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If the late Morris Pesin is the "father" of Liberty State Park in Jersey City, then his son, Sam Pesin, is certainly the park's "preserver."

As president of the Friends of Liberty State Park, Sam Pesin -- with the help of a supporting cast -- has led the fight to keep green the nearly 1,200-acre park which draws 4 million visitors a year.

When, in the early 1990s, a developer pitched a plan for a golf course that threatened to engulf half of the park's open space, it was Pesin who rallied the park's defenders and spearheaded a massive public relations and petition drive, culminating with then-Gov. Christie Whitman ditching the plan in August 1995.

Earlier this year, Pesin and The Friends of Liberty State Park sued the state over its plans for the installation of the "Empty Sky" memorial to the New Jersey victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The suit -- which was recently rejected on a technicality by an appeals court -- alleged that the memorial's two parallel 30-foot-high and 200-foot-long walls will block views of the New York City skyline and challenged the state's spending $700,000 for "hill landscaping, drainage, and irrigation" to prepare the site for the monument as misguided and wasteful.

Pesin contended that it would be more practical for the state to place the memorial in the park's Grove of Remembrance, where 750 trees were planted as a tribute to the New Jersey victims of the 9/11 attack.

The state has already begun construction of the memorial, located near the ferry terminal.

Still, The Friends of Liberty State Park have achieved other goals: they persuaded Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise and the county board of freeholders to appropriate $200,000 in Open Space funds for what Pesin characterized as the park's "first group picnic pavilion" at Freedom Way and Pesin Drive (named for Morris Pesin).

"Getting the first covered group picnic pavilion built will help meet the high demand for group picnic reservations and allow groups to stay in the county for their family reunions, church, and employee events," the Friends newsletter noted.

The Friends sponsored the planting of 150 cherry trees in the park last spring and, during the past four years, organized the planting of thousands of flower bulbs by volunteers. Last month, the Friends hosted a guided walk into the park's interior 240 acres, led by Frank Gallagher, administrator with the state Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Parks & Forestry and a Rutgers University visiting scholar, and by Claus Holzapfel, a Rutgers ecology professor.

Next spring, the Friends newsletter said, visitors can expect to see a "natural area restoration with trails" in the area now occupied by the former Central Railroad of New Jersey freight yards.

Rabbi Kenneth Brickman, spiritual leader of Temple Beth-El, of Jersey City, where Pesin worships and teaches youngsters about Jewish holidays, credits his congregant as a tireless defender of the state park.

In a tribute accorded Pesin by the Boys & Girls Club of Hudson County this past January, Brickman said: "Sam has not only preserved his father's precious legacy, he has enhanced it for the people of this city, this state, and our nation who enjoy the park as an urban oasis in which they can appreciate the beauty of nature and the open spaces which are few and far between in this city."

Pesin, who is quick to cite the past contributions of citizen activists such as Ted Conrad, Audrey Zapp, and Friends co-founder John Tichenor, on behalf of the park, said it's "an overwhelming feeling" just to stand in the park, in the shadow of the State of Liberty and Ellis Island.

"It just connects to our hearts," he said. "It's a very powerful, spiritual, sacred place, particularly for urban people living in such a densely populated area."

Pesin, who received an undergraduate degree in political science and sociology from Boston University in 1971, said he has always identified with open spaces. Feeling the call of the wild, Pesin interrupted his law school studies in 1973 and spent the next six months camping out in the White Mountains in Vermont.

"I chopped wood, got water from a creek, cooked food on a wood stove," he said. "Some nights, it was 20 (degrees) below zero."

About mid-way through his New England sojourn, Pesin wrote his parents he'd decided to quit law school. They were supportive, but Pesin remembers his dad making what he called "the classic statement of a concerned Jewish father."

He told Pesin: "You can't spend the rest of your life looking at the sky."

Outside his isolated refuge, meanwhile, the Vietnam war was still being waged, the Yom Kippur war was in its final stages, the Women's Rights movement was gaining steam, and Pesin -- who had been sharing his rural life with a woman and her two children -- made a life-changing decision to train as a preschool teacher in Portland, Ore., "then seen as the mecca of progressivism."

"I had made a strong connection to the two children I'd been staying with, and I realized that I had been given a lot of love by my grandparents and my parents and that I had a lot of love to give, too," he said. "And, through my family and my Jewish education at Temple Beth-El -- although I wouldn't have thought so at the time as a misbehaving student -- I absorbed values, love, and a sense of justice -- especially from my family."

Family members, he said, such as his immigrant grandparents -- Bella and Jacob Pesin on his father's side, and Louis Pliskin on his mother's side.

Bella was active in the Ladies Aid Society and other charities in Brooklyn, while Jacob, who delivered seltzer with a horse and cart, helped found an Orthodox synagogue in Jersey City's Heights section. And Pliskin, whose father was a rabbi in Russia, became a revolutionary gunrunner battling the Tsar.

As a transplanted American, Pliskin ran a dry goods store and Pesin said he had a reputation as a "loving, wonderful man who gave away clothing to the poor during the winter."

Pesin's uncle, Meyer Pesin, a former Jersey City corporation counsel, was a six-time president of the Jewish National Fund during the 1970s and, for many years, edited The Jewish Standard. Meyer's brother, Samuel, was a former state assemblyman representing part of Jersey City and sponsored one of the first bills championing journalists' rights to protect their sources.

"Judaism was also made real for me by the way my parents (Morris and Ethel Pesin) led their lives and by how much they cared about social justice," Pesin said. Morris served as a Jersey City councilman and as chairman of the city's Cultural Arts Commission; Ethel was a longtime music teacher in city schools and, according to Sam, composer Jerry Herman's first piano instructor.

A post-high school European trip, sponsored by the National Organization of Temple Youth, to Jewish historical sites and two concentration camps helped cement his identity as a Jew, Pesin recalled.

"When I began believing strongly in God, around 25 years old, I felt fully Jewish and saw my daily work as doing my best to love people and learn from my mistakes from the experiences God gave me," Pesin said. "Plus, I saw that a certain toughness and resolve is needed in wanting to make the world better, whether it was the need to be firm in guiding young children or to fight against commercialization at Liberty State Park."

After researching early childhood facilities while backpacking from Calcutta to England in the late '70s, Pesin began trying out what he'd learned as a teacher over the next decade in Texas and Massachusetts before getting a master's degree. Between 1988 and 2002, he was head teacher of 3-year-olds at the Open House Nursery School in Brooklyn. Then came the opportunity at Garden Preschool Cooperative and a permanent relocation to his hometown and a full plunge into local civic involvement.

Dorcey Winant, a trustee with Friends of Liberty State Park, is happy to be in the company of someone she calls "a very tenacious man who doesn't give up easily," particularly in battling the forces "constantly trying to get hold of this park."

For Brickman, Pesin is someone "who epitomizes the sense of idealism and volunteerism that President Barack Obama hopes all Americans will strive to achieve during his administration."