Alfred C. Hines, 93, Tool and Die Maker

Alfred Charles Hines, a retired tool and die maker who made some of the dies for parts of a popular 1950s children’s toy called Robbie the Robot and built a telescope that won a prestigious prize, died in Springs on New Year’s Day. He was 93 and had been in good health until that morning, said his son Patrick Hines of Amagansett.

Mr. Hines’s lifelong interest in metal crafting began as a child playing with an Erector Set. As a teenager at Brooklyn Technical High School, he and friends built and flew model airplanes. He enlisted in the Navy at the start of World War II, and was assigned as a diesel mechanic in the engine room of the U.S.S. Snowden, a destroyer escort.

After the war, Mr. Hines worked as a machinist at a firm called Toolcrafters in Farmingdale, where he was quickly promoted to tool and die maker. A few years later, he bought the company with a fellow worker and ran it with him for two decades. In addition to dies for Robbie the Robot, which was based on a character in the film “Forbidden Planet”  and its sequel, “The Invisible Boy,” in 1960 he made a die that created a wind-up key for another popular robot toy, Mr. Machine.

Mr. Hines sold the business in 1970 and retired to Springs, where he designed and built what his family described as his “dream house” overlooking Gardiner’s Bay on Isle of Wight Road. Even after he retired he had a small machine shop at his house, where he could create any metal part he might want. He was a member of the board of directors of the Lion Head Beach Civic Association in the 1970s, and until last week walked two miles a day around the development. He had apparently been out for a walk the morning of his death,  his son said, and was found in his driveway.

He was born in New York City on Aug. 1, 1921, to Alfred Vincent Hines and the former Irene Lemilin. He grew up there, rising at 4 a.m. as a high school student to deliver newspapers before the start of the school day.

He was married on Aug. 29, 1947, to Loretta Marie Quigley. The couple raised three sons in Massapequa and later East Islip. She died in 2008.

A boater and member of the Jones Beach Power Squadron, he took his family on boating vacations every summer. He was also a dedicated fisherman, who would go out every Sunday morning, rain or shine, in East Islip as well as here, with three close friends, Bill Fisher, Herman Kornehrens, and Dick Rath. He enjoyed shark fishing off Fire Island Inlet, and had once bagged a 152-pound mako “that jumped completely out of the water seven times,” his family recalled. 

When his eyesight was better, he was a regular at the Maidstone Gun Club in East Hampton, using a Ruger Mini-14 target rifle, his family said.

His longtime interest in astronomy prompted him in 1958 to  design and build what was at the time one of the biggest amateur telescopes in the world, grinding the 12.5-inch lens himself. It was featured in leading astronomy magazines and won a prestigious award, according to his family.

He is survived by three sons, Charles Hines of Manhattan, Patrick Hines of Amagansett, and Jeffrey Hines of Springs, and by a granddaughter. He also leaves a sister, Mary Lucas of Williston Park.

Mr. Hines will be cremated and his ashes placed in a shrine next to those of his wife. In keeping with his wishes, no memorial service was held.