Frances Shilowich

Frances Shilowich, an accountant with the Markowitz and Preische firm in East Hampton for many years before opening her own practice, counted not only many local businesses but also the artist Willem de Kooning among her clients and friends. 

A resident of East Hampton since 1964, she died at home on Dec. 30 surrounded by family. Mrs. Shilowich was 87 and had been diagnosed with cancer two years ago. 

Known as Franny, she was born on Feb. 16, 1928, in Brooklyn to Joseph Giglio and the former Rose Bianca. She grew up there, marrying the “the love of her life,” Walter Shilowich, in September 1947. In their early married years, the couple and their children lived in a three-family house in Brooklyn owned by Mrs. Shilowich’s family. Her son Richard Shilowich of East Hampton remembered big Sunday dinners there with the large extended family. 

In the 1950s, the couple’s love of the beach led them to East Hampton, where they rented a cottage on Sammy’s Beach for many summers before building a summer house in the Clearwater Beach area of Springs in 1960. They moved there full time four years later and eventually bought a large house on Manor Lane in Springs. 

Mr. Shilowich died in 1974, leaving Mrs. Shilowich a young widow with three children. She supported them working as an accountant and bookkeeper, developing a loyal client base, including several, like de Kooning, who followed her when she went out on her own. She continued to work into her late 70s, but also took time to travel whenever she could. She had been to Italy countless times and to England and other parts of Europe, as well as to Nova Scotia, among other places. Travel and her family were her great joys, and she was generous, almost to a fault, Richard Shilowich said. “Her generosity and her kindness, that was her,” he said. 

Mrs. Shilowich enjoyed gardening, reading, watching tennis, and card playing and was an accomplished knitter. “Every one of her children’s families has an afghan or two to remember her by,” her family wrote. 

In addition to her son in East Hampton, she is survived by another son, Walter Shilowich of Voorhees, N.J., and a daughter, Barbara Bennett of Southport, N.C. She “adored and doted on her six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren,” her family wrote. 

Donations in Mrs. Shilowich’s memory have been suggested to East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978.