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LAMBERTVILLE: Jim Amon’s focus has been parks, preservation

He’s kept ‘our planet as green as possible,’ says mayor

By John Tredrea, Special Writer
   In a way, you could say Jim Amon put Lambertville “on the map.”
   In 1987, as a result of a four-year effort led by the Delaware and Raritan Canal Commission — where Mr. Amon was executive director for 30 years — the city was put on the National Register of Historic Places.
   Mr. Amon and his wife, Kathleen, have lived in Lambertville for 13 years, on North Union Street.
   ”It’s interesting how that worked out,” he said Sunday. “Ours is one of the houses I wrote about in proposing that Lambertville be a national historic site. That was back before we lived here.”
   During his long career, Mr. Amon has been involved, as a member of the D&R Greenway Trust, in many projects that permanently preserved land as open space in the Delaware Valley area. He has also been a leader in the development of the D&R Canal State Park.
   ”Jim has dedicated a lot of his life to keeping our planet as green as possible,” Lambertville mayor David DelVecchio said.
   On March 18, the Lambertville City Council issued an official proclamation honoring Mr. Amon for “his many achievements and contributions to the City of Lambertville and surrounding communities.”
   About that proclamation, Mr. Amon, an easy-going, affable man, said: “I was pleased. I’ve always felt that good works are their own reward, but it’s nice when some says you did something special.”
   After earning his bachelor’s degree from Ohio State in 1962 and a master’s from San Francisco State in 1964, Mr. Amon worked for the Oxford University Press from 1965 to 1973, editing scholarly books. In 1974, he became executive director of the canal commission, a post he held until 2004. He wrote several books and master plans dealing with the design and protection of a park that runs along the canal.
   ”That park is a special place,” he said. “It’s 60 miles long. It runs from Bull’s Island, seven miles north of Lambertville, to Trenton, where it makes a U-turn and runs up past Princeton to New Brunswick.”
   Mr. Amon is the director of stewardship for the D&R Greenway Trust.
   ”My job there is to oversee the ecological restoration of land after it’s been acquired,” he said.
   As the proclamation notes, another of his “accomplishments is the New Jersey Office of Historic Preservation Historic Sites inventory of the D&R Canal corridor.” That work, which includes documentation on historic structures in the city, continues “to be used in many facets of city government,” the proclamation notes.
   Mr. Amon is also an accomplished photographer; his work has been published in many magazines, newspapers and books.
   In his spare, time, he likes to garden, design and build furniture, and travel with his wife and other members of his family. He and Kathleen have four children and six grandchildren.