Donald L. Hunting, Pillar of Service

Donald L. Hunting, whose credentials as an active member of the East Hampton community read almost like a catalog of good citizenship, died on Monday at Southampton Hospital at the age of 90. His family said he had been in declining health.

In an autobiographical essay, Mr. Hunting said he “stepped off the train in East Hampton in May 1944 to work in the front office of the Sea Spray Inn,” on the oceanfront just east of Main Beach. He was 16. He did not know at the time that one of his distant forebears was the youngest brother of East Hampton’s second minister, Nathaniel Huntting, but having spent summers here with his mother and siblings, he knew that he wanted the job. Over the years, he wrote, “a father-son relationship matured” with Arnold Bayley, the owner of the inn, “which lasted until the latter died in 1970.”

 Mr. Hunting did not have a typical childhood. He was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 19, 1927, one of four children of the former Marie Murphy and Russell Hunting. His father decamped, and Donald went to work at a young age to support his mother, brothers, and sister. He eventually finished his senior year at East Hampton High School. 

Mr. Hunting served in the Army in 1946 and 1947 in a clerical post. He then went to work in the New York office of Nabisco and, over the next six years, earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from New York University. He lived during the week in Bronxville, N.Y., with his mother and siblings, and spent all his weekends and holidays working at the Sea Spray.

Mr. Hunting married the former Marilyn Neuhauser of New York City, whom he had met when they both worked at Nabisco, at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan. The reception was at his “old stomping ground,” the Waldorf. The Huntings moved to East Hampton and brought up their sons here: David Hunting, now of Rochester, and Paul Hunting, who died in 2009. Marilyn Neuhauser Hunting died in 2007.

  During the winter of 1953-54, Mr. Hunting worked at the Brazilian Court Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., for Elliot Bishop, who had managed the Montauk Manor and the Seven Ponds Inn on the South Fork. That year, Mr. Hunting decided to lease the Hedges Inn, behind Town Pond on East Hampton’s Main Street, and he ran it that summer. Just as he was negotiating for the following year, however, he was made an offer by Mr. Bayley and went back to the Sea Spray. 

Mr. Hunting left the Sea Spray in 1964 to buy the 1770 House in East Hampton, running its two dining rooms and tap room for several years. The family lived at the Circle, while he eventually returned to the accounting profession, establishing the firm of Hunting, Rose, and Wingate, which was operated for 30 years. 

During the decades that Mr. Hunting lived in East Hampton, he served in many civic-minded positions, including as director and president of the Chamber of Commerce; as vestryman and treasurer of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church; as director and treasurer of the East Hampton Historical Society, of which he remained an emeritus trustee; as an assistant Cub Scout leader; as vice president of the PTA; and as a member of the Lions Club, the Circle Association, the community preservation fund advisory board, and the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens’ Nutrition Center council.

On top of all this, he was also on the advisory board of the East Hampton Library and served as assistant to the library’s board of managers. When Thomas Twomey died, he served a few terms as treasurer and president of the library, as well.

Mr. Hunting is survived by his son and a grandson. His brothers, Russell Hunting of Southington, Conn., and Richard Hunting of Hawthorne, N.Y., died before him. His sister, Sister Theresette Hunting of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., also survives. 

The family will receive visitors on Sunday at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. On Monday at 11 a.m., a service will be held at the funeral home, with a graveside service to follow at East Hampton’s Cedar Lawn Cemetery. The Rev. Mary Martin of Rochester, his daughter-in-law's sister, will preside. Memorial donations have been suggested to the East Hampton Library, 159 Main Street, East Hampton 11937.

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Correction: An earlier version of this obituary incorrectly identified the Rev. Mary Martin as Donald L. Hunting's daughter-in-law.