Councilman, activist Wenk dies at age 91
WOODSTOCK, N.Y. » Jay Wenk, a town councilman and local exemplar of peaceful but determined activism, has died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 91.
Conor Wenk said his grandfather died Tuesday evening at home on Meads Mountain Road.
“It’s something he had a battle with once before, and this time he really didn’t want to fight it,” Conor Wenk said of his grandfather’s illness. “I was incredibly proud of everything he did, and he was absolutely my favorite person.”
Wenk was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, serving as a combat infantryman in the European Theater, but he also was a member of the group Veterans for Peace, which opposed U.S. military action, and he often participated in demonstrations, including at military recruiting offices.
In August 2005, he and several other protesters were charged with trespassing at Kings Mall in the town of Ulster, where such an office was located, though the charges ultimately were dropped.
Wenk served on the Woodstock Town Board from 1990-93 and again from 2008 until his death, and town Supervisor Bill McKenna reflected fondly on Wenk’s penchant for protesting.
“There was one Town Board meeting a couple of years ago, and it was just four of us, Jay was missing,” McKenna said Wednesday. “I looked over at (then-Supervisor Jeremy Wilber) and Jeremy looked over at me, and we were discussing where Jay could possibly be; usually he’d let one of us know if he wasn’t going to be there. Finally, I blurted out ... ‘[he’s] probably in jail.’”
A week later, McKenna said, he learned Wenk had “been arrested down in New York City, protesting Wall Street. That’s pure Jay.”
Civil rights attorney Michael Sussman, who represented the protesters in the Kings Mall matter, said he found Wenk to be both gentle and stern.
“What I saw in the person was ... tremendous earnestness and a deep humanity,” said Sussman, now the Green Party candidate for state attorney general. “He was someone who saw the need for the average Joe to get out on the street and be as clear as possible about what he or she thought about what the country should stand for. He was honest in a very deep way . ...
“When we were fighting against the war [in Iraq], trying to point out the problems with the Patriot Act, he did it from a position of patriotism and was a person who loved this country and didn’t take its ideals without seriousness,” Sussman said.
Wenk’s attempts to make a point sometimes were viewed as going too far, including when he brought a rifle-style BB gun to the Woodstock Town Hall to stress the need for safety locks on firearms.
“He mentioned he had it (the gun), and somebody said, ‘Get that thing out of here,’” Councilwoman Laura Ricci recalled. “He realized his mistake, but he was trying to do the right thing to talk about gun safety. He was always trying to get the right message out — maybe not the right way, but he never quit.”
Wenk also showed up at the Freeman office in Kingston in December 2015 with the gun.
He also was a frequent writer of letters to the editor. One of his most recent letters to the Freeman, published in November 2017, was critical of a “God and Country” event in Kingston that Wenk said was put on by people who “love war.”
Ricci said that even after Wenk became ill, he still attended Town Board meetings and spoke out about issues he viewed as important.
“He would attack even members of the [Town Board], but I knew it was Jay,” she said. “I understood that it was Jay being Jay and making a stand, and I appreciate freedom of speech, and Jay was out there with his freedom of speech.”
Town Clerk Jackie Early said she and other admired Wenk for the tenacity he displayed when he believed something would benefit the entire community.
“Jay and I came from opposite ends of politics, but we worked through it, and we ended up becoming very, very good friends,” Early said. “He seemed to me that he was not happy with America and I loved it, but we ended up ... respecting each others’ opinion.” Early said her favorite “Jay Wenk moment” was finding out “we were both born on the same day, Oct. 1, 30 years apart.”
“The first time we celebrated it was two years ago, and we shared a bottle of champagne,” she said.
Funeral arrangements for Wenk were pending Wednesday at the Lasher Funeral Home in Woodstock.