Ian Marvy leaves behind a priceless legacy

It was Ian Marvy’s idea to create an urban farm in the early days of modern Red Hook. The farm has provided an alternative education to hundreds of local kids, volunteer opportunities for many, not to mention farm fresh vegetables to all members of the local CSA.

We asked Marilyn Gelber, city planner and founding president of the Brooklyn Community Foundation, a longtime supporter of Red Hook non-profits, to provide a remembrance.

George – here are some thoughts and remembrances of Ian Marvy:

Ian Marvy was the best sort of dreamer – someone with a vision for the future who also knew how to do the hard work to make it happen. How else could a concrete city block adjoining the Red Hook Houses be transformed into Red Hook Farms and later Red Hook Market? I was fortunate enough to meet him after the late great Independence Community Bank under the leadership of Charlie Hamm became a public corporation in 1998, and created a charitable foundation which I was lucky enough to set up and run.

The Bank opened a branch in Red Hook after being challenged by community leaders to bring banking to Red Hook and I was able to bring philanthropy and grant making to the community as well. That led to meeting Ian and his vision behind Added Value and the Farm. We began a partnership that literally and figuratively planted the seeds of a remarkable greening in Red Hook.

After I left the Foundation and he left Red Hook, we stayed in touch, mainly over Facebook and more recently he had posted updates on his health challenges on a site called Caring Bridge; that’s how I learned of his death yesterday. He was back home in Minnesota and surrounded by old friends and did not die alone. May he rest in peace and may his legacy in Red Hook continue to inspire others. George, those are my thoughts. Thanks for asking.

From our pages: August 18 2014 Article by Diehl Edwards
Under the leadership of Ian Marvy, the Red Hook Community Farm has been a recognized pioneer in the urban farming movement. The farm has been a community hub for nearly fifteen years, providing educational programs, service learning sessions, and partnering with dozens of organizations in the neighborhood and citywide. But in 2012, the seawater that Sandy threw over Red Hook, damaged the farm as well, almost fatally. With the help of disaster relief funds, the farm is operating, but is still recovering. Adding to that disaster, Marvy has stepped down as Executive Director earlier this year. The circumstances of that are unclear, but the first job handed to interim executive director Dart Westphal is the restoration of Added Value’s non profit legal status.

What I remember
When I started the Star-Revue in 2010, I got to know a lot of the players in Red Hook pretty quickly because there were very many community meetings back in those days. Ian was at all of them.

My biggest memory was at one of the many post-Sandy gatherings. This one was in the back room of Hope and Anchor. We were talking about a college that was sending students for a study of Red Hook. Marvy scowled and remarked that we ought to get paid by the colleges.

It took me a while to understand why he said that, but after a while I fully understood. That was a time when we were the most studied and most underserved neighborhood in Brooklyn.