Jean Edmond Lanier, Member of L’Arche

Jean Edmond Lanier of Wainscott, who was instrumental in founding L’Arche Long Island, a Riverhead branch of an international organization that creates communities for people with intellectual disabilities and those who care for them, died on July 19 in New York City, surrounded by his family. He was 71 and had been ill for only a short time.

Mr. Lanier was deeply involved with L’Arche from the time he met its founder. “It changed his life,” his wife, Judith Lanier, said. The organization was begun in France by Jean Vanier, a Catholic philosopher and theologian, and it now has established at least 100 community households around the world as well as workplaces and activity centers.

  Mr. Lanier’s family said he was a modest man and, although he had a successful career in business, what mattered most to him, besides his family, was the L’Arche credo: It is “the responsibility of human beings to lift one another up in mutual relationships of love.” He believed in celebrating the unique value and dignity of every person, his family said.

  Jean Edmond Lanier was born in Paris on Feb. 2, 1946, one of four children of the former France Rist and Edmond Lanier. He was brought up in Paris and graduated with a degree in economics from L’Ecole Centrale Paris, going on to receive a master’s degree in operations research at Cornell University.

In 1967, while traveling to the States, he met Judith Webb of North Carolina, who was returning home from Paris after studying French there. They met on the France, an ocean liner named by his father, who was the president of the French line and a director of Air France. They married in June 1970 and went on to divide their time between Paris and Wainscott, bringing up their children primarily in Paris.

In addition to his wife, three children survive: Caroline Bernhardt-Lanier of Bethesda Md., Nellie-France Harasimowicz of Rye, N.Y., and Patrick Lanier of Chevy Chase, Md. Ten grandchildren also survive, as do two brothers, Henri Lanier and Francois Lanier, both of Paris. A sister, Isabelle Essig of Versailles, France, died in 2016.

A requiem Mass was celebrated at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton on Monday. The family has suggested memorial donations in Mr. Lanier’s name to L’Arche Long Island, P.O. Box 354, Riverhead 11901-8052. There will also be a service in France, in Trosly-Breuil, an hour north of Paris, at which Jean Vanier will give the eulogy.