Over the last three decades, Henry Haney of East Hampton, who was well known here as the longtime host of LTV’s “Tell It to Henry” and “Henry on Location,” ran over 1,000 shows for the town’s public access station, interviewing local and regional leaders, musicians, artists, business owners, actors, and others.
His church, Calvary Baptist in East Hampton, played a big part in his life as well. He was a longtime deacon and Sunday school teacher there, and often recorded church services so that those who were sick or otherwise unable to attend could still be involved. “His main passion was working in the church and helping the community,” said one of his daughters, Connie Wallace-Mabry. “He didn’t want any recognition. None at all.”
The Rev. Walter Silva Thompson Jr., Calvary Baptist’s pastor, called Mr. Haney “a conscientious man who wanted to make a difference.”
“His contributions were broad,” the minister said. “He was well known in the community and touched the lives of so many because he was concerned about the sacredness of humanity.”
Mr. Haney, who was also a volunteer at the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center and a member of the town police department’s minority relations committee, died on Oct. 29 at Southampton Hospital. He was 88 years old and had been in declining health.
He and his nine siblings were all born and raised on the Mississippi Delta. Mr. Haney, born on Dec. 9, 1930, was the oldest son of Otha Haney and the former Inez Spurlock.
After working for years in southern cotton fields, he came to East Hampton in the 1950s by way of Florida and South Carolina, one of some six million African-Americans who made up what is now known as the Great Migration. It began in 1916 and lasted until the early ’70s, as black Americans left Jim Crow laws and Southern segregation behind.
Mr. Haney’s first job here was on Ferris Talmage’s potato farm. He also worked for the Bistrian Sand and Gravel Company before establishing his own landscaping business, Henry Haney Maintenance, when he was in his 30s.
He loved the outdoors and “never really retired,” Ms. Wallace-Mabry said. “He loved cutting grass and planting trees and flowers,” as well as listening to and singing along with blues songs. “It was the old-time blues. Not the new, modern stuff,” she said.
He also liked shooting pool and once acknowledged, in a Star interview, being a gambler.
Mr. Haney left school at or before the ninth grade. A 1980 article in Newsday chronicled his determination to improve his fourth-grade reading level by taking federally funded classes in Bridgehampton. Basically, he was a self-taught man. He kept a notebook full of new words and wrote in it every day.
Maggie Kotuk, an artist, once painted a portrait of Mr. Haney, whom she described in 1977 to The Star as a “very, very interesting subject . . . the body, the posture, tell you about a person’s life. He’s worked hard . . . he’s not bent over . . . his head is very proud, but the body shows it’s taken a certain toll.”
In that same article, her subject recalled that back in Mississippi, “if you had some blue overalls and a white shirt, you were really dressed. They were about the onliest thing available to you. I bought a couple pair, halfway for the memory and because they’re more convenient — they have a lot of pockets.”
LTV called Mr. Haney “a pillar of the community” in a Facebook post that linked to a video tribute the station created to mark his 25 years of achievements in public access broadcasting.
“No one else laughed like that,” Ms. Wallace-Mabry said of her father. Over the phone, she did her best imitation of his mischievous “hee-hee-hee!”Mr. Haney met his first wife, Mathalda Wallace, after he moved to East Hampton. They were married in the 1960s and had three children; she died in 1992. Mr. Haney and Louise Hughes were married in 1993 and had two children together.
She survives, as do his five children. In addition to Ms. Wallace-Mabry, who lives in East Hampton, they are Anthony Baker of Sag Harbor, Sheena Hall and Mona Omobhude, who live in Georgia, and Stephanie Smith, who lives in Tennessee. Mr. Haney also leaves seven grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. Five of his siblings died before him; his brother Johnny Haney of Chicago survives, as do three sisters, Eleanora Jackson and Ann Lawrence, who live in Chicago, and Inez Portee, who lives in Colorado.
Mr. Haney was chairman of Calvary Baptist Church’s Martin Luther King Scholarship Fund for many years. His family has suggested donations in his memory to the scholarship fund, at 60 Spinner Lane, East Hampton 11937.
Visiting hours for Mr. Haney are tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m. at the church. A funeral service will take place there on Saturday at 11 a.m., followed by burial at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in East Hampton.