The drive to save Block Island, led by John R. "Rob" Lewis, began to attract international recognition in the 1990s.

The Nature Conservancy in 1991 included tiny Block Island on a list of 12 sites it called the "The Last Great Places" in the Western Hemisphere. That put it alongside the Florida Keys, the Condor Bioreserve in northern Ecuador and much of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

The Nature Conservancy, the largest private land conservation group in the world, wanted to bring awareness to areas where entire ecosystems had been protected. It praised Block Island for hosting as many as 15,000 tourists on summer weekends while still providing a safe haven for thousands of migratory birds, as well as rare and endangered plants and animals.

It expressed hope that the island would serve as a model to communities around the world of "how man should live with nature."

Nearly 20 percent of Block Island -- roughly 1,290 acres -- had been set aside by that time for conservation.

Rob Lewis was delighted. "This is another feather in our cap on Block Island," he said. "It's a tremendous boost for Block Island. But you can't call it a crowning achievement. If it's a crowning achievement, that means there is nothing further."

By that time, he had stepped away from a leadership role.

"I'm retired now," he said. "It's up to other people to carry these things on and fight it out." For that, he looked especially to his sons, Keith and David.

Two years later, in August 1993, 200 people gathered at Block Island's Atlantic Inn to honor Rob. He was 75.

Keith Lang addressed the crowd. A longtime summer resident who brokered land deals, raised money and even wrote a book about island trails while working at The Nature Conservancy and on Sen. John H. Chafee's staff, Lang is now executive director of the Champlin Foundations. He spoke about the late Elizabeth Dickens, who taught ornithology and conservation to so many islanders.

"The ethic started with Miss Dickens," he said. "But the effort started with Rob Lewis. In so many places, people didn't stand up. But here, Rob Lewis did it. And what would Block Island be like if he hadn't?"

True to the nature of Block Island, and to Rob's habitual deflection of praise, that was about the extent of the speechmaking. Instead, islanders talked to each other quietly, enjoying each other's company and the celebration.

ROB NOW HAD new and grave challenges to face.

When he was 60, doctors found a growth in his groin. They removed it, concluding only that it was "interesting."

Later more tumors would appear, and these would be anything but interesting.

The year after the big party, Rob started having trouble breathing. Doctors found and removed a large mass on the left side of his abdomen.

Two years later, Rob needed more surgery. He followed it with 40 days of radiation treatments. He took the ferry each day, then drove the 60- or 70-mile roundtrip to Rhode Island Hospital and back. It wasn't until halfway through the treatments that his son, Keith, was able to go with him.

Thinking back to one of those surgeries, Keith recalled: "He had such a relaxed look on his face. Most people are stressed before surgery. He smiled."

After each surgery, Keith said, his father would bounce back and within weeks resume his daily walks on the beach.

Before long, another honor was bestowed on Rob. In May 1996, the University of Rhode Island, which Rob briefly attended 60 years earlier, conferred on him an honorary doctorate of law.

Rob was proud. But he was especially appreciative when he learned that his nomination had come from a family member, "adopted" grandson Michael J. Hickey.

Now a vice president at Fidelity Investments in Smithfield, Hickey is the son of David Lewis' wife, Nancy, from her earlier marriage. After graduating from URI, Hickey, unsure of his career path, spent the winter on the island, working for a contractor.

At dinners with Rob and Alyce Lewis, Hickey got another sort of education. The Lewises told him stories about the island, about how the people there had survived the Depression. Rob talked about attending one-room schoolhouses, working on the farm and sailing around the globe in wartime.

"The first Gulf War was just kicking off," Hickey recalls, "and we spent a lot of time talking about that."

The conversations struck a chord with Hickey. "I felt, here was a guy accomplished in land conservation and having been a ship's captain at 25. Here was a guy who was as deserving as anyone."

He spent a year working on the nomination, "under the radar" so Rob wouldn't know. His nomination package began:

"This presentation is not, in actuality, about a man, but of his ideals. It is not about a man, but his sense of vision. It is not about a man, but his sense of what makes a community. And in the final analysis, in what may come decades later, the story of a small island out at sea in the twentieth century. An island balancing the tide of development in the name of 'progress' and the preservation of its priceless natural state. Capt. John Robinson Lewis' life is a reflection of Block Island, and Block Island a reflection of Capt. Lewis."

Hickey described Rob's life, and he included pictures from the Providence Journal story that celebrated Rob as the youngest captain in the merchant marine during World War II.

Hickey reported on Rob's creation of the Block Island Conservancy and his battles to save Rodman's Hollow and the Southeast Lighthouse. He included copies of Rob's eloquent letters calling the community to arms.

And he added two letters of support.

Sen. John H. Chafee wrote, "If Rob Lewis had not stepped forward . . . there is no question in my mind that Block Island's unspoiled landscape, so central to its tourist economy, could have been destroyed forever. Rob is an inspiration to all Rhode Islanders."

John C. Sawhill, president of The Nature Conservancy at the time, called Rob a visionary whose work had made a lasting difference for the tens of thousands of people who journey to the island each year.

Without the "unflagging efforts" of Rob Lewis, Sawhill said, Block Island would not have made the "Last Great Places" list.

"There would have been nothing left to save," he wrote. "For that, he has earned our gratitude."

The nomination was accepted without a hitch.

GRADUATION DAY was warm and sunny. Rob shared the stage with Sylvia Earle, the renowned ocean scientist, as well as Gov. Lincoln Almond and Senator Chafee.

Keith Lewis was at sea. But the rest of the family sat in the front row.

"Rob clearly was very proud to be up there," Hickey said. "I think he felt he was up on stage with a lot of very accomplished people -- some of them nationally known. That for me was a day of confirmation of Rob's accomplishments."

The university gave the Lewis family a photo of Rob flanked by URI Provost Beverly Swan and Prof. Peter August, who had spent years quietly helping Block Island conservation efforts with his computerized mapping systems. Rob was beaming.

Hickey recalled that Rob was invited to a lot of other activities that day that the family couldn't attend.

There was a formal dinner with university President Robert L. Carothers. Rob went, but ate nothing.

He was fasting in preparation for another surgery the next day.

The following year, Rob had double bypass surgery. He recovered well, but the cancer returned.

Alyce was ailing as well. So Keith retired from the merchant marine to care for them.

Dr. Gerald F. Abbott, a close family friend and radiologist who helped guide the family through Rob's medical problems, said Rob battled terrible pain with few complaints.

"He loved the island. And he was so sweet to Alyce," Abbott said. "He said he wanted to take care of Alyce. He did."

Alyce died in August 2000. In a remembrance, Keith spoke of a "neat lady" who saw little of her husband during their first 13 years together, yet their marriage was long and happy.

The island's Harbor Baptist Church overflowed for the funeral.

IN THE FALL, Keith said, he and his wife, Kay, were walking on the beach when they saw a figure in the distance, stooped and walking very slowly.

"As we drew closer, we saw that it was Dad; we sadly realized he had become an old man," Keith wrote.

Rob was still walking three miles on the beach each day. He still seemed happy. But Keith said that with Alyce gone, Rob had lost his "incentive."

Soon after, a CAT scan found another suspicious growth on Rob's left side. Another showed up near his liver.

The surgeon said one of the new tumors was in a difficult spot. It could be removed, but months of healing would follow. And the cancer was likely to return.

"Right now you look healthy," Keith remembers the doctor telling his father. "You can enjoy several months of reasonable comfort -- you can still walk the beach. At your age, why trade that for months of healing for no ultimate cure?"

Rob's response was: "Dying is part of living. Sooner or later we have to bring these things to a conclusion."

He went back to his walks on the beach.

But breathing problems soon ended his walks and made it difficult for him to move about his house. Keith said Abbott, the family friend who had teamed up with Rob to move the Southeast Lighthouse, was especially helpful then.

"Though not Dad's primary physician, he was his guardian angel, did the handholding, was there providing a human face in a life-and-death struggle too often impersonal," Keith wrote.

When Christmas came, Keith said, Rob knew he had only a few more months to live.

He did his income taxes.

He read three books by or about Roger Williams, the religious maverick who founded Rhode Island.

"He had a very deep, but non-dogmatic religious faith," said Kay. "He liked having the freedom to follow his faith, the freedom of religious inquiry."

In May 2001, Rob wrote his last letter to the editor of The Block Island Times, dictating it because he was too weak to type. It was about yet another conservation battle.

Block Islanders were upset over languishing efforts to protect more of the remaining undeveloped land at the island's north end. The so-called Hodge property was one of the last expanses of open land on the island that had not yet been preserved -- 24 acres of stone walls and green fields running from Corn Neck Road down to Middle Pond. Months earlier, a Connecticut couple bought 4.7 acres from the Hodges that abutted both the proposed conservation area and protected town property. They later built a big house that sits right in the middle of the protected open lands.

Rob urged the community to buy what was left as soon as possible, then reminded them of the battle nearly 30 years earlier over Rodman's Hollow.

"Some said it was an impossible goal; that it couldn't be done," Rob wrote. "We persevered anyway and began fundraising."

He reminded readers of other conservation victories, and then he closed:

"I want to thank the community for its support of land conservation. It's a wonderful island and is worth protecting. My generation did its best, but there's more to do -- the rest is up to you. It's your island and your world. Please take care of them."

Rob grew weaker and weaker during the next few weeks. Confined to bed, he continued to receive visitors -- family, friends and merchant marine comrades -- who wanted to see him one last time.

Rob's daughter, Nancy Morrison, paid her last visit in June, staying along with her husband, Foster, through Father's Day.

On Sunday, June 24, David stopped to say goodbye to his father before returning to his job on the mainland.

Keith and Kay stayed that night. The next day Kay had to leave on the 5 p.m. boat. She tearfully kissed Rob "so long."

Keith, David's wife, Peg, her son, Matthew, and town nurse Mary Donnelly gathered at Rob's bedside.

Rob's breathing paused, and then restarted.

The pauses grew longer.

And then Rob was gone.

A few minutes later, the old ship's clock in the kitchen rang eight bells, the traditional signal that a watch at sea has ended.

It is a courtesy for mariners to relieve their watch 10 minutes early.

Keith likes to think God relieved Rob early from his final watch.