In Room 808 at Bay Shore Middle School, Philip M. Carpenter Jr. shaped, influenced, and enriched generations of students for over 36 years, becoming an institution in the Bay Shore community. Carpenter died April 2 at his home in Bay Shore, surrounded by his loved ones. He was 84.
At the beginning of each year, Carpenter, standing out among his colleagues, would assign students to research a company listed on the stock exchange to determine whether its stock was a good investment. Keeping a day-to-day update of the stocks his students purchased, Carpenter would write the current per-share prices on the board as a stock ticker. The best-performing stocks of the day would secure that student shareholder a seat at the front of the classroom. To many of his students, he would gift various stocks and tell them not to sell until they graduated high school, to demonstrate how wealth grows over the years.
“He was trying to teach students about upward mobility through education and investing. He wanted to demonstrate to them that the odds were stacked against you if you did not improve your lives through education,” stated Philip Carpenter’s daughter, Susan Moore.
Carpenter’s calling to be an educator stemmed from his formative years of community service as an Eagle Scout in Scarsdale Troop Five and his time as a reservist in the United States Marine Corps as a Lance Corporal. Having an epiphany about the importance of education while in high school, Carpenter drew inspiration from his own social studies teacher. Decisive about his future, Carpenter’s quote in his senior yearbook was “future teacher.”
While earning his bachelor’s degree and later his master’s degree from SUNY Oneonta, Carpenter immersed himself in academic life and developed the values that would define his lifelong commitment to education.
His lifelong friend, Bob Hawkins, a Westchester native who summered in Bay Shore, bragged to him about the town that balanced work and play. While exploring Bay Shore and all it had to offer, including body surfing, boating, and clamming, Carpenter sought and obtained employment within the Bay Shore School District in 1964.
As chairman of the Social Studies Department at Bay Shore Middle School, Carpenter recruited and hired some of the most talented and dedicated educators in the district, many of whom went on to become leaders in education. Among them is superintendent of schools Dr. Steven Maloney, reflecting Carpenter’s lasting influence not only on students, but on the educational leadership of the community.
In 1968, he met his wife, Marjorie “Bonnie” Hall, a school nurse within the Bay Shore School District. Within four months, they were married.
Embracing his adopted hometown, Carpenter helped fundraise for the Bay Shore Fire Department among other community organizations, and became an active member of the Bay Shore Lions Club. His greatest philanthropic impact was establishing several Carpenter Family scholarships for Bay Shore High School students and, in 2007, creating an endowed scholarship at the State University of New York at Oneonta supporting Bay Shore graduates by class year.
In 2018, Carpenter received the SCOPE Education Service Community Award, and in 2019, he was inducted into the Bay Shore High School Hall of Fame.
A member of the Bay Shore Yacht Club for more than forty years, Carpenter frequently summered in Fair Harbor, Fire Island, where he and his wife brought their children each year to enjoy life on the bay. His leisure time centered around the bay, family traditions, and time spent with those he loved most.
However, his passion for education was only matched by his dedication to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Moore stated her father “hated the Yankees and blamed them for ruining his childhood by pushing the Dodgers out of Brooklyn.”
Carpenter’s greatest contributions were his lifelong lessons in education as the path to independence and opportunity, community service, and the work ethic he modeled for all who knew him. His pride and joy was watching his children, all graduates of Bay Shore High School, become pillars within their own communities and industries.
Philip Carpenter is survived by his daughters, Susan Moore (Tony) of Virginia Beach, Virginia; Jennifer Carpenter Low (Craig) of Brightwaters, New York; Elizabeth Carpenter (Rob) of Golden, Colorado; his son, Philip Carpenter III (Jasmine) of Manhattan, New York; his seven grandchildren, Anthony (AJ), Julianne, Ellie, Michael, Isabel, Daniel, and Vivian; his brother, Robert Carpenter of Norwalk, Connecticut; and his sister, Julianne Carpenter Conklin of Boynton Beach, Florida.
