a time when everybody knew everybody, things were not as complicated as they are now,” she said. “They used to say that the supervisor could come in, raise the flag, and go home. Now the full-time population has changed.”

The last decades have seen the changing population and development put pressure on land and water resources and complicate Town finances. “Most Islanders, if things are running, they aren’t going to pay attention,” she said. “They’ve got two jobs and kids to worry about. There’s not enough people who know what’s going on. They vote for someone they know, rather than someone who is looking at the finances and budgets.”

“You should not run for office unless you think something is wrong, and you think you can do it better,” she added, so when Gordon Gooding reached that point in the turbulent run-up to the November 2025 election, Cathy was ready to act. She was on vacation when she got the call. “Gordon said he was going to run and called me in Arizona. I said I’d help him.”

If she could have a redo of the end of 2025 campaign, Cathy says she would change things. “I was a little more aggressive in challenging the status quo. I felt that we had to try to make a change. All you need for democracy to fail is to do nothing.”

Particularly divisive was a memo Cathy wrote and sent to Democratic supporters on the eve of the election, urging them to vote against Town Board candidate Liz Hanley. In the memo, Cathy said Ms. Hanley, a member of the Democratic slate along with Mr. Gooding, was undermining his campaign and would not support Mr. Gooding once they were in office. In the end, Ms. Hanley was elected and Mr. Gooding was not. “I made a mistake sending the memo. I got very frustrated at the end,” Cathy said. “I’m sure I made enemies, and I’m sure I will be forgiven. I felt that we had to make an effort to change things.”

For now, she’s stepping back from politics. 

With political volunteerism on the back burner, she’s turned to community service protecting health and property and honoring her brother Sean’s service. “Now I just hold hoses. I can’t run in where angels dare to tread anyway. Those damn boots are too heavy.”