by Nancy Klingener

When it comes to the future of the Florida Keys, whether it’s a question of complicated growth rules or a controversial condo project, one group can be relied on to weigh in: Last Stand.

The group, which was started in opposition to noisy jets landing at Key West Airport, has continued to battle and work with public officials and private citizens, providing an alternative voice to the big development pressures eternally pressing on the islands.

Recently, a new name started popping up associated with Last Stand in letters to the editor and City Commission meetings. The new name is Al Sullivan, a relative newcomer compared to Last Stand’s recent leaders.

The question then is does a career battling cancer prepare you for leading a famously cantankerous group of more than 300 people toward a common goal of protecting quality of life in the Florida Keys?

(Full disclosure: During my timeout from journalism from 2001-2004, I was a board member of Last Stand.)

SH: Tell me a little about your background.

AS: I’m from Massachusetts originally, born in Boston — grew up there, went to public schools, Jesuit college and medical school in Vermont and Buffalo. Got into a medical research mode at the NIH and specialized in hematology and oncology in teaching and research for about 10 years at Boston University.

Then I was in private practice, south of Boston, in hematology and oncology for about 22 years. We bought a place down here in ’89, this place, and used to come down here two weeks out of the year and five years ago retired and have been down here fulltime since then.

I’ve been a board member of Last Stand for three years — I initially volunteered to help with fundraising and was immediately made chairman of the fundraising. And then when the treasurer left the board, I took over that position for about a year, and then became president this year.

I have no real background in either government or environmental science, but have developed an interest in both those things, and an expanding knowledge. It’s really all new to me. And the board has been a great source of insight into environmental issues. Also into political issues, but the other great help into political issues is being like a lamprey with Sheila Rowan and attending many, but not all, of the meetings that she does, and she attends them all — the City Commission, the Planning Board, HARC, affordable housing and to a lesser extent the county boards. Which has been a great help in figuring out things I had not even a vocabulary for, like comprehensive plans and land development regulations, which are quite important for Last Stand.

SH: Did you expect to be this active in retirement?

AS: In my practice I had 60-hour work weeks. Anything less than that is a blessing. Literally, you worked from 7 in the morning till 9 at night four days a week and 7 to 5, my day off. ... It was very busy. So this is truly retirement. I found out in the first year of my retirement that sitting around wasn’t going to do it for me so I got involved in a number of things and one of them was Last Stand.

SH: You also work with Hospice/Visiting Nurses Association, right?

AS: I volunteer as a physician .... That’s a wonderful group — it keeps my hand in medicine and it’s the part of medicine I love the most, which is dealing with people, both the nurses, the aides, the people who work there, they’re all wonderful people, but also the patients — getting to visit them in their homes and deal with their problems, which involve dying. Which is a very rewarding part of medical practice. Physicians are there to help people and there’s no time in life you need help more than when you’re dying. It’s just contrary to what people normally think of physicians of doing, which is curing people, helping them live longer. This is helping them to die the best way they can. Because it is part of life. And we all do it, although most of us don’t think we will.

SH: Do you think Last Stand is perceived as a negative group, always objecting to things rather than proposing things?

AS: Last Stand is by virtue of what it does largely a reactive, negative organization to try to prevent overdevelopment, inappropriate development that destroys the environment and the Keys. That’s its job, what its job has become. If Last Stand didn’t do that, there’d be nobody here, unless another group sprang up to do that. The only other group that deals with local governments in that fashion is Reef Relief and their agenda is toward one specific area of the environment.

SH: How do you balance the group’s efforts between big-picture issues like the county growth rules and individual projects that spring up and get a lot of attention?

AS: It’s important for us to deal with specific projects, and decide whether we like them or not. But it’s also important to try to change the overall regulations, if we can, or to have a say in those when they do change. The problem with the county of course is now, as everybody knows, the county is quite pro-development, at least three of the commissioners are and it’s hard to get a word in. ... Last Stand will try to have a say in changing the overall regulations in a way we see that benefits the people who live here and the overall environment.

We’re having a number of groups come to us, looking for our blessing, our noninterference, wanting us to cosponsor some sort of development that they’re planning. We’ve already met with Cay Clubs, and the assisted living facility is coming to make a presentation at our board meeting, and then the Botanical Garden, which wants to do big things on College Road, wants to speak to us. Last Stand, for whatever reason, is seen as a player in the community. And maybe it’s just because nobody wants us to stand up and say no we don’t like this project. ...Our basic answer has been that we’re not in the business of endorsing development plans.

SH: Do you think it’s more important for Last Stand to be right, or to be effective?

AS: I think it’s more important to be effective. I truly believe that. There have to be some compromise, obviously, sometimes. Most Last Stand members are about compromise. The board, obviously varies from this end to that end. Last Stand is very interesting that way, because it varies from true environmentalists like Joan Borel and Dennis [Henize] and Mick [Putney] to people, who although interested in the environment, have no particular skills or previous history dealing with it. It’s a board that has people who are still extremely confrontational to those who are much more conservative in approach. Maybe all boards are like that. But it’s an interesting mix of people and they are all bright and all well-intentioned and they have different ways to reach their goals. And the job as president is to try to make them work together successfully and not kill each other. That’s the only skill I see that I particularly have as president. I’m neither an environmentalist nor a politician. But I deal with people reasonably well so sometimes I can work in front of the camera or behind the scenes to make them work well together.

SH: And just showing up at the commission meeting isn’t always effective.

AS: It’s particularly important to try to get to people and try to modify their plans if you can before they even get to the politicians. Which is why the proposals from Cay Clubs and the assisted living and the Botanical Garden — if we can change something a little bit, I think that’s important. One of the issues, for example, that many Last Stand members think we shouldn’t be involved in is affordable housing because it’s hard to be a growth limiting organization in some respects and not be labeled as anti-affordable housing. Which we’re not — we’re for it, but we’re for preservation and infill. It would be foolish for anybody to say that we would fight every new development for affordable housing. I think they’re going to be built and I don’t think Last Stand’s position needs to be that. … I think it’s important, especially in Key West, to find a mechanism to try to protect the affordable housing that’s here … although the emphasis by everybody has been to think of ways to build new structures, I think there has to be perhaps even more importantly protection of affordable housing that exists. The protection of that is Last Stand’s position.

SH: And of course you’re dealing with a place experiencing major economic and demographic change.

AS: Last Stand really needs to stay true to its mission of being reactive and saying no but it also has to look for ways to be a positive pro-environmental group. Two things have happened recently, one of them very small, the other a little bit bigger. One of them is a grant we proposed with the environmental sciences teachers at the high school, a grant that was awarded to us by [the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys] for $5,000 — Last Stand working with the high school science department … It has to do with hydroponic gardening as a hands-on laboratory experience but also lectures and talks by Last Stand members about areas of their expertise — Dennis with solar and wind power and a field trip to Mick Putney’s house, which is totally energy and environmentally friendly and a talk by George Halloran about the enormous lens of freshwater that Key West sits atop and water conservation. That’s a major positive program that Last Stand is becoming involved with.

We’re all very proud of that because we know that our image, as I said at the CFFK awards event, is that we’re the horsefly on the butt of the city and county commission. Often that’s what we’re seen as. This is a different view. ... We’re trying to be positive pro-environmentalists as well as naysayers. 

nklingener@keysnews.com