Jeffrey Brackett Potter died at Southampton Hospital on Saturday after a brief case of pneumonia. He was 94. A resident of East Hampton, he was the author of several books, including an oral biography of Jackson Pollock, “To a Violent Grave,” which was published in 1985. He also wrote two works of children’s fiction that were published by Viking Press, “Elephant Bridge” and “Robin is a Bear.” At one time, he ran a marine construction company here, East Hampton Dredge and Dock, whose motto was “Your Bottom is Our Business.” 

    He was born at home in New York City on April 12, 1918, to Mary Barton Atterbury and Joseph Wiltsie Fuller Potter. He was the last surviving member of his family, his sisters, Helen Potter and Polly Balding, and brothers, Fuller Potter and Charles Potter, having died before him.

    Mr. Potter went to St. Bernard’s School in New York, summering as a child at Shinnecock Hills in Southampton. In the seventh grade he enrolled as a boarder at the Groton School, where he said there had “always been a Potter” since the school’s founding. He dropped out at the end of his junior year, however, in a dispute over a failing grade on a science test, and never completed high school. He went to work as a reporter in Columbia, S.C., where he told of witnessing the electrocution of a young African-American charged with murder, whom he believed was innocent.

    He also worked in Hamilton, Ohio, on the factory floor of a company building steam locomotives, and had a lifelong love for cars and machinery. His family said he attempted to volunteer for service in the Spanish Civil War, but was rejected as too young. Though a staunch Democrat in later years, he was arrested in 1941 for dropping leaflets from an airplane over Hamilton that said, “No Third Term,” referring to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a former classmate of his father’s at Groton — a relationship Mr. Potter later described in a piece for The New Yorker.

    Blind in one eye, he was ineligible for the military at the start of World War II and served for about two years in the merchant marine on two ships that were torpedoed by German U-boats. He then joined the American Field Service and was attached to the Royal Indian Army, serving with Sikhs and Gurkhas in combat against the Japanese in the jungles of Burma. He was twice mentioned in dispatches, for exceptional bravery as a combat medic and ambulance driver.

    After the war, Mr. Potter worked in New York as a stage manager. He and his first wife, Madeleine Penelope Sack, with whom he had three children, moved in 1949 to Amagansett. They bought Amagansett’s Stony Hill Farm, and started a riding academy. They were divorced in 1959. In 1963, he married Diana Hitt and moved to Tyringham, Mass. They had one child. Their marriage also ended in divorce.

    In the next decade, Mr. Potter published a book on oil spills consequent to tankers running aground, “Disaster by Oil” in 1973, and, in 1976, a biography of the newspaper owner and publisher Dorothy Schiff, called “Men, Money and Magic.” He also contributed short pieces to The New Yorker. In New York, he remained a longtime member of the Century Association.

    In 1981, he and Priscilla Bowden of East Hampton, a painter, were married. Although continuing to live in East Hampton, they spent 15 summers in Weymouth, Nova Scotia, which Mr. Potter would leave only reluctantly, loving the pastoral beauty of the seacoast and the friends he made there. In East Hampton, he hosted a series of programs for LTV, the public access channel, called “Meet Your Neighbor, Neighbor,” interviewing local personalities and adding valuable material to the archives. 

    Mr. Potter is survived by his wife  and four children, Job Potter and Manon (Madeleine) Potter, both of East Hampton, Gayle Potter Basso of Heber, Ariz., and Horatio Potter of Wilsall, Mont., and New York, as well as five grandchildren. Two great-grandchildren  are on the way.

    His ashes will be placed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, which he was proud to say was founded by Episcopal bishops in his family. There will be a memorial service at a future date. Contributions in his memory can be made to East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978 or to the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Leonard B. Harmon, a retired insurance company owner  and championship bridge player who lived on Jason’s Lane in East Hampton and who was awarded the Purple Heart for an eye injury during World War II, died at home on Nov. 27. The cause was heart failure and stroke, his family said. He was 93.

     For more than 50 years, Mr. Harmon ran the Alva Agency, which sold insurance in the United States and South America. Originally in New York City, Mr. Harmon moved the company to East Hampton when he and his wife, the late Marion Harmon, decided to settle here full time in the 1980s. For a time he ran the company from an office on Pantigo Road in East Hampton.

    In the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Harmon had been one of the bridge world’s leading players, becoming Life Master Number 600 in 1953. With Ivar Stakgold, he won the 1958 open pairs spring and summer national championships. Press coverage included a 1959 Sports Illustrated story.

    Bridge accolades and trophies continued, with a Reisinger Trophy at the Bermuda Bowl in 1959. That year, he was part of the second-place team at the World Bridge Championships and was voted bridge player of the year, having won four national championships during 1958-9: Reisinger Board-a-Match, the Vanderbilt, the Open Pairs, and the Spingold.

    He was born in New York City on Sept. 14, 1919, to Marcel Horowitz and the former Adele Ornstein and grew up there and in Paris. He attended Townsend Harris High School in New York City and New York University, where he majored in French.

    After college, his father invited him to join his insurance business, but Mr. Harmon declined. His first job, he told an interviewer in 2007, was interrupted by World War II. Figuring he was likely to be drafted into the Army infantry, he enlisted and was trained as an Army Air Force bombardier.

    During a bombing run over France in 1942, an anti-aircraft round struck the nose of his bomber, breaking the Plexiglas nose cone. A fragment of it went into his left eye and knocked him unconscious. In the 2007 interview, Mr. Harmon said that medical care for his injuries was delayed five hours until the aircraft landed in England. In addition to the Purple Heart, he was awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross. On his way back to the United States from England on a month-long voyage, Mr. Harmon said, he passed time playing cards — winning about $1,000.

    After successfully petitioning for a discharge, Mr. Harmon began selling life insurance and playing bridge competitively. He and Marian Sanders married in 1963, and lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In 1974, they bought a house in Northwest Woods, East Hampton. He sold his share of the business in 1992. Ms. Harmon died in 2003.

    With his wife, Mr. Harmon was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork, serving on its board and finance committee.

    His family said that those who knew him recognized him as a “skilled storyteller, killer word games player, and crossword puzzler.”

    “If they knew him a bit longer, they would also realize that he was a supporter of so many charitable causes it would take pages to list.”

    Donations in his memory have been suggested to any South Fork organization that helps those in need.

    Mr. Harmon was cremated and his ashes will be spread in East Hampton as he had wished. A memorial will be announced.

    Capt. Milton L. Miller Sr., a lifelong commercial fisherman and 12th-generation member of an East Hampton family, died on Sunday in his sleep at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton. He was 97.

    Captain Miller, who ran unsuccessfully for East Hampton Town Supervisor in 1997 on the Independence Party line, was a World War II veteran, having served in the Coast Guard as a chief boatswain’s mate in the Pacific Theater, assigned to LSTs, Navy tank-landing ships. While in the Pacific, he commanded 114 men and participated in many battles, including the Guadalcanal campaign, his family said.

    He was born on Nov. 19, 1915, at the family homestead on Amagansett’s Atlantic Avenue, to Samuel R.G. Miller and the former Nettie M. Payne. Captain Miller’s father himself spent 35 years in the Coast Guard.

    Captain Miller was one of five siblings. Russell G. Miller, Elizabeth Booth, Florence Reed, and Jessie Wikens all died before him.            In an interview in 1993, Captain Miller recalled growing up in Amagansett, working alongside the Edwards brothers and other commercial fishermen from the time he could walk, sometimes spending the night sleeping on the beach under an overturned dory.

    “I don’t know if we were that poor,” he said. “We always had plenty of food to eat, clothes to wear, plenty of fish to eat.”

    During the worst years of the 1930s on the South Fork, he said, according to a transcript of that interview, “If you had any ambition, why would the Depression hurt you? You’ve got all the clams, scallops, oysters, fish. You was eating the best of stuff: lobsters and crabs. Got all the potatoes and stuff you wanted, cabbage, and all that stuff. Last you all winter.”

    When the trains came through, Captain Miller said, the firemen would toss a bit of coal out for those in need. “Instead of putting it inside the train, he threw it outside, and then you’d go track-walking and pick up the coal.”

    In 1933, he married Etta L. Midgett, his childhood sweetheart, with whom he had four children, Lois Kfoury of Fort Salonga, Lila Miller of Michigan, and Mickey Miller and Lori Miller-Carr of Springs.

    Fishing for cod was an important part of winter subsistence here in those days. Captain Miller in the 1993 interview recalled staying up late at night baiting 500 hooks on a tub-trawl line, then getting up before daylight to row out through the ocean surf. It was cold work. “The time you pulled the codfish out of the water up into the boat, distance of three or four feet, it froze just like that, the whole piece stiff as a board.”

    While the Depression was dragging on, Captain Miller enlisted with the Civilian Conservation Corps and walked the length of Long Island, helping protect its natural resources.

    While taking a morning off fishing on Sept. 21, 1938, he was caught in the greatest hurricane of modern times to strike Long Island and New England. He recounted some of what he saw for the Public Broadcasting Service’s 1993 documentary, “The Hurricane of 1938.”

    His house on Meeting House Lane in Amagansett lost part of its roof, and his boat and net, left at Gerard Park in Springs, were destroyed.

    After the storm, Captain Miller joined the Coast Guard and was initially stationed at the Ditch Plain station. Late in life, he was an outspoken advocate for the preservation of the Atlantic Avenue station, which is now owned by the Town of East Hampton and undergoing a limited restoration.

    After being discharged from the Coast Guard in 1945, he went back to fishing. He joined American Legion Post 419 in Amagansett and was its commander in 1946 and ’47. He was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 550 in East Hampton and a founding member of the East Hampton Baymen’s Association, for which he was its first vice-president, then president in 1962.

    He spoke out frequently at town meetings and in letters to the editor of The East Hampton Star about subjects that concerned him, the United States Constitution, for example, or in 1976, when he helped successfully block a plan to lease public underwater land in Napeague Harbor for aquaculture. He ran for East Hampton Town bay constable on the Democratic ticket in 1977.

    In his long life, he had several close calls while on the water. In 1964, an explosion on his boat nearly cost him an eye. In 1990, while power-seining at night, his boat was forced aground by large swells left over from a distant Hurricane Lili. In 1998, a heat-exchanger on his unnamed dragger exploded while he was north of Gardiner’s Island, injuring his face and left side.

    In 1980, following a plane crash in Montauk after which fishermen helped rescue passengers, he was involved in setting up the East Hampton Dory Rescue Squad. The author Peter Matthiessen used him as a major source for his 1986 “Men’s Lives,” which in turn was made into a play of the same name by Joe Pintauro and staged at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor in its inaugural season. It was revived this past summer.

    In 1996, after his wife died, Captain Miller moved to Barefoot Bay in Sebastian, Fla., where he stayed until 2008, when he returned to East Hampton, living in Windmill Village.

    In addition to his children, Captain Miller is survived by 7 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. Two grandchildren died before him.

    He left his body for medical research and left instructions in his will that no ceremony or service should follow his death.

    His family has suggested memorial donations to the Amagansett Life-Saving Station, P.O. Box 51, Amagansett 11930.

    In an elegiac letter to the editor on the eve of the 1997 election, Captain Miller wrote that he had “mapped out what we must face regardless of politics. I leave this to the voters who are the sailors, who will take us, and our future generations to come, on a safe voyage. I have had a wonderful sail.”

    Ronald E. Sullivan, a seaman who moved to Montauk to raise his family there, died at home in his sleep on Dec. 21 at 74 years of age. Doctors were uncertain of the cause of death, but his family said he died peacefully.

    Born in the Bronx to Edward Joseph Sullivan and the former Anne Dunham on March 16, 1938, he grew up in the Bronx, enlisting in the Navy after he graduated from high school.

    “He served all over the world — Spain, Tripoli, Scotland,” his daughter Julie Smith remembered yesterday.

    His ship was anchored in Holy Loch, Scotland, when he met his future wife, Loretta McAdam, whom he married on March 24, 1963. The Sullivans had two children, Edward Sullivan and Ms. Smith.

    When the children were first born, the family moved from naval base to naval base, wherever Mr. Sullivan was deployed.

    “He and my mom purchased their home here when I was 5 so we could go to school here,” Ms. Smith said. She and her brother ended up settling in Montauk and still live there.

    When they were young, their father was stationed across the sound in Groton, Conn., and then New London. He would spend every weekend in Montauk.

    When he left the Navy, he went into the salvage business. He frequently would work with insurance companies, raising sunken boats.

    He also was in the welding business, founding the Ron Sullivan Welding Company, which his son now runs.

    “He was very active in the Montauk Fire Department,” Ms. Smith said.

    He loved collecting trains, particularly American Flyer C gauge, and built an elaborate working display in his basement.

    “He loved spending time with his family, his trains, and the water. He loved the beach and fishing and ice fishing,” his daughter said.

    “He was a good man. He is very, very missed,” his wife said yesterday.

    Besides his two children and wife, he is also survived by a grandchild.

    A service was held on Dec. 28 at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton, led by the Rev. Bill Hoffman. Burial services were held at the Montauk Community Church the next day, after which he was interred in the Fort Hill Cemetery in Montauk.

    The family asks that donations be made in his name to the Montauk Community Church, P.O. Box 698, 850 Montauk Highway, Montauk 11954

    Ruth Ratcliffe, who loved everything about the Sag Harbor area and never wanted to leave, her family said, died at home on North Haven on Dec. 23. She was 91 and had lived there for 56 years.

    Born in Brooklyn on April 22, 1921, to Henry and Rose Stampfl Bornkamp, she was very close to her only sibling, Robert Bornkamp, who died in 2011.

    She married Robert Ratcliffe in the fall of 1941. During World War II, Ms. Ratcliffe was a true Rosie the Riveter, working as an aircraft riveter.

    In 1949 the couple had one son, Robert Ratcliffe, who lives in Sag Harbor. Ms. Ratcliffe was a homemaker, mother, and devoted wife, her family said.

    The Ratcliffes moved from Brooklyn to North Haven in 1956. While she was saddened by leaving her beloved Brooklyn, she soon found an even deeper affection for Sag Harbor. She taught Sunday school at the Old Whalers Church in the village during the 1950s and 1960s.

    She played bridge regularly for over 30 years and became an active member of the Community Bible Church in Noyac.

    Besides her son, she is survived by three grandchildren.

    A service took place last Thursday at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in Sag Harbor. Contributions in her memory can be made to East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978.

    Joseph Radon Jr., a veteran of World War II who lived on Ayrshire Place in Springs for over 30 years, died at home on Nov. 5. He was 86 and had emphysema.

    He was born in 1926 in New York City, a son of Joseph Radon and the former Anna Kohut. Mr. Radon served in the Army Air Corps during World War II from July 1944 to August 1946. He was self-employed for most of his life.

    Mr. Radon is survived by a brother, Richard Radon of Springs. A sister, Lillian Gibson, died before him. He was buried at Calverton National Cemetery on Nov. 9.

    Jonathan L. Auerbach, a resident of and lover of all things Sagaponack for the past 20 years, died of cancer on Nov. 29 in New York City with his family by his side. He was 70 years old.

    Mr. Auerbach, who was the founder and managing director of Auerbach Grayson and Company, which provides international securities research, execution, and settlement for United States institutions. He was also a dedicated supporter of the arts, serving in leadership roles at the Shakespeare Globe Center in the United States, as well as the Globe Center in London, which he helped found.

    He produced the underground film “Vortex,” which was selected for the New York Film Festival, among others, and appeared in the film “Belladonna,” which premiered at a Whitney Biennale.

    A man of wide-ranging interests, he loved vintage car road rallies, as well. In 2000 he became involved in the Bridgehampton Road Rally. This May, he took part in the Trans-America Rally, which covers the over 4,000 miles between New York City and Vancouver, British Columbia. He made the trek with his son Jake Auerbach acting as navigator, crossing the country in a 1951 Chrysler New Yorker. He also participated in the New Jersey Vintage Grand Prix and the Mount Washington Climb to the Clouds, among other rallies and motoring events.

    Born in Philadelphia on Nov. 25, 1942, he graduated from the Noble and Greenough School, a boarding school in Dedham, Mass. He went on to Yale University, where he was a member of the R.O.T.C., and served in the Army as a first lieutenant after his graduation in 1964.

    He began his career in international securities trading and marketing in the 1970s and founded his own firm in 1993. He had a deep interest in the developing world, particularly in Africa. He traveled the continent, not just as a businessman but as a humanitarian.

    In 2003, according to an article published the Noble and Greenough School, he met Wangari Maathai, who ended up winning the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. That meeting led him to support a reforestation project in Kenya through the Green Belt Movement, which Ms. Maathai had herself become involved with in the 1970s. The Green Belt Movement is an environmental organization that empowers communities, particularly focusing on women, to conserve the environment and improve their lives.

    Ms. Maathai spoke to Mr. Auerbach’s alma mater in 2008, and said, “Be appreciative of nature. There is a lot about nature you don’t see and don’t understand, but you should nevertheless appreciate it.”º

    Mr. Auerbach set up a scholarship at Noble and Greennough, to provide assistance for students primarily from emerging markets.

    He also was a trustee of the Dwight School in New York City.

    Mr. Auerbach split his time between Sagaponack and New York City, and had been planning before his death to move to Sagaponack full time.

    He was a member of the Peconic Land Trust and was a supporter of the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton, along with his wife of 23 years, Anne Luce, who survives.

    In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children, Gabrielle, Jake, Nick, and Sasha Auerbach, all of New York City, as well as his father, Joseph Auerbach, who lives in Boston, and a sister, Hope Pym of Kent, England.

     His mother, Judith Auerbach, and a son, Patrick Luce Auerbach, died before him.

    Mr. Auerbach was buried at Edgewood Cemetery in Bridgehampton.

    The family is planning for a memorial service in the new year.

Harry Gilbert Carlson

    Harry Gilbert Carlson, an expert in the literature of William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen, died on Saturday at Stony Brook University Medical Center of complications from an infection. He was 82.

    A funeral service will be held tomorrow at 10 a.m. at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett.

    He was a professor emeritus at Queens College in the department of drama and theater, and was the author of “Out of Inferno: Strindberg’s Reawakening as an Artist,” published in 1996, and “Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth,” published in 1982. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1966.

    According to Richard Gambino, a member of a coterie of Shakespeare enthusiasts, a typical evening involved gathering around a piece of audio-visual equipment to watch Shakespearean productions Mr. Carlson had recorded from films and videotapes. Discussions followed.

    It all started with a small TV on the top floor of a house in East Hampton. Mr. Carlson’s collection included about 2,000 DVDs of plays by Ibsen and Shakespeare. In recent years, the group met on Saturday mornings at the Amagansett Library.

    Mr. Carlson was born in 1930, the son of Harry C. Carlson and the former Bertha A. Johnson. His parents were immigrants from Sweden. He lived in East Hampton for many years in a house built by his father, a carpenter. Mr. Carlson is survived by his wife, Carolyn, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

    During the Korean War, Mr. Carlson served in the Army. He asked to be discharged in South Korea so he could teach Shakespeare to Korean college students. Mr. Gambino said Mr. Carlson told the story of the time he was reading a passage from a Shakespeare play to illustrate the universality of the playwright’s insights and noticed that his students were nodding their heads. He asked why. One of them answered, “Shakespeare must have been a Buddhist.”

    He went on to teach Ibsen’s and Shakespeare’s works in Europe and the U.S. He also served as a director, producer, and sometime actor in a great many productions for the rest of his life.

    Mr. Gambino wrote: “The opinions universal among those many who knew Harry Carlson on hearing of his death are all so many variations on: ‘Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’ ”

    Rosalie Strong Wootten of Taylors, S.C., an East Hampton native and member of one of the town’s founding families, died at home on Dec. 8 of a brain hemorrhage. She was 85.

    The only girl in a family of four children, she was born in East Hampton on Sept. 25, 1927, the daughter of James Madison Strong and Flora Sweeting Strong, and was called Rose by her family.

    Her great-grandfather was Capt. James G. Scott, who was the Montauk Lighthouse keeper for 25 years.

    After graduating from East Hampton High School, she received a bachelor’s degree from Houghton College in Houghton, N.Y. Before earning a master’s degree in elementary education from the State University at Farmingdale, she was a student teacher in general science at Houghton Academy.

    She taught for two years in Friendship, N.Y., and for three years in New Hyde Park before moving to Huntington in 1954. She began substitute teaching there in 1960. From 1964 to 1984 she taught at the Huntington Christian School in Huntington Station, where she eventually became assistant principal at the grade school.

    A member of West Hills Baptist Church, she taught Sunday school and sang in the church choir. Ms. Wootten had a talent for music; she had perfect pitch and played piano and violin.

    With her mother, she contributed to “The Gospel in Song,” a weekly radio program on WLNG in Sag Harbor that featured a different soloist each week. A cousin of her father’s, George Gould Strong, was a pianist who often accompanied “Big Edie” Beal, and she enjoyed many nights at an aunt’s house in East Hampton when he played piano and a group of cousins participated in sing-alongs.

    She also enjoyed painting, crocheting, and reading romance novels.

    Ms. Wootten is survived by her husband of 62 years, Robert C. Wootten of South Carolina, as well as the couple’s two sons, David R. Wootten of Friendswood, Tex., and Paul D. Wootten of Greenville, S.C. A brother, John Graham Strong of East Hampton, also survives.

    She was predeceased by her other brothers, R. Thomas Strong, who was an East Hampton Town councilman, justice, and Suffolk County legislator, and Jim Strong, a real estate broker and the founder of the Strong Insurance Agency in East Hampton.

    Jim Strong and a partner, Walter Hackett, started the Creme Queen ice cream stand on Pantigo Road in East Hampton, later called A&B Snowflake, and in the 1950s Ms. Wootten had a summer job there.

    The Woottens moved from Long Island to the Greenville, S.C., area in 1985, and became charter members of Community Baptist Church.

    A graveside service took place on Dec. 12 at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Greenville, the Rev. David Whitcomb officiating. A memorial service was held at Community Baptist Church in Greer, S.C.

    A memorial service for Louise Wilson of East Hampton, who died on Dec. 8, will take place on Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Calvary Baptist Church on Spinner Lane in East Hampton.

    Last week’s obituary for Ms. Wilson should have included the name of her son Windell Gant of Waterboro, S.C.

    John R. Talmage, who grew up in East Hampton and the Bronx, died on Dec. 5 in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, following an aneurism. He was 74.

    Mr. Talmage was born in New York City on Feb. 2, 1938. Raised in East Hampton by his mother, the former Ruth Thinnes, and his stepfather, Donald Gould, he graduated from East Hampton High School with the class of 1955 and went on to Pace College and Rutgers University, eventually becoming a certified public accountant.

    He was married on Oct. 6, 1962, to Barbara Forste, who survives. They lived in Bronxville, N.Y., and East Brunswick, N.J., in the 1960s, moved to Erie, Pa., and finally settled in Brook Park, Ohio, in the 1970s, where Mr. Talmage had his own C.P.A. business.

    His parents, who have since died, lived in East Hampton for many years until retiring to Florida.

    Mr. Talmage was a family man who loved sailing and his dogs.

    In addition to his wife, he leaves two daughters, Sharon Cowley of Strongsville, Ohio, and Jean Hribar of Brunswick, Ohio, as well as three grandchildren, a sister, Mary Lou Kutscha of Elmhurst, Ill., and a brother, Stephen Gould of Shelton, Conn.

    A service was held at the Busch Funeral Home in Parma, Ohio, on Dec. 10. Mr. Talmage was cremated.

    His family has suggested memorial contributions to the Berea Animal Rescue Fund, 400 Barrett Road, Berea, Ohio, 44017.