Helen Louise Freytag

    Helen Louise Freytag, a bookkeeper who had made Springs and East Hampton her home since World War II, died on Friday at Southampton Hospital. She was 86 and had been in declining health for the past couple of years.

    Known to her friends as Louise, she was born on Dec. 22, 1926, in Greenfield, Mo., to Russell William Brooks and the former Anna M. Barnard. She grew up in Oakland, Calif., where her parents moved when she was a child.

    “She was very athletic,” her daughter, Diana F. Wunschel, said yesterday. She played basketball and softball. During the war, she would go figure-skating at a rink in Oakland. It was there that she met her future husband, Warren H. Freytag. He was a professional hockey player, a goalie in the New York Rangers minor league system, who was serving in the Navy and stationed in San Francisco.

    Mr. Freytag’s parents lived in the Maidstone Park section of East Hampton, and the couple moved there, eventually buying a house on Harbor View Lane. Besides Mrs. Wunschel, they also had a son, Douglas A. Freytag. He died in December.

    As a child, Mrs. Wunschel remembers skating with her parents on Town Pond. “It was a lot colder in the 1950s and 1960s,” she said. She recalled figure skating on one end of the pond with her mother while her brother would practice hockey on the other end with their father.

    Mrs. Wunschel recalled going with her parents to friends’ homes, where the adults would have dinner and play cards while the children played together.

    While raising her two children, Mrs. Freytag worked as a bookkeeper in Town Hall and for a number of businesses in East Hampton.

    The Freytags divorced in 1967. Mrs. Freytag remained in East Hampton. She lived on Spinner Lane for the past 30 years.

    In the 1970s, she opened up a tavern on Newtown Lane called the Crescendo Pub. She attended St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and was active in the American Legion Auxiliary.

    She was a yard sale person, her daughter said. “She would always come home with treasures.” For the past 25 years, she was active at the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center.

    In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Freytag is survived by her sisters Vivian Marie Tollefson of Walnut Creek, Calif., and Annalee Smith of Apache Junction, Ariz., and by three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

    Mrs. Freytag was cremated. A service for her will be announced in the near future. Donations in her name have been suggested for the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center, 128 Springs-Fireplace Road, East Hampton 11937.