One of the greatest figures in American letters has died.
Larry Penner, a former federal transit official who had a second career as one of the most prolific writers of letters to the editors of scores of area newspapers, died on Thursday in hospice care after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 71.
His last published piece was on Sunday, Jan. 12 in the Daily News, one of the many publications that featured Penner regularly.
The future commentator was born in Brooklyn in 1953, but moved to Great Neck, a Long Island suburb, when he was 6, according to his wife, Wendy.
Penner moved back to Brooklyn to attend Long Island University from 1971 to 1975, where he minored in journalism. Professionally, he worked for the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, whose name was later changed to the Federal Transit Administration (as it is known today), for 31 years, all of them in the New York region.
His job was to oversee a team of six that helped transit systems apply for government grants to upgrade equipment. "He believed the government's money was not funny money. He wanted the receiving transit systems to account for what they received," said Wendy Penner, his only survivor.
But to members of the public who did not closely follow the intricacies of federal transit funding, Penner was known for his vast contributions — both weighty and personal — to news organizations. His wife said he had been sending letters to the editor well before he retired from the FTA 10 years ago — "but after his pension was locked in, he was able to tell the truth. The FTA was not happy."
Wendy Penner said she helped her husband by editing his letters — at a "fee" of $1 per published letter.
"By last year, I had earned over $700," she told Streetsblog. "It was token amount because I used to claim I was a 'Letter to the editor' widow."
He published far more than those 700 letters, though an actual count would be impossible, given how many of the newspapers to which he submitted do not publish online. A simple Google search reveals at least 10 pages of links.
His work at the Federal Transit Administration burnished his reputation as an expert on transit. In 2017, the New York Times quoted him in a story about Gov. Cuomo's ribbon-cutting for the Second Avenue Subway, a celebration that the by-the-books Penner felt was "premature."
In 2023, he wrote a two-page spread in the Sunday Daily News about his experience in the early days of the MTA's East Side access project. His recollection, filled with insight and wit, was classic Penner.
"In 2001, while working for the Federal Transit Administration’s Region 2 office, I attended a meeting with the LIRR," Penner wrote. "They estimated a cost of $4.3 billion with completion by 2009. I counseled my FTA colleagues that the price tag would be $9 billion with a completion date of 2015. Ironically, people thought I was too pessimistic. The subsequent history would prove that I was too optimistic!"
He later showed up at the opening of Grand Central Madison and was told by MTA cops that he couldn't be there. He said he could be there ... and the cops arrested him. (Wendy said the charges were soon dropped.)
Michael Aronson, the Daily News's editorial page editor, said he was pleased to publish Penner over the years, including "his final op-ed, warning about looming problems with Long Island Rail Road and NJT service into Penn Station because Amtrak will soon close one tube of the East River Tunnel."
But Aronson also had an appreciation for Penner's many contributions over the years, beyond any specific piece.
"For many years, Larry was both a very frequent letter writer on everything from National Waitress Day to National Banana Split Day and an expert on the funding and operations of all forms of mass transit from his 31 years at the FTA," Aronson said. "He was an invaluable resource to the press in covering transit and freely shared his expertise with reporters at the Daily News and elsewhere."
For Streetsblog, Penner wrote multiple stories, plus comments under many stories, and was a weekly contributor to Mass Transit.
But it was as a letter writer that gave Penner his greatest renown.
Some of his letters — such as those to The Brooklyn Paper about Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards boondoggle or the pipe dream of a cross-harbor freight tunnel — were as serious as a heart attack. But others — such as a letter to the editor to the Times about the joy of getting two hot dogs, a drink and change for a $1 — were humorous slices of life from a man who was a Queens boy at heart.
"I can still taste those Nedick's hot dogs washed down with their famous orange drink," he said.
Such memories also informed his tribute to growing up on the Queens-Nassau border for a long piece in the Queens Chronicle. In the 1960s, Penner was a "shake man" at the McDonald’s at Marathon Parkway and Northern Boulevard.
“In those days, it was a simple menu of hamburgers, fries and milk shakes. The Big Mac was the new item of the day,” Penner said.
His prolificacy was astounding to even hard-bitten journalists, and The Wave, a Rockaway community paper, honored him in 2016, writing, "He seems to understand the transportation issues facing Rockaway far better than the people who get paid to solve them."
Many people who received letters from Penner served him up for gentle mockery, but Penner made a strong argument for his place in championing public transit, the greatest force for equality of movement.
“Economically successful communities are not 100 percent dependent on automobiles," he once told the Wave. "Seniors, students, low- and middle-income people need these transportation alternatives. Investment in public transportation today contributes to economic growth, employment and a stronger economy. Dollar for dollar, it is one of the best investments we can make.”
Penner's funeral is Sunday, Jan. 19 at 9 a.m. at Sinai Chapels in Great Neck. It's no coincidence that the chapel is right next to the LIRR station.
Wendy Penner is asking anyone so moved to make a donation to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Caner Research.
