Jarvis James Slade, a part-time resident of Middle Lane in East Hampton Village and a retired investment banker and venture investor, died yesterday at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City of complications of a stroke. He was 93.
Mr. Slade was of Cuban-Basque heritage. He attended the Hill School in Pennsylvania and then Yale University, with interim military service in the Office of Strategic Services in counterintelligence in 1945 and 1946.
He received a master’s degree from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in California and was one of its first graduates to go to Wall Street. He worked as an associate at New York Trust, and then joined F. Eberstadt, an investment bank, where he became a partner in 1956. He was the founder and co-chairman of New York Securities from 1962 to 1975, briefly was the president of Computer Investments, and then became general partner of Hampton Capital, which he founded in 1976.
During his long career, Mr. Slade was chairman of the board at MCRB Service Bureau in North Hollywood, Calif., and a director at Church & Dwight in Princeton, N.J., and Prime Energy in Stamford, Conn. He also was a consultant to the board at the Lexington Management Group in New York City.
Mr. Slade was born on Feb. 12, 1926, in Paris, a son of Henry Lewis Slade Jr. and the former Elena de Arostegui, and grew up in New York City.
Despite a challenging childhood and the early loss of his only sibling — his brother, George, a B-17 bomber navigator killed in action over Germany in October 1944 — Mr. Slade became a very successful investor and the patriarch of a large and extended family.
He loved his family, his dogs (Charlie Brown, Arturo, Eulalio, and Bijoux), reading the news and biographies, sailing, golf, and, well into his 80s, tennis and skiing, his family said. Perhaps his favorite “sport” was debating current events, without fail from the opposite perspective of the person with whom he was conversing.
He was an inspiration for many, with a zest for life and a passion for traveling the world and living life to its fullest, his family said.
Mr. Slade adored East Hampton, where he bought a house in 1961 among the potato fields and installed what he claimed was the first private swimming pool on eastern Long Island.
He boasted that East Hampton had the most beautiful beaches in the world, and he immersed himself in the area’s natural beauty every season — exploring Gardiner’s Bay in his sailboat, the High Barbary, swimming in the ocean during the summers, riding his horse, Grey, through the fields and woods in the fall and spring, cycling, walking his dogs, and playing paddle tennis in the snow in the winter.
His annual sailing trips with his buddies, his son, and his sons-in-law, Mark Betts and David Mellgard, might be to Block Island, Fishers Island, or Martha’s Vineyard with a gourmet picnic and lots of good wine, sometimes making it to the planned destination and occasionally keeping the Coast Guard busy with rescue missions following nautical misadventures.
He was also close to his daughter-in-law, Tonia D’Angelo Slade, and 10 grandchildren.
He was a member of the board of governors at the Maidstone Club in East Hampton, and a member as well at the River Club and Racquet Club in New York City and the Mill Reef Club on Antigua.
His wife, Pamela Ferrari Slade, survives him, as do his children Shelley Slade Betts of McLean, Va., Georgiana Slade Mellgard of New York City, and Jarvis Slade Jr. of East Hampton. His second wife, Carlyle Lind Slade, died in 2000. An earlier marriage to Alice Patterson ended in divorce.
A funeral is planned for Aug. 11 at 3:30 p.m. at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton with the Very Rev. Denis C. Brunelle officiating.
Donations in his memory have been suggested to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. box 901, Wainscott 11975.