Alan York, Optometrist
Alan York, an optometrist with a practice in a building he owned at 1 Main Street in East Hampton Village and a founding member of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, died on Nov. 29 at Southampton Hospital. He was 89.
He counted among his patients the artist Willem de Kooning, with whom he spent hours discussing the old masters while watching him paint. Understanding how de Kooning painted helped him make glasses suitable for both his close-up and faraway work.
Dr. York’s interests were wide-ranging. In 1960, for example, Guild Hall in East Hampton mounted an exhibit of his collection of political buttons, banners, and other items, which included material associated with George Washington and contained buttons or medals for every presidential election from Andrew Jackson’s in 1828 to John F. Kennedy’s in 1960.
His collections also spanned Irish Temperance Movement medals, material from the British abolition movement, Jewish Holocaust currency, and antique eyeglasses.
He loved classical music and was a former chairman of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons cultural education committee and Guild Hall’s film committee. He also served at one time as the president of the East Hampton Rotary Club.
After the death in 2013 of Harry Carson, who ran a Saturday morning Shakespeare discussion group at the Amagansett Library, Dr. York was among a group of members who carried on in his place.
He was born on May 9, 1925, in Brooklyn to Peter York and the former Selma Ablemar and attended Erasmus High School there. He received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College, and another degree from New York University. He also studied at the Illinois School of Optometry and was an Army veteran.
It was at N.Y.U. that he met Claire Fisher, whom he married on June 22, 1952. Shortly after that, the couple moved to Sag Harbor and then to East Hampton, living on Sherrill Road for many years. Ms. York died in 2011.
He is survived by a son and a daughter, Steven York of Sherman Oaks and Barbara York of East Hampton.
His funeral was on Dec. 2 at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons.
Dr. York’s family has suggested memorial donations to Elsa’s Ark, P.O. Box 2900, East Hampton 11937 or to the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, 44 Woods Lane, East Hampton 11937.