When she was growing up in Connecticut, Peggy Light knew Save the Redwoods League co-founder Arthur Connick as the grandfather who’d “do some kind of financial stuff in New York, then pop up at our house.”
She remembers him being quite dapper, but not one to toot his own horn. In fact, she didn’t know much about his work with the League until after he died. “He was just my grandfather, very tall, a straight back, white hair – a great guy who was always outside with his binoculars looking at birds,” she said.
Light would also see her grandfather and other extended family members during summers when they converged on family-owned property to camp along the South Fork of the Eel River in Northern California. She remembered gathering at the campfire after dinner near a giant redwood. “We called it Big Tree, and it has the mark way up high of one of the big floods that had come through the area.”
A retired certified public accountant living in Los Angeles, Light has both financial savvy and a love of nature in her DNA.
“I inherited that sense that you can be a businessperson, a part of the economic and material world, and also have a deep and abiding love of natural places,” Light said.
Her involvement with the League began in 1982 as a donor. In 2005, Light’s cousin, Sarah Connick (now a past member of the Board of Directors), drafted her for a financial advisory role on the Board of Councilors. Now Light serves on the Board of Directors.
“What I like most about the League is that it works to protect vast swaths of land and provide public access to that property,” said Light. “That the League strikes a balance between conservation, protection and public access is just brilliant to me.”
Today, Light heads the 2018 Centenary Task Force to develop a vision for the redwoods encompassing the next hundred years.
