More than a decade ago, in the early days of marriage equality in New York State, noisy opponents would show up at Southampton Town Hall to protest the same-sex civil ceremonies that Sundy Schermeyer, the town clerk, would perform.
She said it was an “exciting and rather scary time,” having been threatened with impeachment for simply doing her job. But she did it, and on July 26, 2011, she officiated the first gay wedding at Town Hall.
Marriage equality was a relatively new concept, even in progressive New York, and it would still be two more years before a particularly prominent federal case would be decided. On June 26, 2013, section three of the Defense of Marriage Act would be struck down by the Supreme Court in the case Windsor v. United States on the grounds that it violated the constitutional equal-protection rights of L.G.B.T.Q.+ individuals to have marriages recognized under federal law.
Edith Windsor, a Southampton summer resident for 40 years, started the fight that led to federally recognized marriages for same-sex couples, and on Monday — 10 years to the day since the Supreme Court ruled in her favor — Southampton Town dedicated a memorial to her: a brick platform in the shape of a heart, surrounded by a circle of diamond-shaped paving stones, where civil marriage ceremonies for people of all stripes can be performed.
The Edie Windsor Heart Project will also generate, through its custom brick-engraving program, donations to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Edie Windsor Healthcare Center in Hampton Bays, which focuses on the specific needs of the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community.
Ms. Windsor, who died in 2017, “was an amazing powerhouse,” Ms. Schermeyer said, “who took on the United States in a court case that paved the way toward recognizing same-sex marriage. She was a force to be reckoned with . . . and she was so interested in other people and their welfare that she continued on.”
She “took on the U.S. knowing what was right, what was just,” Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said. “Edie taught us that love is love. There is no love that is not legitimate.”
After a 40-year engagement, Ms. Windsor married Thea Spyer in 2007 in Canada, a union that was recognized in New York State but not by the federal government. That meant when Ms. Spyer died of chronic progressive multiple sclerosis in 2009, Ms. Windsor had to pay estate tax on her inheritance from her spouse — a tax from which heterosexual married couples would have been exempt. She commenced her court case in November of 2010.
There was no question that a memorial to Ms. Windsor in Southampton was in order, said Mr. Schneiderman, but exactly what kind of shape it would take was an open-ended question. He recalled a conversation with Judith Kasen-Windsor, Ms. Windsor’s second wife, in which they agreed that it had to be something more special than a street or park named in her honor.
Mr. Schneiderman said he came up with the idea of the interlocking brick-heart pattern, and together he and Ms. Kasen-Windsor decided it should be encircled in diamond-shaped paving stones, representing the circular diamond brooch that Ms. Windsor always wore. It had been a gift from Ms. Spyer because during the early days of their 44-year relationship, they couldn’t openly wear engagement rings.
The result is “a place in Edie’s honor where people can marry who they love,” Mr. Schneiderman said.
The Southampton couple whom Ms. Schermeyer married in 2011, Alan Ceppos and Frederic Rambaud, were in attendance at Monday’s dedication ceremony, which was also attended by several of Ms. Windsor’s own friends. Among them was Jimmy Mack of Southampton, an ambulance volunteer who has credited the Edie Windsor Healthcare Center with keeping him healthy while living with H.I.V., and Ardon Kessler of East Hampton, who first met Ms. Windsor in 1975.
“She was a small woman with a huge heart . . . so all-embracing,” Ms. Kessler recalled. “It didn’t matter who you were, what you were, or where you came from, you were always included if she was around.”
Ms. Kessler also spoke on behalf of Ms. Kasen-Windsor, who couldn’t be at the dedication Monday because she herself was being honored for her activism by Vice President Kamala Harris in New York City.
Through Ms. Kessler, Ms. Kasen-Windsor said, “The gay rights movement cannot be written into history without crediting Edie Windsor for her prodigious determination in fighting for civil rights. This is a testament to how much one person’s life contributions over time can make a lasting and powerful, transformative difference.”
But there is still more work to be done, Ms. Kessler continued, given some 500 pieces of anti-L.G.B.T.Q.+ legislation now making their way through state and local governments across the U.S. “No action or effort is too small to effectuate change,” she said.
Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. concurred, saying that in the Supreme Court now, “rights aren’t being expanded, they are being contracted. We need to be vigilant.”
He continued, “Let people who come here, hopefully for happy occasions like marriage, let them be reminded that Edie won a victory for them. They are the ones who are going to keep that victory, and this will be an inspiration, I know, to generations to make sure that we never lose that victory.”
