Necrology

Robin Dropkin K'74

Dec. 8, 1952-Feb. 26, 2023

Robin Dropkin K’74, P’05,’09 died at her home in West Lebanon, N.Y., on Feb. 26, 2023. Born on Dec. 8, 1952, in New York City, she grew up in Teaneck, N.J., and came to Kirkland from Teaneck High School. She brought with her a strong interest in nature that would shape her later career. At the end of her sophomore year, Robin transferred to the University of Michigan, where she undertook a program in environmental studies, and graduated in 1974. Two months before her graduation, Robin met Ralph “Chip” Frank, whom she would later marry.

From Ann Arbor, Robin and a group of friends joined the Sufi community of Abode of the Message that occupied a former Shaker community in New Lebanon, N.Y. She remained there for three months doing agricultural work. Dissatisfied with the experience, she then moved to Boulder, Colo., where Chip had moved to start a Buddhist graduate school: the Naropa Institute. 

When her mother’s previously diagnosed breast cancer returned, Robin and Chip left Colorado for New Jersey to care for her. They subsequently returned to the Abode and lived there for three years. During that period, beginning in 1977, Robin began graduate work in environmental studies at Antioch University New England in Keene, N.H., earning a master of science in teaching in March 1979.

In 1980, she and Chip were married in Lenox, Mass. They later purchased a home in West Lebanon and would have a son and a daughter.

Having completed her degree, Robin was employed as a park ranger educator, but after one summer she changed course. She and a graphic artist she had met at the Abode formed a freelance advertising agency. Their success led to her being hired by one of her clients: GE Plastics, headquartered in Pittsfield, Mass. 

After working for GE for five years and with two children to raise, she took a part-time job in 1987 with Parks and Trails New York (PTNY), a nonprofit organization devoted to the creation and maintenance of parks and trails in the Empire State. It would mark a major redirection in her life.

Early in her affiliation with PTNY, she led a campaign to create the Genesee Valley Greenway, employing the towpath of the former Genesee Valley Canal and connecting it to an abandoned right-of-way of the former Pennsylvania Railroad. Today it runs for almost 90 miles, connecting Letchworth State Park with the Erie Canal at Rochester and intersecting with several other trails along the way. The Greenway Project became a model for Robin’s efforts following her appointment as executive director of PTNY in 1995, a position she would hold until 2023. In that span of almost 30 years, she would redefine and expand PTNY’s mission. 

Robin built important coalitions with other park and public land advocates, including the Open Space Institute based in New York City, to contest and ultimately prevent the closure of 88 state parks threatened by New York State’s budget shortfalls during the 2008 recession. The result was a state appropriation of $250 million to support the state’s parks.

Working with others, she completed an economic impact study of the New York State Park System in 2009 that led to annual capital funding for the parks for the next six years. Her organization regularly partnered with state parks to provide funds to various nonprofit organizations that are stewards of public lands across New York. 

Thanks to her advocacy, one can now bicycle from Buffalo to Albany on the Erie Canalway Trail and then travel south on the Hudson River Valley Greenway as far as New York City. Taken together with allied trails, they constitute the 750-mile Empire State Trail, completed in 2020 and becoming in the process the nation’s longest multiuse state trail.

Concurrently, Robin remained devoted to her family and friends, organizing jaunts to New York City to attend Broadway shows, organizing get-togethers there as well as on Cape Cod and in the Adirondacks, and with Chip throwing memorable Memorial Day parties that were the place to be on that holiday. An avid reader, sometimes with two books going at once, she served for more than 30 years on the board of the New Lebanon Public Library.

In 2017, Robin was diagnosed with cancer. Undeterred, she continued to lead PTNY until January 2023, just a month before she died. In her 27 years as executive director, the organization’s financial resources grew from $500,000 to $2 million, and its original three-person staff increased to 10 people. 

Following her death, Robin was memorialized by, among other organizations, the New York State Senate: it passed a resolution that described her as an “unwavering champion of public lands and environmental protection.”

Robin Dropkin is survived by her husband, her daughter Mara Frank ’05, son Ari Daniel Dropkin-Frank ’09, and two grandchildren.

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