The Crab Meadow Golf Course in Northport will be renamed for Robert J. Flynn, the former Huntington supervisor whose work in acquiring parkland paved the way for the town's two municipal golf courses, according to a press release.
The Huntington Town Board unanimously approved the rededication of the 18-hole course, which will now be formally known as Robert J. Flynn Crab Meadow Golf Course. Flynn's tenure as town supervisor from 1959 to 1965 included the creation of Suffolk County's first municipal parks system and led to the creation of the public Crab Meadow and Dix Hills Park golf courses.
In a 2016 profile, Jeff Neuman of The Met Golfer said Crab Meadow's launch during the early-1960s course-building boom was a result of Flynn's "forward thinking."
"Flynn believed in protecting open space as part of a strong parks system, and he led the fight for a bond act passed in 1962 that funded the purchase of 700 acres of land for town parks large and small. ... Crab Meadow is bordered to the north and west by wetlands that might have been filled and sold for development in those pre-EPA days had the town not gotten involved." -- Jeff Neuman, The Met Golfer, Nov/Dec 2016
Crab Meadow opened to the public in 1965, the design work of William Mitchell, who's credited with many of Suffolk County's municipal golf courses and considered golf's "public defender." The history of golf on or near the Crab Meadow property actually dates farther back to the early 1920s, when famed designer Devereux Emmet built the short-lived Northport Country Club beside the wetlands and Sound.
For more on Crab Meadow, check out the course flyover.