Alfred H. Conklin, 100
Alfred Howell Conklin, who on Oct. 27 reached his 100th birthday, a milestone he had been looking forward to with great anticipation, died at his Dayton Lane home less than a week later, on Nov. 2. Mr. Conklin, a lifelong resident of East Hampton Village, worked into his 99th year as the owner of Home Sweet Home Moving and Storage.
He was just 21 when his 44-year-old father died unexpectedly, leaving him, as the oldest of four children, to take over the family business. At that time it consisted of a taxi company, a moving company, and a school bus service; it was also the dealer for Graham “motor cars” and Reo trucks.
Mr. Conklin led the company successfully through the Depression — with guns aboard his trucks to defend against hijacking — and returned to it after World War II, during which he served in the Army transporting troops and teaching recruits how to drive heavy vehicles. He was furloughed for a week, his family said, to oversee the emptying-out of the Montauk Manor, then a luxury hotel with 300 rooms full of elegant furniture, so it could be used for Navy barracks.
Born in 1915 to Francis M. Conklin and the former Marjorie Howell, Mr. Conklin met his wife, Mildred Brennan, not long after the war began at a dance at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Bridgehampton. They had been married for 70 years when she died, in 2012. “He was devoted to her,” said the family, and had cared for her all through the illness that preceded her death.
Home Sweet Home received some outlandish requests through the years, Mr. Conklin told The Star in a 1999 interview. In the ’50s a family had its son, with his broken leg suspended in traction, shipped from Southampton Hospital in the back of a moving van, hospital bed and all, to a beachside estate, where the bed was rolled (very carefully) down a truck ramp and into the house. In the ’60s, the company took apart an entire merry-go-round and transported it, in pieces, to the Waldorf Astoria for its April in Paris ball.
There were notable customers, too, among them Jackson Pollock. Mr. Conklin regularly picked up Pollock’s paintings from his Springs studio — sometimes while they were still wet, he said — to deliver to galleries and patrons in the city. “He treated his employees like family,” said his family, and was rewarded with their loyalty “and, in many cases, decades-long service.”
Mr. Conklin held a number of offices, both elected and by acclaim, in service to the East Hampton community. He was at various times a member of the East Hampton Town Board, president of the chamber of commerce, and president of the Lions Club, where he was responsible for purchasing and operating the village’s first free ambulance. He belonged to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, for which he drove the church bus.
In a letter to The Star written a few months before his 85th birthday, by which time the Conklins were spending seven months a year in Lighthouse Point, Fla., Mr. Conklin reflected on the changes he had seen in the town he loved. “We hit the scene when there were 5-and-10-cent stores where you bought things for 5 and 10 cents,” he wrote. “Marmador sold ice cream cones for a nickel. For a nickel, you could make a telephone call, or mail a letter and two postcards. You could buy a new Chevy coupe for $600, but who could afford one? A pity, too, because gas was 11 cents a gallon. In our days cigarette smoking was fashionable, grass was mowed, coke was a cold drink, and pot was something you cooked in.”
Mr. Conklin, who was cremated, is survived by two children, James Conklin and Diana C. Freeman, both of East Hampton, two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. All three of his siblings died before him. The Rev. Steven E. Howarth of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church, a friend of the family, will officiate at a memorial service there at 1 p.m. on Nov. 28. Memorial contributions have been suggested to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott 11975, or to the church, 350 Main Street, Amagansett 11930.