East Quogue Superintendent And Principal Robert J. Long Remembered For Kindness And Generosity, And For Making School Feel Like Home

When Natalie Merchant wrote the song “Kind and Generous,” she said she was trying to create something that would have broad appeal and application for anyone trying to express their gratitude for someone else.

For those who knew Rob Long, it seems as though the lyrics were tailor-made for him.

On May 3, every student in East Quogue School, from kindergarten through sixth grade, and every member of the faculty, gathered on the back lawn to surprise Long, the elementary school’s longtime principal and superintendent, with a special rendition of the song that they’d been practicing for two weeks under the direction of music teacher Kim Clemensen.

For weeks, the faculty had been trying to choose the perfect song to sing for Long in honor of Principals Appreciation Day, Clemensen said earlier this week. Eventually, kindergarten teacher Anne Culhane suggested Merchant’s 1998 hit, and when the teachers listened to it together, they all started to cry, and immediately agreed that it was perfect.

On the day they sang that song, there was something that all the teachers knew, but that most, if not all, of the students did not: Long was nearing the end of a four-year battle with colon and liver cancer.

He died on August 9, surrounded by family, at his Hampton Bays home. He was 53.

In the days since, family, friends, teachers and fellow administrators have reflected on his life and career, and the lyrics of Merchant’s song are particularly poignant in light of what they’ve been sharing:

You’ve been so kind and generous

I don’t know how you keep on giving

For your kindness, I’m in debt to you

For your selflessness, my admiration

For everything you’ve done, you know I’m bound

I’m bound to thank you for it.

Robert J. Long Jr. began his career as an administrator when he became principal of East Quogue School in 2000, and he never left the small district, ultimately taking over the superintendent’s role in 2015.

Long, who lived in Hampton Bays with his wife, Dawn, and daughters Meghan, 22, and Shannon, 24, was universally beloved by staff, students and parents, because, they say, he treated the school and the larger East Quogue community with the same care and love he showed his own family.

“The biggest thing about him was the school,” his daughter Meghan said. “As much as people think he loved the school, he loved it 10 times more than that, if that’s even possible. That school was his whole life, right to the very end. That’s what kept him going throughout the four years after his diagnosis.”

Many people marveled at the fact that Long continued to show up to work, and show up for the students and staff, while battling cancer and steering the district through the uncharted waters of a global pandemic.

Deb Winter is the superintendent of the Springs School District, and worked alongside Long early in their careers as educators, when they were both in the Longwood School District. She said Long was her “personal inspiration to keep going” when dealing with the many challenges school leaders faced because of COVID.

“Not only was it a pandemic, but he was sick himself, and he had to take care of all those kids and his staff,” Winter said, adding she frequently would sign into Facebook during the spring of 2020 to watch the morning announcement live videos Long would broadcast from his home for the students, who were all engaged in remote learning at that time. He would say the Pledge of Allegiance and read the announcements in both English and Spanish — some days he read the students a story, or spoke about his beloved team, the New York Mets.

“It sounds corny, but I wanted to be like Rob Long,” Winter added.

Of course, having cancer meant that Long was in the high-risk category for COVID, a fact he and his family did not take lightly. Ultimately, when the school opened its doors to students again in the fall of 2020, Long was determined to be there as well.

“He could’ve [taken a leave], and we talked about it,” his wife, Dawn, said. “But he wasn’t leaving that district. He poured his heart out there, and he wasn’t going to give that up.”

Aside from treating the students, staff and parents with an uncommon level of care, empathy and dedication, part of Long’s legacy will be the vast transformation the school underwent in recent years in terms of both facilities improvement projects and the addition of more and varied educational programs and offerings.

Less than a decade ago, the district’s finances were in such poor shape that there was brief consideration of offering only half-day kindergarten. There was no funding for prekindergarten, several teachers were excessed, and there were no full-time teachers for library, STEAM or Spanish.

Since then, the district has added those three positions, brought back some other teachers who had been let go, built an expansive vegetable garden and began offering the Earth Rangers after-school club, added a sixth-grade wing and a greenhouse, fully renovated the playground, and added several outdoor classroom spaces, which were particularly key during the pandemic.

Long also worked closely with the Board of Education to secure state aid for free full-day prekindergarten for East Quogue families, now offered at various participating preschools in the area. An expansive outdoor amphitheater for concerts and assemblies was completed in the final days of the most recent school year.

George Purkis is a sixth-grade teacher at East Quogue, entering his 32nd year in the district. He said the improvements that have been made in the school in recent years, particularly since Long took over as superintendent, are a testament to his dedication to the job.

Before Long took over, the superintendent role in the district was a part-time position, which, Purkis said, created a sense of disconnect.

“When Rob took over, he was really invested in the school,” he said. “East Quogue has always been a great place and the school has always been a nice school, but Rob ended up being the perfect person to run the district. He wanted to take what was special here and make it even better.”

District Clerk Lenore Rezza and Principal’s Secretary Robin Goldfarb have worked closely with Long over the years, and echoed those sentiments. They shared how much they loved working with him, and how much they will miss his presence when school begins again in the fall.

“He was available at any time to kids, parents and staff,” Rezza said. “He prided himself on always returning a parent’s or staff member’s phone call, no matter how late in the day or evening, or, lately, how bad he was feeling.

“We all knew that he had our backs,” she continued. “He had such a big heart. Rob always made me feel that we were a team, that my advice or opinion was important to him.”

Long was universally beloved by the faculty and staff, who all described him as, essentially, a dream boss.

Bridget Caliendo is a third grade teacher in the school. When the district was going through financial woes in 2015, she was one of several teachers who was let go, and she recalled Long being in tears delivering the news to her.

Caliendo taught at Remsenburg-Speonk for several years after that but ultimately was able to return to East Quogue in 2018, thanks to Long.

“Rob always promised he’d bring me back,” she said, adding that she was not the only teacher to whom he made good on that promise. “He didn’t have to do that. He was such a wonderful person to work for and a wonderful friend. He put relationships first. He had a way of making us all feel important, like our opinions mattered.

“He allowed us to put our families first, too,” she continued. “He knew our families. He was at so many weddings and barbecues. He was at my daughter’s first birthday.”

Colleen Henke is a teacher at Southampton Elementary School, and is a lifelong friend of Long’s. They went to high school together at St. Anthony’s in Huntington, where she said he was “friends with everyone.”

They crossed paths again years later, both ending up living on the East End and pursuing careers in education, while also both sending their children, for a period of time, to elementary school at Our Lady of the Hamptons School in Southampton. Long then hired Henke as a leave replacement teacher during the 2010-11 school year, when she was going back to work after taking several years off to raise her children.

“I always knew him as a friend, but I was amazed by how he was professionally,” she said, expressing gratitude to Long for giving her a soft place to land when she was making the transition back into teaching full-time. The following year, she was hired in Southampton.

“I’m in education and I’ve worked for many different administrators,” she said. “They come and go, and you often feel like half of the staff likes them and half doesn’t, and there can be that divide — but with Rob, everybody adored him.”

The hard-to-achieve quality of being universally beloved was a theme for Long throughout his whole life, from the time he was a high school student, where it can be almost impossible to avoid cliques and tribalism, to his years as a teacher and beyond.

Dawn Long first met Rob when they were teaching together in the Connetquot School District and recalled how popular he was.

“On the last day of school, we’d be walking out together, and I’d be carrying a mug and a $5 gift card to Dunkin’ Donuts, and he’d come down the hall with a flatbed piled high with gifts from parents,” she said with a laugh. “Kindergarten was a half-day program at that time, and he had something like 50 families sending in gifts for him.”

The key to his popularity, she said, was simple. “He always tried to do for people’s children what he would do for his own,” she said. “To just love them and respect them, and try to make the school not only a place where they learned but a place where they loved to be.”

Anne Culhane had a special relationship with Long, working as a kindergarten teacher alongside him for the past 20 years. She called him “an inspiration, mentor and dear friend,” echoing a common refrain from the teachers — that he was unfailingly supportive of their efforts, and of new ideas, and had unwavering faith in their ability to do their jobs well.

“Mr. Long was so special to all of us,” she said. “He believed in us, and in that belief we were able to do great things.”

Culhane and many others remarked on Long’s special fondness for spending time with the school’s youngest students, giving them a chance to forge a connection with him early on.

His wife, Dawn, said that, on his most difficult days in recent years, he made a habit of visiting the kindergarten wing for an emotional pick-me-up. It was not surprising, given the fact that he’d been a kindergarten teacher early in his career.

Even as he ascended the career ladder to the top role of superintendent, he never lost the playful, nurturing and affectionate nature that teaching that grade level requires.

“I enjoyed when he would come in for my observations,” Culhane said. “To watch him interact with the children was something so special. He loved them as much as I do.”

Long’s ability to form that close, familial bond with students of all ages was a natural extension of the same love, energy and enthusiasm he had as a husband and dad.

“It was so fun to grow up with him as a father,” his daughter, Shannon, said. “Even through all of this, and how sad it is, I feel like if he were here, he’d be having a laugh with us. He’d be telling us something to make us laugh.”

“We were such a close-knit, tight family,” Meghan added. “We did so many things together.”

She recalled how her father shared his love of East Quogue and the school community with them, taking them there on school bingo nights and for plays and other performances, or taking them to the gym on weekends to play basketball. Occasionally, outside of school hours, he would let them make announcements over the PA system, a job he always cherished doing for the students.

Long also had immense pride in how far Meghan and Shannon, both Hampton Bays High School graduates, went in their own educations.

Dawn tearfully spoke of how Long regretted that he would not be able to see Shannon, who earned her four-year degree from SUNY Geneseo and is in her third year at law school, officially earn that law degree.

“That was something he wanted so badly, because it meant so much to him,” Dawn said.

Long was able to celebrate Meghan’s recent graduation from James Madison University, and in the final days before his death, he was thrilled to hear that she’d landed a job as a tech assistant with News Nation, an up-and-coming news network.

In return for his unwavering support of them, Long’s wife and children supported him back. They witnessed the extra effort he put into working to achieve all the goals he had in mind for the school, particularly after his diagnosis, which they said created in him a sense of urgency to pursue everything he had envisioned.

The pandemic, of course, created a major obstacle, and they all worked together to overcome it. Meghan helped provide a crash course in using Zoom, and the entire family worked behind the scenes to make his morning Facebook shows during the spring of 2020 a success.

“Behind the scenes of that production was insane,” Meghan said, with a laugh, talking about how minutes before going live, they’d put the finishing touches on coordinating the music, the backdrop and other props.

“He’d get on and be all calm, but it was always chaos before that,” she said. “It was all very challenging, but he loved rising to the occasion.”

For as much effort as Long invested in both his own family and his school family, he also found time for personally enriching projects. He was an avid runner, completing several half-marathons, and was a talented and ambitious writer as well. He participated in the annual Summer Writing Conference at Stony Brook Southampton College several times, where he worked on several picture book manuscripts, including one about a young girl and her father who took trips across the country to different baseball stadiums while learning about the history and culture of all the cities they visited. The inspiration was clearly pulled from his own life.

Long enjoyed taking vacations with his family, whether it was to Montauk or farther afield — and often worked in a race or a trip to a baseball stadium — but for him, there truly was no place like home, which was both the Hampton Bays community where he lived and the East Quogue community where he worked.

Clemensen, the music teacher, recalled how, in a twist of fate, several students sang the song “Home” by Philip Phillips as part of a daytime concert just a day after the budget had failed to pass in 2015.

“I remember Rob was very moved by that, and also a little angry,” she said. “He felt like their home had betrayed them. For years, Rob talked about that song, and then all these years later, the school has completely transformed and we’ve added all these incredible programs.”

When it was time to choose a song for the dedication of the new amphitheater — which took place during the final week of this most recent school year — it was an easy task for Clemensen. Just a few weeks after the entire student body had celebrated Long with “Kind and Generous” for Principals Appreciation Day, they were back outside again, listening to the voices of students singing a song that had many layers of emotional resonance.

“As soon as the song started, Rob looked at me and said, ‘What are you trying to do to me?’” Clemensen said. “He knew it was a special song for him and East Quogue, and looking at how far we’d come.”

Many of the teachers acknowledged that the coming school year will be an emotional one for them, saying that Long’s loss will be felt in so many different ways, precisely because he was so involved in everything that went on at the school. He regularly attended the annual overnight field trip to Boston with the sixth-grade class, and was a big presence at both the kindergarten and sixth-grade graduations.

Purkis also pointed out that the annual Senior Walk — when East Quogue School graduates returned to the school for a ceremonial walk down the hallway in their cap and gown upon graduating from Westhampton Beach High School — was one of Long’s favorite traditions.

Clemensen called Long “everyone’s biggest cheerleader,” and, like her colleagues, spoke about how he made the school a safe and nurturing environment for everyone. Long was also close with Clemensen’s husband, Hampton Bays Superintendent of Schools Lars Clemensen, who said he became “fast friends” with Long, interacting with him first as a parent, when Meghan and Shannon were students under his care in Hampton Bays, and eventually as fellow administrators in neighboring school districts.

He delivered the eulogy at Long’s funeral at St. Rosalie’s Church on Saturday morning, praising Long for bringing a “family first” mentality to the school. He spoke about Long’s strong love and devotion for his daughters and thanked the family for sharing Long with the community.

“He wasn’t just the principal and superintendent,” Lars said, a few days after the funeral. “He wasn’t anonymous to the kids. He was Mr. Long.”

While it will be a struggle to adjust to life without Long, Clemensen said it will be up to the teachers to pick up where he left off.

“We have to carry out his vision, and keep striving for better,” she said. “To put the community and the kids first, and do what we’ve been doing for the past many years.”

Plenty of people outside of the district took note of the way Long poured himself into the job. State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. worked closely with Long in his efforts to secure prekindergarten funding for the district, and said they became friends over time.

“Rob Long brought passion to every aspect of his life,” Thiele said in an email. “He was a dedicated educator and administrator who served the East Quogue School District with distinction. It was truly a labor of love.

“Throughout his battle against cancer, his optimism and zest for life never wavered,” Thiele continued. “I will miss our regular conversations about education, family and life.”

Long was not the type to seek out accolades for the tremendous efforts he made to make the school great in so many ways, and the dogged persistence he maintained in pursuit of that goal, despite battling cancer, despite the unprecedented challenge of a global pandemic. Winter pointed out that many others in Long’s position would’ve used the superintendent’s job at a small district, with only one kindergarten through sixth-grade school, as a stepping stone to another, higher paying or more prestigious administration job elsewhere.

That was never in his heart. Instead, he made the simple but vital act of building community in a small, tight-knit town his life’s work and legacy, and he did it in so many ways, big and small, whether it was overseeing the construction of outdoor learning spaces and a new classroom wing, or creating a signature catchphrase, like “See you out there,” his well-known sign-off for announcements and correspondence.

Most adults probably don’t remember their elementary school principal, and likely would have felt disconnected from the idea of their death. But nearly every parent of students in the school has shared privately how the loss of Long has been felt deeply by their children — and by them as well — much like the death of a grandparent or other cherished adult family member. For many of them, it is their first meaningful encounter with grief and loss.

While it is painful now, the depth of that impact is likely to be the most beautiful and enduring part of Long’s legacy, and it was plain to see on Saturday morning when East Quogue families and students were invited to gather at the school and pay their respects, as the funeral procession made a special stop at the school so his wife and daughters could lay flowers on the front lawn.

That scene — under the backdrop of a picture-perfect summer day, with a giant American flag flying from one of several East Quogue Fire Department trucks lined up on Central Avenue, which was packed, from one end to another, with cars — made it clear that, as Merchant’s song goes, the entire school community felt in debt to Long for his kindness and generosity; that they shared the sentiment that they never could have come this far without him, and that, one final time, they were bound, together as one, to thank him for it.

In addition to his wife, Dawn, and daughters, Meghan and Shannon, Long is also survived by his parents, Robert and Anna Long, as well as his siblings, Kerry, Daniel and Kathleen; his mother-in-law, Ann Pavlovsky; and numerous nieces and nephews.

In lieu of flowers, the Long family would appreciate donations to either East End Hospice or to the Robert J. Long Jr. Scholarship Fund, C/O East Quogue U.F.S.D., 6 Central Avenue, East Quogue, NY 11942.