Alfred Thomson of Levittown, Jones Beach stalwart and a preservationist, dies at 72

Alfred Thomson, who advocated for landmark preservation across Hempstead Town and rose from handling paperwork at Jones Beach State Park to supervising toll collection there, died Jan. 28. He was 72.

His death was from heart failure in Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital in Oceanside, said his husband, Joshua Soren, 71, who was also a Jones Beach supervisor.

They married in 2016, having spent much of the previous half-century as a couple living what Soren said were “sort of closeted” lives in the heart of Levittown. “People assumed we were just very close friends,” he said.

Long Island in the 1950s, when Thomson and Soren were born, did not, by and large, embrace gay people. In that decade, this newspaper printed at least three stories about police raids on Cherry Grove, a Fire Island LGBT community and vacation destination, once quoting Brookhaven police Chief Edward N. Bridge vowing a “full-scale cleanup of undesirables from our beaches.”

Both Soren and Thomson dated women in high school. “It was one of the things you had to do to be accepted,” Soren said.

Over the next decades, stories of Cherry Grove raids dropped out of the newspaper, and gay bars like Pal Joey’s in North Bellmore and Equus in Seaford drew crowds. But “sometimes you had to worry about where you parked your car so it wouldn’t be vandalized,” Soren said.

Alfred Peter Thomson was born Aug. 5, 1951, in Oceanside. His father, Ronald Thomson, worked for Mobil Oil, and his mother, Gertrude Thomson, was a homemaker. Thomson graduated from Island Trees High School in Levittown and from Queens College, where he majored in German.

Thomson and Soren met through a mutual acquaintance. Later, when Thomson walked into the record store where Soren worked in a Levittown mall, Thomson did not recognize him. “Your friend’s a snob,” Soren told their mutual acquaintance. Nevertheless, “we had our first date January 21, 1974, which never ended,” Soren said.

The two shared an interest in historic preservation. Thomson was president of the Wantagh Preservation Society for four years and trustee for 25. With Soren and others, he helped found the Levittown Historical Society. Both men advocated for stronger landmark laws in Hempstead Town, where Soren serves on the Landmark Preservation Committee.

Thomson served as president of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church council in Levittown and played organ at a local Jewish temple. He taught German at Berlitz and Long Island Lutheran High School in Brookville. 

He was an avid gardener, planting annuals, a lemon tree, ginkgo and, to the dismay of the neighbors, bamboo that spread from the couple’s backyard to theirs. “Al hired a landscaper to dig out the heart but for years the shoots were coming up,” Soren said.

Thomson’s tenure at Jones Beach started in 1997, when both he and Soren worked at Castles in the Sand, a park history exhibit whose staff, Soren said, wore white sailor outfits modeled on the uniforms park employees wore when the park opened in 1929. His other roles included working in the canvas shop that supplied beach umbrellas rented to park patrons and night watch before he was promoted to tolls. Thomson retired in 2014.

When New York legalized gay marriage in 2011, Thomson and Soren did not apply for a marriage license.

Soren said this was out of consideration for Thomson’s mother. Soren remembered her as a loving woman who “treated me like a son,” had them over for dinner and left him answering machine messages that started “Josh, this is your mother.” But in all the decades the men had been dating, “we never talked about it” with her, he said.

“After Al’s mother’s passing, that’s when he felt more comfortable to do it,” Soren said. They married May 2, 2016, at a house that Soren’s brother owned on the water in Merrick. A friend, Nassau County Judge Anthony Paradiso, officiated. Later, Thomson’s sister, Carol D’Agostino, of Levittown, hosted a gathering for the couple.

Her brother, she said, had unusually broad interests that led him to learn and play at least six musical instruments. In addition to German, he spoke Spanish and some Japanese; he returned from a year in Europe having “picked up some Scandinavian languages.” He was, she said, “openly friendly, not afraid, not cautious in any way” around other people. 

A friend, Alison Cook Lorch, of Bellmore, said the Christmas singalongs Thomson organized for the Wantagh Preservation Society became a tradition in her household. “It would be a Sunday afternoon in December,” she said, with 20 or 30 carolers in the Society's headquarters on Wantagh Avenue and the potbellied stove providing heat. “The songs would be written out, and everyone would get a flyer; if they didn't have enough, you would share with your neighbor.”

Thomson provided keyboard accompaniment and sometimes prefaced the music with brief remarks on the provenance of the carols, Lorch said. “He was soft-spoken,” she said. “He sounded like a teacher.” Afterward, everybody stayed for cookies and cocoa.

Besides his husband and a sister, Thomson is survived by six nephews. 

A wake will be held Sunday at Thomas F. Dalton Funeral Home in Levittown, with visiting from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m.

On Monday, friends and family will gather at the funeral home at noon before Thomson’s burial at Greenfield Cemetery in Uniondale.