Larry Penner, transit manager and letters to the editor writer, dies at 71
Transit advocate and historian Larry Penner worked for the Federal Transit Administration for 31 years. He is shown on the LIRR platform in Little Neck, Queens, on May 21, 2021. Credit: Craig Ruttle
He appreciated the irony that his last name matched what he did — because transportation manager and maven Larry Penner penned letters to the editor. Thousands of them, according to his wife.
"He liked that coincidence," said Wendy Penner, of Great Neck. "All the local papers did. They called it ‘Penner’s Pen.’ " Starting in 1969 at age 15, with a published letter in Newsday, his missives appeared in papers great and small, from New York City tabloids to Queens community weeklies. His wife said in one year alone, he wrote 700 — about two per day.
They mostly covered his twin passions: Urban mass transit — informed by his decades at the Federal Transit Administration’s New York office, where he advocated fiercely on behalf of the subway and local rail — and mom-and-pop diners and restaurants.
A 2010 Newsday essay written with his wife lamented the loss of the Scobee Grill in Queens. His friend and former FTA boss Brian Sterman, of Manhattan, recalled an email in 2021 with the subject line, "Somebody died." "It was from Larry," he said, "and it read, 'Aunt Bella's has closed,’ " referring to the 44-year-old Italian eatery, also in Queens.
Penner’s letters to the editor could be equally playful but were mostly serious, and increasingly pointed after his retirement from the transit agency, when he felt he could speak more freely.
"He wasn't a fan of most new systems and new extensions," Sterman said, "whether it was the Second Avenue Subway or Penn Station Access [extending Metro-North’s New Haven line], because Larry felt the agencies were not putting in enough funds to do necessary repairs" on the existing infrastructure.
Penner died at home on Jan. 16, of pancreatic cancer. He was 71.
Born April 9, 1953, in Brooklyn, Larry Penner was the only child of Seymour and Shirley Tolchin Penner. His father was a teacher and his mother worked at various office jobs. The family moved to Great Neck when Larry was 6.
While attending Great Neck South High School, he joined the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom. He would serve on its national board from 1975, the year he graduated from the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University with a political science degree, to 1979.
Remaining in Brooklyn and involved in Republican politics, he unsuccessfully ran for assemblyman for the state’s 42nd Assembly District in 1980. He briefly worked at the New York City Board of Elections and then the City Planning Commission before being appointed by the Reagan administration in 1981 to serve in New York City’s Region 2 office of the Urban Mass Transit Administration, now the Federal Transit Agency.
In 1989, political appointee Penner transitioned to work as a civil servant for the FTA. He eventually rose to become director of Region 2’s Office of Operations and Program Management, retiring in the early 2010s.
He had moved back to Great Neck in the late 1980s, said his wife. The couple met in the mid-1990s at the Scobee Grill and married on May 4, 1997, aboard the Skyline Princess, sailing from the World’s Fair Marina in Flushing, Queens, to the Statue of Liberty and back.
He loved romantic gestures, said his wife, the former Wendy Goldstein. "On our first date, he brought me flowers, and he saw the way I smiled when he handed them to me." He then sent her flowers at both home and office once a month. "He proposed on Valentine's Day on one of the horse-drawn carriages in Central Park," she recalled. And every year, on the anniversary of the day they’d met, they had dinner together at the same booth at the Scobee Grill.
Penner’s hobbies were few, said his wife. "He was a member of the Bills Mafia," as fans of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills are known. "He felt they were the only true New York football team" after the Giants and the Jets decamped to New Jersey’s Meadowlands. "And he had a wicked sense of humor. He wore a tuxedo T-shirt shirt under his dress shirt at our wedding and at other weddings and formal events. And then at some point he'd take the dress shirt off and he would have his ‘poor man's tuxedo.’ "
He was buried in it, said Wendy Penner, his only survivor.
A service was held Jan. 19 at Riverside-Nassau North Chapels in Great Neck. He was interred at Montefiore Cemetery in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, where his wife’s family is buried.
He appreciated the irony that his last name matched what he did — because transportation manager and maven Larry Penner penned letters to the editor. Thousands of them, according to his wife.
"He liked that coincidence," said Wendy Penner, of Great Neck. "All the local papers did. They called it ‘Penner’s Pen.’ " Starting in 1969 at age 15, with a published letter in Newsday, his missives appeared in papers great and small, from New York City tabloids to Queens community weeklies. His wife said in one year alone, he wrote 700 — about two per day.
They mostly covered his twin passions: Urban mass transit — informed by his decades at the Federal Transit Administration’s New York office, where he advocated fiercely on behalf of the subway and local rail — and mom-and-pop diners and restaurants.
A 2010 Newsday essay written with his wife lamented the loss of the Scobee Grill in Queens. His friend and former FTA boss Brian Sterman, of Manhattan, recalled an email in 2021 with the subject line, "Somebody died." "It was from Larry," he said, "and it read, 'Aunt Bella's has closed,’ " referring to the 44-year-old Italian eatery, also in Queens.
Penner’s letters to the editor could be equally playful but were mostly serious, and increasingly pointed after his retirement from the transit agency, when he felt he could speak more freely.
"He wasn't a fan of most new systems and new extensions," Sterman said, "whether it was the Second Avenue Subway or Penn Station Access [extending Metro-North’s New Haven line], because Larry felt the agencies were not putting in enough funds to do necessary repairs" on the existing infrastructure.
Penner died at home on Jan. 16, of pancreatic cancer. He was 71.
Born April 9, 1953, in Brooklyn, Larry Penner was the only child of Seymour and Shirley Tolchin Penner. His father was a teacher and his mother worked at various office jobs. The family moved to Great Neck when Larry was 6.
While attending Great Neck South High School, he joined the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom. He would serve on its national board from 1975, the year he graduated from the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University with a political science degree, to 1979.
Remaining in Brooklyn and involved in Republican politics, he unsuccessfully ran for assemblyman for the state’s 42nd Assembly District in 1980. He briefly worked at the New York City Board of Elections and then the City Planning Commission before being appointed by the Reagan administration in 1981 to serve in New York City’s Region 2 office of the Urban Mass Transit Administration, now the Federal Transit Agency.
In 1989, political appointee Penner transitioned to work as a civil servant for the FTA. He eventually rose to become director of Region 2’s Office of Operations and Program Management, retiring in the early 2010s.
He had moved back to Great Neck in the late 1980s, said his wife. The couple met in the mid-1990s at the Scobee Grill and married on May 4, 1997, aboard the Skyline Princess, sailing from the World’s Fair Marina in Flushing, Queens, to the Statue of Liberty and back.
He loved romantic gestures, said his wife, the former Wendy Goldstein. "On our first date, he brought me flowers, and he saw the way I smiled when he handed them to me." He then sent her flowers at both home and office once a month. "He proposed on Valentine's Day on one of the horse-drawn carriages in Central Park," she recalled. And every year, on the anniversary of the day they’d met, they had dinner together at the same booth at the Scobee Grill.
Penner’s hobbies were few, said his wife. "He was a member of the Bills Mafia," as fans of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills are known. "He felt they were the only true New York football team" after the Giants and the Jets decamped to New Jersey’s Meadowlands. "And he had a wicked sense of humor. He wore a tuxedo T-shirt shirt under his dress shirt at our wedding and at other weddings and formal events. And then at some point he'd take the dress shirt off and he would have his ‘poor man's tuxedo.’ "
He was buried in it, said Wendy Penner, his only survivor.
A service was held Jan. 19 at Riverside-Nassau North Chapels in Great Neck. He was interred at Montefiore Cemetery in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, where his wife’s family is buried.
SARRA SOUNDS OFF: Wrestling, North Babylon hoops and more! Will Grayson Meak faceoff against Devin Downes in counties? Meanwhile North Babylon's Jasmine McKay hoops it up and there's history on the mat in Nassau County in Episode 2 of "Sarra Sounds Off."
SARRA SOUNDS OFF: Wrestling, North Babylon hoops and more! Will Grayson Meak faceoff against Devin Downes in counties? Meanwhile North Babylon's Jasmine McKay hoops it up and there's history on the mat in Nassau County in Episode 2 of "Sarra Sounds Off."
