Frank J. Forde
Frank J. Forde, a native of Dublin who served in India, Egypt, and Palestine with the British Army before coming to the United States in 1950, died on Sept. 8 at Southampton Hospital at the age of 90. His death was attributed to dehydration and other natural causes.
At 18, Mr. Forde was drafted into the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. After seeing action in World War II and later serving with the military police in Palestine, he was discharged in 1948 and returned to Cheshire, in the north of England. There he met his future wife, the former Beryl Ellis, whose family had moved in 1939 from wartime London to the town where her maternal grandparents lived.
Mr. Forde arrived in the U.S. on the Britannic to meet family members in East Pittsburgh — uncles, aunts, and cousins whom he had never seen before, his father having been separated from his own parents and siblings as a child. He arranged for his fiancée to travel there in May; she was not yet 18, and his father came with her.
They went back and forth to England for the next eight or so years, finding it hard to get work in New York City, where they had moved. At some point a friend told them that a town on Long Island called East Hampton was “God’s country,” and they moved here to live in 1959.
Mrs. Forde, who survives, said her husband had worked as a kennel man for Dr. Albert Pontick, going on farm calls and assisting during surgery, when Dr. Pontick owned the East Hampton Veterinary Group with Dr. Herbert French. Later he worked for the East Hampton Town Parks Department, retiring at 70 after 25 years.
He did not talk much about his war experiences, Mrs. Forde said, other than to tell her how different it was in the countries where he had served and how poor the people were.
Mr. Forde was born on March 24, 1926, one of five children of Andrew Forde and the former Catherine Barry. He graduated from a Catholic school in Cheshire, which is near Liverpool. He was “a wonderful man, one of a kind, a loving husband and father,” she said. “He was happy-go-lucky and never complained. He gave us his all.” She said he had no hobbies and worked 12-hour days, though he did enjoy driving, and they often went shopping at the big stores in Riverhead.
He was a member of the American Legion, attending meeting and events at the hall in Amagansett, and of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Forde is survived by two sons, Frank Forde and Barry Forde, both of East Hampton, a sister, Alice Ward of England, and three nieces and a nephew. He also leaves five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Two other sisters, Kitty Ward and Edna Walker, died before him, as did his brother, Andy Forde; a daughter, Margaret Forde, and two granddaughters, Lindsay and Breanna Forde.
The family received friends and relatives at the Yardley & Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton on Sept. 11. Mr. Forde was cremated, and his ashes were buried the following day at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in East Hampton, next to his daughter, Margaret Forde; two granddaughters, Lindsay and Breanna Forde, and a nephew, Tony Forde. Loretta Walker, the wife of his nephew, said Mass at the cemetery and bagpipers played.