A Community Volunteer Extraordinaire Who Wears Many Hats

Cynthia Roberts, Deb Pekarek, Jon Leslie and Madelaine Eppenstein in 2017Attorney, conservationist, gardener and VP of the Scarsdale Forum Madelaine Eppenstein has taken on so many important volunteer jobs that it’s difficult to know what to crow about first. You can see the result of some of her efforts when you drive around Scarsdale and feel the impact of her words in changes to the way we are governed.

Here are a just two of her most impressive efforts:

As a member of the Friends of Scarsdale Parks she worked on a grant to secure funding from the New York State, Department of Environmental Conservation that ultimately resulted in the planting of 1,000 native trees and shrubs in Scarsdale, all funded by the DEC.

Another big one: As the Chair of the Procedure Committee for the Citizens’ Nominating Committee, she worked with the group to amend the Non-Partisan Resolution for the forty-second time since 1930. It resulted in a series of far reaching amendments governing the leadership of the CNC, how candidates are vetted and election procedures. All were passed by voters in November 2018.

But these are just two of Eppenstein’s many accomplishments in her tenure as a Scarsdale volunteer.

As a part of our series highlighting outstanding community volunteers, we invite you to meet your neighbor, Madelaine Eppenstein:

How long have you lived in Scarsdale and what brought you here originally?
Nearly 27 years in Scarsdale has been the longest time my extended family and I have settled into the rhythm of any one place. We’ve gone far, just not geographically. I was born in the Bronx, grew up in a Nassau County suburb adjacent to Queens, and attended local public schools throughout. We came to Westchester in 1985 with our two children when rents suddenly exploded in Brooklyn Heights. We then moved from Edgemont to the village in the summer of 1993 when our son was ready for Scarsdale Middle School and his live-in grandmother could no longer manage stairs. To add to the drama of yet another move, our Scarsdale adventure began just in time for walking our new puppy outdoors on ice during more than a dozen Nor’easters that first winter.

What motivated you to get involved?
For me the question is always why not become involved, a lifelong pattern that has led me in interesting directions. In high school it was not one but two musical instruments and a senior yearbook editorship. In law school it was an international moot court competition that won me and two of my peers national and international awards and free tuition – and a journal editorship. Later on, taking over another firm’s intermediate appeal unexpectedly led to representing our new clients in a landmark U.S. Supreme court case. In a village of so many volunteers who often extend invitations to join them, it is profoundly difficult not to get immersed in Scarsdale’s culture of civic engagement. The opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the community is also hard to resist and provided my entry point to serve actively on nonprofit boards and committees like the historic Scarsdale Forum and Friends of the Scarsdale Parks, the nonpartisan village election system’s Citizens Nominating Committee and Procedure Committee, and other organizations.

What do you do in your professional life?
I’m a newly retired lawyer, fortunate to have been able to enjoy a dual family and professional trajectory after a brief stint after law school at a mega law firm. I met my husband Ted as an undergraduate and we went on from there, taking turns putting each other through law school and eventually working together for almost 40 years in our own boutique law firm. We focused on commercial and consumer litigation, and arbitration for public investors, handling matters for clients in state and federal courts and in one instance that memorable U.S. Supreme Court appearance. We were invited to testify several times before U.S. Congressional committees on issues related to that case. Our two children took part in conversation about the law around our kitchen table, had the opportunity to see us in action in a couple of seminal cases, and worked with us from time to time as legal assistants before finding their own paths.

How did you first become interested in conservation and protecting trees?
I was born in the Bronx near Crotona Park not far from the Botanical Garden, as the proverbial crow flies. By the time my twin sister and I could walk we had moved to the suburbs. We had a beautiful apple tree in the backyard that our nature loving younger brother used to climb, a crabapple in the front yard – my grandmother made preserves with the fruit – and a heritage linden on the sidewalk that appears to be the same tree visible decades later on Google Earth. Us kids were the gardeners who did the yard work and planted vegetables from seed. My family and neighborhood friends spent a few winter-break vacations on a farm in Ulster County, hiking and skating on bumpy frozen ponds. The beautiful oaks and elms in that pastoral Hudson Valley setting inspired me to make drawings of trees as a teenager. Then there were the elective environmental courses in law school that I wanted to attend if only they hadn’t been offered in the evenings when I was preoccupied with a pre-teen at home and a husband working long hours in Manhattan. I’ve made up for lost time in local environmental pursuits now. It all makes sense in retrospect.

As a volunteer here in Scarsdale, tell us about your work on parks, conservation and trees.
My small blooming garden in May and June was included a couple of times in garden-walk events. I participated occasionally with neighbors and the village on greening the traffic island on our street, before it became a matter of urgency to address the decline in pollinators caused by the pervasive use of toxic pesticides, which landscapers apply liberally on residential property throughout the village. The evolution of my environmental interests accelerated once we moved our office operation to Scarsdale in 2009, and when I was invited to become active in the work of Friends of the Scarsdale Parks in 2010. Volunteering with FOSP, Scarsdale’s environmental nonprofit active since 1957, was the logical way to begin working on park conservation and related projects with the village and its parks and public works superintendents and staff.

The blizzard of 2014 literally inaugurated a “watershed” volunteer moment. For the first time I became aware of the use of the Harwood Park wetland between the High School campus and the Library as a snow stockpile. The plowed snow from the village center was routinely piled high in the parkland along the South Fox Meadow Brook banks and against the trees along Brewster Road. Much of it hadn’t melted by March 2015.

Harwood Snow Stockpile along Brook Winter 2015 Nearly thirty years earlier in 1987, FOSP’s board had proposed focusing on “Harwood Park along Brewster Road behind the high school where snow and street sweepings have been dumped by the Village: A number of trees have been killed, the stream running from the pond behind the High School and next to Dean Field has become clogged and the area has become a general eyesore. It was the belief of the Friends that we should join with other groups in objecting to the ‘dumping and environmental and visual degradation’ of the area.” The board’s minutes noted that several prominent members of the community at that time were involved in addressing the issue.

Fast forward to 2014, around the same time that Deborah Pekarek, former village trustee, alerted FOSP to the existence of a New York State, Department of Environmental Conservation grant program. I worked with the rest of the FOSP board to obtain that DEC grant on behalf of the village. Since 2015, over 1,000 native trees and shrubs obtained at no cost from the DEC’s Saratoga Nursery have been planted at Harwood Park by hundreds of community volunteers. FOSP initially supported this ongoing restoration program at Harwood Park by submitting to the village a 15-page annotated report with 17 exhibits, including some of these images. Scarsdale’s Community Planting Day event in late April or early May has become an annual collaboration of FOSP with the Parks, Recreation and Conservation department. The snow is now stockpiled in a more appropriate location.Friends of the Scarsdale Parks first Community Planting Day at Harwood Park, May 7, 2015 with DEC regional coordinator and volunteers, in a collaboration with Parks, Recreation and Conservation Department.

In spring 2019, FOSP brought the Cornell University, Urban Horticulture Institute’s oak tree hybridization research trial to the attention of the village. Of the hundreds of hybrid white oak trees transported in April from upstate growing fields to municipalities statewide, five were randomly selected for delivery to Scarsdale. The trees, FOSP’s gift to the Village, were hybridized with a variety of different oak genotypes native to North America, Europe, Asia, and Mexico. They were planted by Scarsdale’s skilled DPW staff in April 2019 at 10-acre George Field Park in the Greenacres neighborhood.

These are just some of FOSP’s environmental initiatives that I’ve participated in with my esteemed colleagues on the FOSP board, past and present:

• Advocated for best management practices for village parks, recreation fields and open green spaces, including a no-pesticide policy.2019 fifth annual Community Planting Day, student volunteers and Sam Weinstock, PT Director and Village Naturalist/Educator at Scarsdale’s Weinberg Nature Center.
• Advised the village about the environmental and climate benefits of native plants and trees and certain non-native species, strategies to save our tree canopy while addressing public safety, and best methods to mitigate invasive plants.
• Invite SHS student liaisons to work with FOSP, to learn about our nonprofit-municipal partnership, and to encourage the next generation to appreciate the outdoors and environmental protection.
• Recommended a long-range improvement and maintenance plan for the Library Pond and gardens.
• Submitted proposals to the Village to ensure creation of a greener, more sustainable, and more walkable bikeable Village.
• Funded “Little Free Library” book sharing kiosks to enhance Chase, Hyatt Field and other parks.
• Trained and coordinated volunteers to plant thousands of native trees and shrubs to restore Harwood Park between the Scarsdale Library and High School, enriching the ecology of the South Fox Meadow Brook, a Bronx River tributary, and mitigating local flooding.
• Secured a NYSDEC conservation grant 6 consecutive years for free native trees and shrubs for the Community Planting Day collaboration with the village and purchased additional plants for restoration planting at Harwood and other parks.
• Sustained the blooming pollinator garden FOSP designed, built and planted with the help of the village at Hyatt Field Park to educate youth at the playgrounds and playing fields.
• Supported the revitalization of Chase park and the Boniface Circle pocket park in the village center.Scarsdale Forum President Tim Foley with VP Madelaine Eppenstein in May, 2019

We know you have taken on many additional volunteer responsibilities. Tell us about your other activities.
Traffic calming has been a personal concern ever since a young child was the victim of a fatal traffic incident on the street where I grew up. After the conclusion of one of our law firm’s major litigations, it seemed there would be time to work on a set of recommendations to the village about traffic calming and safety. The finished product was a report of the Scarsdale Forum’s Municipal Services Committee, which I chair. I am currently Vice President of the Forum and co-chair of its Climate Resilience committee, serving with co-chair and Forum president Tim Foley and co-chair Darlene LeFrancois-Haber, who is also chair of the Forum Sustainability committee. I also work with so many other sensational Scarsdale Forum committee chairs and members who are committed to civic engagement. They are all friends with whom I’m so fortunate to collaborate on these and many other issues of concern to the community.

It wasn’t until I began serving my first 3-year term on the Citizens Nominating Committee (CNC) that I became familiar with the principles and procedures of the nonpartisan village election system in its governing Resolution. The CNC’s thirty members, elected as representatives of their neighborhoods, nominate candidates annually for open village offices through an established and thoughtful deliberative process. When I graduated from the CNC to become a member of the Procedure Committee, the administrative arm of the system, I took that opportunity to work with a wonderful group of volunteers to amend the Resolution for the forty-second time since 1930. I also helped create the first operations manual for the Procedure Committee, whose primary responsibilities are to recruit community volunteers from each of the five elementary school neighborhoods who wish to seek a seat on the CNC, and to run the CNC neighborhood elections of a new class of ten CNC volunteers each November.

What accomplishments are you most proud of in your volunteering work?
There isn’t any one project that that I would rank above others. All involved collaborative work with our community of volunteers and often the village staff. Thinking about this question, it occurred to me that each of the projects I’m proud of was motivated by longstanding personal interests, required a written set of recommendations to be effective, and involved a desire to not only identify but also help solve a problem and change current practices for the better. The top ten list would have to include, among others, ongoing restoration and reforestation of the Harwood Park wetland and other village parks; public ratification of amendments to the nonpartisan village election system’s administrative procedures; drafting that system’s administrative operations manual; introducing the village to the Cornell hybrid oak program; and advocating through committees of the Scarsdale Forum for: village participation in the NYS Climate Smart Communities program and many other environmental initiatives, traffic safety improvements, discontinuation of non-organic pesticide use in the village, revitalization of the village center, and last but not least, establishment of a dog park in the village. None of this would be possible without collaboration with other volunteers.

Do you ever find it frustrating? If so, why?
That word doesn’t compute. The camaraderie and sense of accomplishment from volunteering with friends and colleagues leaves little time or inclination to allow occasional blips to interfere with team goals and meaningful personal relationships.

How have you used your professional skills in your volunteer work?
My training and professional life in the law informs just about everything I do. It has become instinctive to apply those skills and knowledge to the many goal oriented, issue advocacy projects that interest me.

Why do you like living in Scarsdale?
With the commute to our office in mind we chose Scarsdale for the reputation for excellence in its public schools and its proximity to New York City. Happiness is a function of the joyfulness in living purposefully, not necessarily a function of the place itself. Becoming more engaged in various aspects of civic life in Scarsdale has made it a meaningful place, where it seems possible to make a difference on the issues that are important to me and other residents. That reality adds enormously to the fun of living here.

What would you say to a newcomer about volunteering?
I don’t recall a conversation with new residents that didn’t include a rundown of some of my affiliations and the volunteer opportunities Scarsdale has to offer to newcomers. I’d tell them that, besides religious and school communities, there are seventeen neighborhood associations, nonprofits, village advisory boards and councils, nonpartisan system nominating committees, the Board of Education, PT Council, and village elected offices that are available to most residents – and that’s just a partial list. I agree with my colleagues on several of these groups who have suggested on this website that newcomers should follow their passions and dreams and get involved. Like me, they are sure to find many new friends and a sense of purpose and accomplishment in their civic engagement.

My thanks go to Joanne Wallenstein, founder and editor of Scarsdale10583, for creating this feature and inviting Scarsdale residents to share publicly their personal volunteering stories. Because my experience is far from unique, the collective narrative in these entries will hopefully encourage others to take the leap and participate in Scarsdale’s welcoming circle of community volunteers. Working together as a team on the issues that are important to our community is the gift that keeps giving in volunteerism. It’s the reason I’m grateful to all my wonderful Scarsdale friends and colleagues who I’ve had the privilege to join on this journey. I just hope I’m forgiven for not acknowledging each of my friends and fellow Scarsdale volunteers by name.