Farewell to a longtime friend of Ocean County

We have received the sad news at Save Barnegat Bay of the passing of a giant in the environmental history of Ocean County, Robert Anstett, on March 19.

After moving to Brick in 1967, Bob was a reporter and columnist for the Observer. He then headed the Citizens Conservation Council of Ocean County for decades. In his later years, Bob withdrew from active involvement in environmental issues in order to pursue his first love, which was theater.

An ironic result of this life change is that many who are deeply involved in environmental issues in Ocean County today do not know the name of a man on whose shoulders they are standing.

In the 1970s and 1980s Bob was —along with the late Mort Cooper, and later with Linda Gillick — among the most prominent environmentalists in Ocean County. His stories are legend.

In the early 1970s, when a pile of petitions to protect Cedar Creek was being ignored, Bob put out a release announcing that he and his supporters were going to ceremonially burn the petitions at Double Trouble State Park. The elected officials changed sides on a dime.

Bob was a part of every regional environmental effort during those years: Ciba Geigy, ocean dumping, CAFRA legislation, Traders Cove (then called Pellican Cove) — the list is endless.

In 1987, when my father, Bill deCamp, and I took it into our heads to conserve Reedy Creek in Brick, there was no question as to who was the first person we needed to get out to see those woods — Bob Anstett.

Once, when slapped with a $200 million lawsuit by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority for having halted the creation of a Turnpike spur into Toms River — an action that is still enriching our lives — Bob, who was not the sort to be intimidated, remarked, "I hope they understand that if they win, it may take me a while to come up with the money."

Bob served on the Advisory Committee of Save Barnegat Bay and on the board of trustees of Clean Ocean Action.

Bob was a mentor to me, as he was to others, when I started in environmental issues in the mid- 1980s. Bob knew the ropes, he knew the players, and he had a rare sense of what matters in life and what does not.

As a resident of one of Ocean County's less typical towns, Mantoloking, I personally found in Bob a wise and passionate mentor with an instinctive understanding of the irrelevance of social distinctions when dealing with the great human problems.

Whenever an environmental issue arose, Bob seemed to know the "prehistory." The controversy we thought was new was all too often a recycled battle in which Bob had been a general.

Bob loved the theater and had many stories about his encounters in the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg, Dustin Hoffman, MarilynMonroe and others. For the last decade he headed the theater and writing program at Citizens' Conservation Council of Ocean County. Many young and old lives were enriched under his guidance. The most fitting tribute to Bob's life would be for the township of Brick to ensure that a suitable successor is found to head this program notwithstanding the financial extremity of the moment.

Bob was one of a kind, a huge heart. He changed the lives of many who knew him, and many, many who did not.
William deCamp Jr.,
Chairman
Save Barnegat Bay