Robert E. Kalbacher, the founder of Kalbacher’s Auto in Springs, died on July 19 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was 82. The cause of death was congestive heart failure. He had been in ill health for a few years, his family said.

Mr. Kalbacher, known as Bob, started his auto repair business in 1964 and expanded it to include storage in 1981. Kalbacher’s Auto, which specializes in imported cars, is now run by his son Robert Kalbacher of East Hampton.

He was a founding member and past commander of the East Hampton Power Squadron. Mr. Kalbacher was a recreational sailor, an interest he shared with his wife of nearly 57 years, Frances Kalbacher, who is known as Billie. The couple were frequently on the water, entertaining friends and family aboard their boat, the Bobil, which got its name as a combination of Bob and Billie.

While the automotive repair and storage business kept Mr. Kalbacher busy for nearly three decades, he always had time to work with his fellow members of the power squadron. He received nearly every award and honor given by the squadron to its members, including the Edward Corner Award as most valuable member in 1993.

In the days after Mr. Kalbacher’s death, a large wreath of carnations in the shape of a life ring was placed on the aft deck of the Bobil at its berth in Three Mile Harbor.

He was born in Ozone Park, Queens, on April 20, 1932, to Robert Kalbacher and the former Elise Wehringer. He attended Woodrow Wilson High School in New York City and later studied mechanical engineering at Columbia University.

Mr. Kalbacher served in the Air Force from 1956 to 1960, reaching the rank of staff sergeant. While in the service, he was a senior automotive mechanic in charge of inspection of vehicles before and after repair.

He met Frances Emma Hudson in New York City, and they were married on Oct. 26, 1957. As a young man, Mr. Kalbacher and his friends had been frequent campers at Hither Hills in Montauk, and he fell in love with the area, deciding once he was married to start a family here.

Mr. and Mrs. Kalbacher were active in numerous local service organizations and were founding members of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett, where Mr. Kalbacher’s memorial service was held on July 24.

Mr. Kalbacher is survived by his wife; two sons, Robert Kalbacher and Richard Kalbacher, both of East Hampton; two sisters, Joanne Shaughnessy of West Palm Beach, Fla., and Paula Easevoli of Amagansett and Key Largo, Fla.; two brothers, Steven Kalbacher of Amagansett and William Kalbacher of East Hampton, and four grandchildren. Another brother, John Kalbacher, died in August 2004.

“My parents moved to East Hampton in 1962, after they finished building their home on Gardiner Avenue in Springs,” Richard Kalbacher said at his father’s memorial service in July.

“My mom wanted to raise Rob and me in East Hampton. My dad’s job was in New Jersey. He worked for Volvo and later for British Leyland-Jaguar Rover Triumph for a total of 24 years. He was the service supervisor for dealer development and traveled continuously throughout the U.S. to all the dealerships for B.L.-J.R.T. He commuted to New Jersey on Mondays and came home to East Hampton every Friday. So needless to say our weekends were all about family and doing things together.”

In an article in The East Hampton Star in 2008, Mr. Kalbacher said, “I have been doing this for 65 years. When the business opened, we decided we didn’t want to be on the main highway, that’s why we are deep in the woods. I don’t want people walking into my shop saying, ‘I want my car fixed now.’ You can’t do that in a doctor’s office, so please, make an appointment.”

“People originally told my dad, ‘You’ll never make it,’ ” Robert Kalbacher said.

Donations have been suggested to Good Shepard Lutheran Church, 6301 SW 18th Street, Boca Raton, Fla. 33433, in care of the Rev. Robert Endruschat.

A memorial service celebrating the life of James H. Schneider, who worked for more than 30 years with the University of Michigan’s sports information department, retiring as a public and media relations director in 2008 because of ill health, is to be held at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church on Oct. 6 at 1:30 p.m.

Rich Schneider, his younger brother, said the service will be followed by a reception at the Session House. James Schneder died in Ann Arbor on July 22 at the age of 63 as the result of congestive heart failure.

A celebration of his life is also to be held at the University of Michigan tomorrow at the Junge Family Champions Center there from 4 to 6 p.m.

James Schneider was the son of the late Harrison and Margaret Schneider of East Hampton. He graduated from East Hampton High School in 1969 and from Bowling Green State University in Ohio in 1974 with a journalism degree.

He joined the University of Michigan’s athletic media relations office in 1978 after having worked as a sportswriter for Bowling Green’s newspaper, The Daily Sentinel-Tribune.

During his career at Michigan, the younger Mr. Schneider said, “Jim worked closely with the football program’s head coaches Bo Schembechler, Gary Moeller, and Lloyd Carr; was the public address announcer at home games for men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, and softball teams, and served for many years as color analyst for baseball and hockey radio broadcasts. Colleagues remember him for his humor, intelligence, empathy, and his ability to communicate and network.”

Barry Larkin, the ESPN baseball analyst, Cincinnati Reds Hall of Famer, and former Michigan baseball player, said at the time of Mr. Schneider’s death, “Not only was Jim a great man and a fantastic sports information director, but he was also funny, incredibly witty, and kind. He was the best non-staff hitting coach I had during my time at Michigan. I will miss his humor, his stories, and his hitting tips. Rest peacefully, my friend.”

Mr. Carr said, “We’ve lost one of the great people in Michigan athletic history.”

Jim Abbott, a Michigan baseball alumnus who pitched 10 years in the major leagues, said, “Michigan’s baseball family claims ‘Schneids’ as one of our own even though he wore many hats. . . . He quietly served as a mentor and friend to so many of us; his vast knowledge of the program, its players, and coaches is irreplaceable. So long, and thank you, Schneids. Your voice will long be remembered echoing through the rafters of that great stadium.”

Besides his younger brother, Mr. Schneider’s survivors include another brother, Harrison, of Batavia, Ill., a sister, Margaret, of The Woodlands, Tex., five nephews, two nieces, and numerous grand-nephews and grand-nieces.

The family has established the Schneids Go Blue Fund at the university earmarked for athletic scholarships. A memorial fund in his name has also been established at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church, 120 Main Street, East Hampton 11937.

Annette MacNiven, a world-class mountain-biker who competed in Xterra championships in Hawaii, California, Colorado, and Utah, and who taught swimming to I-Tri girls and members of the Hurricanes youth swim team at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, died on Sept. 16 at Southampton Hospital, where she was on life support. She was 56.

Her husband, Tom, said his wife of 30 years had “a strong will, and a huge heart, both physically and emotionally. Her heart was the last thing to stop.”

Ms. MacNiven was born on Dec. 31, 1957, in Albuquerque, the daughter of Manuel and Marie Alarid. Her father died when she was 2 years old.

She was reared in Fort Worth, where she met her husband-to-be after they had graduated from college, she from Texas A&M with a degree in horticulture, and he from Southern Methodist University.

They met, he said, when he “hired and trained her in 1984 to sell cable TV door to door — that was one of my first jobs out of college.” Within four months they were married, “in Albuquerque, in the presence of our two dogs and her older brother and his wife. We’d decided by then to pack all our worthless belongings up in a U-Haul and make the trip here, where my parents had had a weekend house since the mid-’60s. We took that detour to Albuquerque after Annette said, ‘Wait a minute — I’m not going unless we’re married.’ ”

Mr. MacNiven remembered it was “a freezing cold and windy April day with a bright blue sky when we arrived. Annette had never been east of the Mississippi. We were on the beach and agreeing that it was beautiful up here when she said, ‘Okay, I’ll stay.’ ”

The couple have been an integral part of East Hampton’s athletic community ever since, participating in road races, triathlons, and mountain bike races, “though, coming from Fort Worth, she had a very difficult time assimilating in New York,” he said. “She told me recently that she hadn’t felt she was a part of the community until she began coaching the Hurricanes and I-Tri girls at the Y four years ago. She loved those kids — she’d tell me all about the practices when she came home. It got so I knew all the kids without having met them.”

A runner first and foremost, Ms. MacNiven had to conquer fears of her own when it came to swimming. Evidence that she had was amply provided at the 2013 world cross (swim-bike-run) triathlon’s warm-up 1K swim in the North Sea at The Hague in the Netherlands. As hundreds bailed out, she was among the few who braved huge waves and 20-knot winds the entire way.

“Tom said he couldn’t believe it,” she said in recounting the event for The Star. “After that, I was ready for anything.”

Some of their best times, Mr. MacNiven said, “were when we’d go with the Cashin brothers, Ed and Kyle, and David Brauer and Mary Scheerer, Shari Hymes, and Nancy Lipira to the 24-hour mountain bike races in Canaan, W.Va., along with a full complement of cooks, masseuses, managers, mechanics, and kids.”

Ms. MacNiven gravitated to Xterra’s rigorous mountain bike races about a decade ago, “because it was more fun for her than racing on the roads,” he said. “It was never important for her to win. She wanted to, but that wasn’t it. She wanted to be there and finish, she wanted to compete with everybody and with herself. She was an Xterra ambassador — there are only a few in each region. Her job was to make the new people welcome.”

Mr. MacNiven also said his wife “never stopped — she had a work ethic like nobody I’ve ever known. Literally, she rebuilt all of our houses, here and in Colorado. She wore the tool belt. You’d want to stay away when she had power tools in her hands.”

Besides her husband, Ms. MacNiven, who took her own life, leaves a son, Casey, and a daughter, Cory; her mother, Marie Baca, and stepfather, Benjamin Baca, of Fort Worth; two brothers, Albert Alarid of Albuquerque and Steven Baca of Cleburne, Tex., and two sisters, Lorraine Cox of Fort Worth and Patricia Baca of Mansfield, Tex. Two other siblings, Andrew Alarid and Benjamin Baca, predeceased her. She is also survived by a grandson, Carter MacNiven, and by five nephews and three nieces.

A celebration of her life is to be held at the MacNivens’ house at 7 Knoll Lane in Wainscott on Saturday at 4 p.m.

Donations may be sent to Theresa Roden’s I-Tri girls program at P.O. Box 567, East Hampton 11937, or may be made online through I-Tri’s website.

Frances Starr Todd, a teacher and philanthropist who spent summers in East Hampton, died on Aug. 28 at home in Far Hills, N.J. She was 73 and had cancer.

She was married to John Todd, whose grandparents were among the first families to build summer houses on Dunemere Lane in East Hampton. The couple lived there for a time, her daughter, Mary Starr Todd Ganzenmuller, said. She later lived on Buell Lane in a house that became a gathering place for several generations of the family.

Mrs. Todd was a volunteer at the Y.W.C.A. in New York City, teaching women “workplace readiness.” She also taught young women who were returning to school for General Educational Development degrees and at Columbia’s School of General Studies.

Born on May 28, 1941, to Louis and Abbey Starr, she graduated from Foxcroft School and Columbia University. She will be remembered as “a strong advocate for the importance of learning, especially for young women returning to school,” her family said. “She was a patient but demanding teacher, with a quick mind and definite opinions, but always ready to listen and try new approaches.”

An enthusiastic painter, her subjects were golf courses, beaches, and landscapes around East Hampton, and she sold her work at Guild Hall’s Clothesline Arts Sale. She was a member of the Maidstone Club, the Ladies Village Improvement Society, and Guild Hall, and she volunteered with the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons.

Other cultural and community organizations she was committed to included the Metropolitan Opera, the Lower East Side Girls Club, Poets and Writers, Harlem Academy, and the River and Plains Society. She attended the East Hampton Presbyterian Church and the Lamington Presbyterian Church in New Jersey.

“Her passion for art and music was contagious, and she was more than generous in sharing those loves with others. This was exemplified in her hands-on support for causes she believed in, always focusing on making a difference in the lives of those she benefited,” her family said.

Mrs. Todd’s husband died in 1988, as did a brother, Dillwyn Starr.

In addition to her daughter, who lives in Oldwick, N.J., she is survived by a son, Christopher Bray Todd of Peapack, N.J., and five great-grandchildren.

Memorial contributions can be made to the L.V.I.S. at 95 Main Street, East Hampton 11937, or the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott 11975.

Vernal Harold Lafoe, a former resident of East Hampton, died of cancer on Sept. 17 at the Hospice of Citrus County in Lecanto, Fla. He was 88.

One of six children, Mr. Lafoe was born on June 7, 1926, in Brownington, a small town in northern Vermont, to Harold and Pearl Lafoe. In 1944, at the age of 18, he enlisted in the Navy and served with the Seabees, the Navy construction battalion, in the South Pacific.

He was a lifetime member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 550 in East Hampton, where he and his wife, Alice, settled soon after the war’s end. His daughter, Kathryn Augustine of Bay Shore, believes that a sister of his, Greta LaMonda, was already living here at the time,

Mr. Lafoe worked as a dairy farmer at the old Dune Alpin Farms in East Hampton, and later at Schwenk’s Dairy, before retiring in 1983. His daughter described him as a jack-of-all-trades.

The Lafoes moved to Inverness, Fla., not long after he retired.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Lafoe is survived by three sons, Vernal C. Lafoe, Scott Lafoe, and Perry Lafoe, all of Florida. He also leaves a sister, Dooreen Roberts of Florida, and a brother, Louis Lafoe, who lives in Louisiana. Nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren survive as well.

A celebration of his life was held on Friday at the Charles E. Davis Funeral Home in Inverness, Fla. Burial with full military honors followed at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, Fla.

Stephen L. Marley Jr. didn’t just teach history, he was a keeper of it. Mr. Marley, an East Hampton High School teacher for 32 years, also coached the school’s golf and winning junior varsity basketball teams in the 1960s and he played on and managed a number of men’s slow-pitch softball teams over 30 years, keeping their score books.

Even years later, if anyone had a question about a game’s outcome, they would call him, his wife, Corinne Marro Marley said.

The same was true for history. “He was Google before Google,” she said. He had a large and meticulously organized library of history books to which he would often refer.

“Not only did he have all those books, not only did he read them, he remembered what was in them,” said Hugh King, a friend for decades who played on many a softball team with Mr. Marley. A friend might pose the most nuanced and detailed question, and Mr. Marley would immediately have the answer. “He had a great memory.”

Perhaps because of his reading and deep appreciation for history, he was also very reasoned in his approach to things, Mr. King said. “I always valued his opinion,” he said, even when he disagreed with him. “He really looked at the evidence.”

Mr. Marley had a number of strokes in recent years and had been in declining health for some time. He died on Sunday at home on Hedge Row Lane in East Hampton. He would have turned 79 later this month. A memorial Mass will be said on Saturday at 11 a.m. at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton. A celebration of his life will be held at a later date.

He was born on Sept. 30, 1935, to Steve L. Marley and the former Ethelyn Carbrey, and grew up on the Circle in East Hampton. A sports fan from an early age, he would often go to Marley’s Stationery Store on Main Street, owned by his uncle, James Marley, to anxiously await the daily newspapers so he could check sports scores. His father was the village mayor and an East Hampton fire chief in the late 1950s.

After graduating with East Hampton High School’s class of 1953, Mr. Marley earned a bachelor’s in history from Colgate University in 1957 and a master’s in education from the State University at Albany in 1959. He returned to East Hampton to teach and coach. Among the electives he particularly enjoyed teaching was one called Wars of America, his wife said.

In the summer, Mr. Marley worked at the Maidstone Club and later for East Hampton Town’s summer recreation program. He also was supportive of local Biddy basketball, she said. In the early 1980s, Mr. King recalled, he and a couple of softball teammates started the Relics, for players 35 and over. “We won the championship in 1983, but it was downhill from there,” Mr. King said. Still the Relics soldiered on, playing into the mid-1990s, sponsored first by Wolfie’s Tavern and later by the Three Mile Harbor Inn. After the games, there was always a cold beer at the sponsor’s establishment to celebrate with or cry into, depending on how the game went.

“In the soothing post-game light of the tavern’s back room routine, bloop singles are magically transformed into vicious line drives, and losing, with the help of a few pitchers of beer, becomes easier to swallow,” The East Hampton Star wrote in a 1985 article on the team.

After retiring in 1992, Mr. Marley participated in two dozen Elderhostel programs throughout the country and enjoyed played golf with friends, some of whom he had been close with since his school days. He was an ardent fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and loved to watch college football and basketball and professional golf on TV.

He and his family loved warm weather holidays and would often take villa vacations in Jamaica with fellow East Hampton teachers and their families. He later enjoyed Naples, Fla., where he and his wife had a condominium.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children, Stephen L. Marley III of Wilmington, Del., Catherine Anne Marley of Manhattan, Susan Kip Payne of Lahaina, Hawaii, and James Marley II of Newburgh, N.Y. He also leaves five grandchildren.

His family has suggested contributions to the Colgate University Maroon Council, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, N.Y. 13346, or the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott 11975.

Ilie Wacs, a celebrated coat designer and part-time Wainscott Main Street resident, died on Sept. 7 at home in Manhattan. The cause was cancer, his publicist, Susan Arpin, said. He was 86.

From the late 1960s to the 1980s, the women’s coats and suits he designed were frequently seen in The New York Times, Women’s Wear Daily, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and other fashion magazines.

After closing his fashion firm in the early ’90s, Mr. Wacs became an artist, painting from his apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan or in Wainscott in the summers at a house he shared with his partner of 30 years, Susan Halpern.

He was born on Dec. 11, 1927, in Vienna, the only son of Moritz Wachs and the former Henia Fachs. His father, who was from Romania, was a tailor, and his mother was a milliner and former beauty queen from Poland.

At the age of 12, Ilie and his family fled Nazi-annexed Austria on the eve of World War II, finding passage on a ship to Japanese-occupied Shanghai, where Jews were accepted without restrictions. After World War II, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee helped Mr. Wacs win a scholarship to l’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He later transferred to the Acadamie Julian and then worked for Alex Maguy, a designer.

Mr. Wacs immigrated to the United States in 1942, joining his family in Manhattan. He worked as a sketch artist for Philip Mangone, a suit and coat maker, then as a designer at Seymour Fox, and later as the head designer for the coat maker Originala before producing suits and coats under his own label.

During a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., on Mr. Wacs’s 70th birthday with his sister, Deborah Strobin, they discovered a photo of her posing for Japanese war propaganda as a young girl in Shanghai. As memories surfaced and the pair reminisced, a book project took shape, Ms. Arpin said. In 2011, they published a joint memoir, “An Uncommon Journey,” chronicling their escape from the Nazis, their time as refugees in the Shanghai Jewish ghetto, and their final arrival and rise to success in the U.S.

In recent years, the siblings shared their experiences with audiences at the 92nd Street YMHA, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and Manhattan, at various events sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and in schools. In 2013, they participated in Authors Night to benefit the East Hampton Library.

In November 2013, on the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Mr. Wacs’s collection of artwork called “The Vienna Papers, 1938‚” was on display at Manhattan’s Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance. Debuting at the now-closed Pamela Williams Gallery in Amagansett in 2001, the collection was inspired by a suitcase stuffed with the family’s wartime documents, which he had inherited upon his mother’s death decades earlier. It was later left to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In his last year, Mr. Wacs continued a daily routine of jogging three miles around the reservoir in Central Park and playing tennis with a longtime group of friends until a week before his death.

His daughter, Maris Wacs of Hadlyme, Conn., described her father as “the perfect party guest because he was gregarious, handsome, smart, and funny.”

In addition to Ms. Strobin, Ms. Wacs, and Ms. Halpern, he is survived by another daughter, Darin Wacs of Montclair, N.J., five grandchildren, and Ms. Halpern’s daughters. His wife, the former Sylvia Silverstein, died in 1985.

Donations in Mr. Wacs’s memory have been suggested to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at jdc.org.

Visiting hours for Annette MacNiven will be held on Monday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. Ms. MacNiven, a world-class mountain-biker, and a runner and swimming instructor, died on Tuesday at Southampton Hospital, where she had been on life support. She was 56. 

A celebration of her life is to be held at her house at 7 Knoll Lane in Wainscott on Sept. 27. 

Barbara Osborn Babinski Meyer, a Wainscott resident whose roots go back to John Osborn, one of the first settlers of the hamlet, died at home surrounded by her family on Aug. 31 after a brief illness. 

Mrs. Babinski Meyer is in the 10th generation of Osborns who live in the Town of East Hampton. John Osborn, the son of Thomas Osborne, who followed Lion Gardiner here in 1670, dropped the last letter of his surname, according to Hilary Osborn Malecki, the family historian. Twelve generations later, his descendants still live in Wainscott.

“Barbara loved Wainscott and the ocean, but her greatest loves were her family and friends,” her family said. All but about two years of her life were spent in Wainscott, in houses no more than a mile apart, her daughter, Jane Weigley, said.

The only child of Elisha and Ella Osborn, she was born on Dec. 9, 1924, in a house on Wainscott Main Street that dates to around 1700. It remains in the family, though it has been moved twice. Her family later moved to Beach Lane.

Her father was a farmer, and Mrs. Babinski Meyer’s grandson Billy Babinski farms the land today. Her father also was among the offshore whalers who caught the last Wainscott whale in 1907, Ms. Malecki said.

A member of the first class at the third Wainscott School building, Mrs. Babinski Meyer graduated from East Hampton High School in 1941. She then earned a teaching degree at the State Teachers College at New Paltz.

After teaching for a few years at the Bridgehampton School, she met Bill Babinski, the son of Polish immigrants, when he returned to Bridgehampton to work on his family’s potato farm after serving in the Navy in World War II. She went on to teach, mostly second graders, at the Springs School. Mr. Babinski died in 1963.

In 1976, she was married to Henry von L. Meyer Jr., a summer resident and family friend. She retired around that time after 22 years in the classroom.

Active in local organizations, Mrs. Babinski Meyer was a member of the Wainscott Sewing Society, the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, and multiple bridge clubs. She was also a member of Delta Kappa Gamma, an association of retired teachers.

Her children, William Babinski, who is known as Andy, of Wainscott, Ms. Weigley, of Chevy Chase, Md., and Wainscott, survive, as do five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Tom Meyer of Bedford Hills, N.Y., her stepson, and his two sons also survive.

Another stepson, Hank Meyer of Stuart, Fla., also died before her, but she is survived by his two sons as well.

Mrs. Babinski Meyer’s second husband died in 2003 at the age of 94.

A private burial was held on Sept. 5 at the Wainscott Cemetery. Her son-in-law, Jim Weigley, wrote her eulogy. A celebration of her life took place at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church the following day.

Memorial donations have been sugested to the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church’s painting fund, P.O. Box 3038, Bridgehampton 11932.

Emmett Clarence Bennett, a lifetime resident of Springs and Wainscott, died of Huntington’s disease at the Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook on Sept. 16. He was 67 and had been ill for years.

Mr. Bennett graduated from East Hampton High School with the class of 1964 and joined the Air Force two years later, serving as a mechanic for about four years. His roots here went way back. He was born at Southampton Hospital on Oct. 26, 1946, to Clarence Bennett and the former Clara Payne; he was related to the Lester family as well.

While stationed with the Air Force in England, he met and married the former Eunice Bowerman. They lived for five months in Alabama before he was discharged and then moved to the East End, first to Hedges Lane in Wainscott and later to Springs.

Mrs. Bennett survives, as does a daughter, Danielle Pizzo of Richmondville, N.Y., and a son, Michael Bennett of Lincoln, Calif. He also leaves two grandchildren.

Mr. Bennett worked for many years for the East Hampton Town Parks and Recreation Department, a perfect job for an outdoorsman. He was an early riser, his daughter wrote — up every morning at 5:30. In his spare time, with his father and sister, Catherine McHugh, who lives in East Hampton, he helped to raise and show chickens at poultry shows, and also coached Little League baseball while his children were growing up. His wife fell in love with American softball, and Mr. Bennett coached her team for many years, and a men’s softball team as well.

He had an eclectic appreciation of a broad range of activities, from watching the birds that gathered around the family feeder to country music and the music of the ’50s. The Bennetts went to many concerts at the Westbury Music Fair. On television, he was a fierce fan of the Boston Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Steelers. His children also reported that he was a wicked badminton competitor.

Family gatherings were extremely important to him, whether a barbecue or a Sunday-morning breakfast. “I can close my eyes and hear him making coffee in the kitchen, humming,” his son told a large crowd of friends and relatives during graveside services Saturday at Round Swamp Cemetery in East Hampton, where generations of Lesters are buried. His debilitating disease “never got him down,” his son said. “He never gave up and he never complained.”

Mr. Bennett spent his last 15 months in the veterans home. “We could have paid a million dollars a day and not gotten better care,” his wife said yesterday, adding that “he was a simple man. He loved the simple things, and he loved his family.”

The family has suggested that memorial donations be directed to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, 505 8th Avenue, New York 10018.