JERSEY CITY AND BEYOND – Parks activist Audrey Zapp, who was instrumental in the creation of Liberty State Park, has passed away.
Zapp – along with former Jersey City Councilman Sam Pesin and her husband, Warren Zapp – spent years fighting for the creation and preservation of what is now Liberty State Park. Thanks to the efforts of Pesin and the Zapps, what was once a run-down Central Railroad site is now a beautiful 1,100-acre urban oasis on the New York Harbor.
In the late 1970s she joined the Liberty State Park Study and Planning Commission and became co-founder Friends of Liberty State Park after the park was created in 1976. She would later be known as the park’s “godmother.”
For her dedication to the park, a street that runs through it was named in her honor.
As an advocate of open green space throughout New Jersey, Zapp’s interests extended beyond Liberty State Park. She fought against the privatization of public lands and lobbied for Green Acres funding for Jersey City.
After her husband’s death in 2001, Zapp moved to Colorado, where her son lived, according to Jersey City’s municipal web site. Despite the move, Zapp’s heart was still in Jersey City, and Liberty State Park. In 2006, when Liberty State Park held its 30 anniversary, Zapp wrote an open letter to the Friends of Liberty State Park that read, in part: “If we keep the ‘public’
in public land use, then Liberty State Park and other public lands have a great future. An open government working with its citizens is democracy. A closed government, pretending to include citizens, is a dictatorship. Although I cannot be with you today, you are all in my heart and thoughts. I am there in spirit. I am blessed to have known and worked with all of you these many years.” – E. Assata Wright