The Sag Harbor Partnership has announced the seventh annual Community Service Award, this year honoring Linley Pennebaker Hagen.
The award, which recognizes outstanding service to Sag Harbor and the community, will be presented to Pennebaker Hagen at the Masonic Lodge on Main Street in the Village. The private reception and ceremony will take place from 5 to 7 PM on November 10. Previous award recipients are Diane Schiavoni (2021), Evie Ramunno and the volunteers of the Sag Harbor Food Pantry (2020), Greg Ferraris (2019), Nada Barry (2018), Edmund Hollander (2017), and April Gornik (2016).
Pennebaker Hagen’s family connection with Sag Harbor began in 1960, when her parents bought a house on Madison Street. “They loved the community of writers and artists out here,” Pennebaker Hagen said. She and her late husband, Peter Whelan of East Hampton, would go on to raise four children in a house they built in Noyack.
Pennebaker Hagen is being honored with the Community Service Award for her tireless involvement in multiple initiatives that have benefited Sag Harbor and the East End. Along with Nada Barry (of The Wharf Shop), she founded and ran the Sag Harbor Youth Committee from 1996 to 2020, which provided youth programming. Pennebaker Hagen’s affiliation with the John Jermain Memorial Library began in 1997 and from 2011 to 2016 she was a member of the library’s Board of Trustees where she helped fundraise for the new addition. In 1997 she also organized the Friends of the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum group to create community awareness about the museum’s important role in preserving Sag Harbor’s rich history. After being the first women on the museum’s Board of Directors in 2002, Pennebaker Hagen eventually became president of the Board from 2016 to 2020.
Since 2016, Pennebaker Hagen has been a member of the Board of Mashashimuet Park where she helped raise funds for the new playground installed in 2019. “I love bringing my grandchildren there,” Pennebaker Hagen said. Her current focus remains on Mashashimuet Park, where refurbishment of the historic Grandstand is wrapping up. “We hope to be able to renovate all of the park buildings,” she said. “There’s definitely more work to be done so that we can continue to enjoy and take pride in our town.”