Anne Marie Connors
Anne Marie Connors, who raised her family in the Cooper Lane, East Hampton, house she and her husband built 59 years ago, died of complications from pneumonia on March 27 at Hope Hospice in Cape Coral, Fla. She was 84 and had been ill for six weeks.
Born in Brooklyn on March 7, 1929, to Ralph Rodney Mulford and the former Anna Bergen, she grew up in West Hempstead, attending the Chestnut Street School and West Hempstead and Hempstead High Schools. After graduating, she got a job with the Arnold Constable Department Store in Hempstead, where she found more than employment: She met her future husband, Arthur Connors, there. He survives her.
The two married in August 1948. Both took jobs with the Long Island Lighting Company. The couple raised two sons and two daughters, having lost one son, Michael, at birth. As young newlyweds, they spent as much time as they could at Jones Beach, until they discovered East Hampton.
Mr. Connors saw an advertisement for a LILCO position here, so the couple took a drive and liked what they found. “She loved everything about East Hampton,” especially the beach, her daughter Pamela Schenck said Monday.
The fact that they didn’t have a house didn’t stop them. “There used to be a nursery that belonged to the Vetault family. They were selling off lots,” Ms. Schenck said. The couple bought one and built their dream house in 1954.
“She was a Kool-Aid mom. She always made sure the car was filled with kids when she drove to the beach,” Ms. Schenck said. Her mother’s favorite spot was Wiborg’s Beach.
At night, “She loved having people over and entertaining,” Ms. Schenck said. She enjoyed cooking for her guests.
As Mrs. Connors’s children grew older, she returned to work in East Hampton as a secretary for Robert C. Osborne, an attorney, as well as for the law firm of Fallon and O’Connor and the William Salinger plumbing company.
At Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church, she would help out at fund-raising dinners and other functions. She volunteered at St. Andrew’s School in Sag Harbor and was a member of the East Hampton Fire Department’s Ladies Auxiliary. She enjoyed golf, bridge, reading, traveling, and, most of all, her family.
In the mid-1980s, Mr. and Mrs. Connors lost a son, Donald Connors, in an auto accident. The grief of knowing he was buried across the street from their house, at Cedar Lawn Cemetery, weighed on them, and the couple moved to North Fort Myers, Fla. Mrs. Connors joined the St. Therese Catholic Parish there. But they always looked forward to returning to East Hampton during the holidays.
Besides her husband, who lives in North Fort Myers, and Ms. Schenck, who lives in East Hampton, she is survived by another daughter, Cynthia Quigley of Sayville, a son, Jack Connors of Slidell, La., and five grandchildren.
Mrs. Connors was buried at Cedar Lawn Cemetery. A service in her honor will be held at Most Holy Trinity on June 20 at 11 a.m. Memorial donations have been suggested for the East Hampton Fire Department, 1 Cedar Street, East Hampton 11937.