אנטיסעמיטישער שונא פון קרית יואל געפּייגערט

Photo News
Chester — Spencer McLaughlin, an Orange County legislator representing Monroe and Highland Mills, died late on Wednesday, Jan. 24. He had been fighting pancreatic cancer for years.

He lived with his wife, Vicki, in the Town of Monroe. They have two children, Matthew, 25, of Queens, and Marie, 19, at home when she not attending college at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

The family had not prepared an obituary by press time. However, Vicki McLaughlin told The Photo News on Thursday morning that visitation would be held at Smith, Seaman & Quackenbush Funeral Home in Monroe on Sunday, and funeral services at Sacred Heart in Monroe on Monday. For up-to-date information about visitation and funeral services, visit its Web site at www.ssqfuneralhome.com.

McLaughlin was also a lawyer with Greenwald Law Offices in Chester, where he focused on land use, municipal and environmental law. He started working at the law office nine years ago, two years before graduating from law school.

''I would not have been able to do what I have done in the past eight years without the full support of Gary Greenwald and the staff at the office,'' he wrote recently in a letter to the editor published in The Chronicle. ''From personal health issues to volunteer time and legislative commitments, I have been given the flexibility of schedule and support that I honestly can say that I would not gotten anywhere else, including working on my own.''

McLaughlin was a member of the New York State and Orange County Bar Associations and served on the board of trustees of the Orange County Law Library.

Since graduating from St. John's University in 1967, he has served as the executive director of a number of Business Improvement and Neighborhood Stabilization programs, and as the deputy executive director of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. He was certified in community dispute resolution as a mediator and has served as a senior training consultant for the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution in New York City.

He was elected to the Orange County Legislature in 1990. He has served on, or chaired, numerous committees during his tenure, including the Physical Services, Mental Health, Personnel and Compensation, Environmental Facilities and Services, Social Services, Rules, Enactments and Intergovernmental Relations, Ways and Means, and the Education and Economic Development committees.

McLaughlin was a graduate of the Leadership Orange Class of 1994 and served on the organization's board of directors. The board of directors named McLaughlin the 2006 recipient of its Leadership Award.

''Spencer has been active and influential in just about every aspect of Orange County life,'' said Joyce Stoeberl, chair of the program, when announcing the award. ''From Main Street revitalization to recreation and farmland preservation, Spencer has spoken for the people of Orange County honestly and selflessly ... Spencer's ability to bring people together in tough circumstances, to use humor to diffuse tense situations, and to stand by his convictions in order to better the community are rare and extremely admirable character traits.''

Local legislators who worked with McLaughlin remember him with great fondness.

Legislator Noel Spencer of Chester said McLaughlin cared deeply about people, noting his work as a human rights commissioner in New York City.

McLaughlin was the first person to interview Spencer, for his radio show on WALL-AM, when Spencer was first elected to the Chester Town Board in 1998. He told Spencer he wanted to acknowledge this ''historical moment,'' the first time a person of color was elected to office in Chester.

Legislator Thomas Pahucki of New Hampton, who also represents Goshen, said he served in the legislature with McLaughlin for 13 years, during which time McLaughlin would ''publicly rip me to shreds with his eloquence,'' and then approach him later to talk things through. But the two men met a couple of years before Pahucki was elected to the legislature, when McLaughlin joined the fight to close the Orange County Landfill.

''He bucked the establishment and supported us [the neighbors of the landfill] when nobody else would,'' Pahucki said. The rest of the legislature just saw it as a way to make money. He stood up for air monitoring and water testing, and when the results came in, he said it wasn't worth it — money doesn't count over health. If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have gotten the landfill closed. I will be forever grateful for that.... I'll don't think I'll ever walk into the [legislative] chambers again without thinking of him and the good he did.''