Scene Around: Honoring a Fair Haven Heartstring Anchor

Familiar face. Familiar place. Sometimes that familiar face is an anchor to a place many call home. Call it a heartstring tug-and-hold.

This time, the face is that of Marty Coy. The place is Fair Haven. The longtime borough Department of Public Works laborer and volunteer fireman was honored at Monday night’s Borough Council meeting with a proclamation commending him for his decades’ worth of work as an employee, volunteer, and, most of all, a tie to the core of the borough’s small-town familiarity feel — with a lot of heart. That feel is at the core of Coy’s soul as a Fair Haven-dedicated guy who just plain loves where he’s lived, worked and volunteered.

And while the proclamation honoring Coy was a great honor to him, there was much more to it, like the deep love he has always exuded to anyone seeing him around town doing his job, volunteering and taking the time to wave, chat and truly care. The more than three-decade job was much more than just a job to Coy. Anyone who encountered him could see that.

Why? Well, sometimes working for a town for a very long time is not just a job, but more a labor of love for what is and will always be home in your heart. And sometimes the love of home that person holds tight in his heart extends to serving the community in a volunteer capacity. Sometimes a town gets lucky enough to call that person one of its people — the face that ties the place to a hometown heartstring.

That’s the feeling anyone who knows Marty Coy gets, including a relatively new-to-town mayor.

“A lot of living in a small town like this is the moments — the moments in your own home, the moments on your property, the moments spent with friends and neighbors … I’m gonna give you some insight into some moments I’ve had over past 16 years where I’ve been living in town. Oftentimes me and my wife, obviously, would be driving around town, whether we were on the other side of town or out of state. And oftentimes, we’d come home see the DPW trucks parked all over town. And every single time — it actually became sort of a joke with me and my wife — I would say before we got close to the enough truck, every time, I would say I’d say ‘Ah, it’s gotta be Marty.’ And every single time, it was Marty! He was everywhere; and, he was everywhere since January of 1996 (when he was hired by DPW), and that’s just an incredible time and amount of service that he provided to the residents borough and I couldn’t be prouder to be the person standing here today to read this proclamation.”
Fair Haven Mayor Josh Halpern

And the mayor did just that. It said that Coy was hired in Fair Haven’s Department of Public Works in January of 1996. He has “selflessly served the residents of the borough for 30 years, working through all weather conditions to preserve the safety, beauty and infrastructure of the community … “

Coy, the proclamation also highlighted, has served as a volunteer with the Fair Haven Fire Department since November of 1989, serving as fire chief in 2003 and Fire Police captain for “multiple consecutive years.”

Awarded the proclamation to a standing ovation, Coy said, “I’ve got a lot of friends a lot of family here and a lot of people that I’ve met over the years. I’d like to thank the Fair Haven Council and all of you for allowing me to do that service for over 30 years. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.”

But that wasn’t all the awarding that went on for Coy. Borough Administrator Chris York reminisced that he, himself, via a Coy fire company connection, was bestowed the honor of getting a future fireman’s badge about 34 years ago, when he was 32. “When I came here as the borough administrator, I went to my first firemen’s dinner and brought my future firemen’s badge,” York said. “I held it up and said ‘Marty gave this to me 34 years ago and you’re not getting it back!'”

So, all these years later, York returned the pinning favor and gave Coy a Fair Haven seal pin. Call it a pinning of a different kind — one of deep commitment to Fair Haven.

Coy’s retirement from DPW is effective Aug. 1.

But, he will still be volunteering with the fire department and all will see him at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair, always “known as the familiar face in Fair Haven and (is) thanked for making Fair Haven a great place to live and work,” the proclamation concluded.

Enjoy your retirement, Marty! See you around the towns and at the fair!

— Photos/Dan Kane