Sondra E. Anderson, Former A&P Butcher

Sondra E. Anderson, who was, in her neighbor Gordon Ryan’s words, “a real old-time Lazy Pointer,” died in her sleep at home there on March 19. Ms. Anderson, who was once a butcher at the A&P on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, now Stop and Shop, was 77.

Ms. Anderson was married three times. Her first marriage was brief and, in 1966, she married Arthur Davis. They lived on McGuirk Street in East Hampton for many years, and eventually moved to a house on Shore Road in the Lazy Point neighborhood of Amagansett, which had been put together from shacks and moved back from the end of the road near the beach.

Living there full time, the couple enjoyed going to an old bar and restaurant called Merrill’s Irish Mist, where, in 1959, a complete roast beef dinner cost $2.50 and there was music for dancing from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. The couple also enjoyed fishing in Gardiner’s Bay from outboard boats that were inevitably named Sandy.

After Mr. Davis’s death, Ms. Anderson married Kenneth Anderson of Lazy Point, a childhood friend. He died in 1992. Ms. Anderson, who gradually lost her eyesight, could be seen walking or riding an electric scooter on Cranberry Hole Road to get to St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett. “She was a tough old bird,” Mr. Ryan said.

She had been a babysitter for his children, he said, and in recent years he helped her by running errands, doing simple chores, finding her cat, and stringing Christmas lights, among other tasks. He drove her to church after her sight was gone.

She had a number of cats and dogs over the years and another neighbor, Mike Walton, found a home for her last cat. In the last few years, the police were called so often by her LifeAlert device that they kept a key to her house in the garage. At the time of her death, plans were being made for Ms. Anderson to move to an upstate care facility. 

Mr. Ryan remembered Ms. Anderson and her third husband driving in a dark maroon, wood-paneled Jeep Wagoneer. She would be at the wheel, operating the pedals and the turn signals even though her sight was going, while he sat in the passenger seat giving directions. Once pulled over for driving without headlights, she lost her license when she had to take, and failed, a road test.

Ms. Anderson, who was born on May 9, 1939, in Pennsylvania, was adopted by Stuart Turner and the former Elizabeth Werner. Little information about her early life was known by her Lazy Point friends.

A memorial service will be held at St. Michael’s Church on a date to be announced,  with the interim pastor, the Rev. Robert Modr, presiding. She was buried at Fort Hill Cemetery in Montauk.

In the 1980s, Ms. Anderson asked Mr. Ryan, a lawyer, to help her write a will. It said that if her property was sold after her death,  the proceeds should go to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, Save the Children, or Greenpeace. Memorial donations therefore have been suggested to Save the Children, 501 Kings Highway East, Suite 400, Fairfield, Conn. 06825, or online at savethechildren.org, and the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott 11975.