Stephen L. Marley Jr.

Stephen L. Marley Jr. didn’t just teach history, he was a keeper of it. Mr. Marley, an East Hampton High School teacher for 32 years, also coached the school’s golf and winning junior varsity basketball teams in the 1960s and he played on and managed a number of men’s slow-pitch softball teams over 30 years, keeping their score books.

Even years later, if anyone had a question about a game’s outcome, they would call him, his wife, Corinne Marro Marley said.

The same was true for history. “He was Google before Google,” she said. He had a large and meticulously organized library of history books to which he would often refer.

“Not only did he have all those books, not only did he read them, he remembered what was in them,” said Hugh King, a friend for decades who played on many a softball team with Mr. Marley. A friend might pose the most nuanced and detailed question, and Mr. Marley would immediately have the answer. “He had a great memory.”

Perhaps because of his reading and deep appreciation for history, he was also very reasoned in his approach to things, Mr. King said. “I always valued his opinion,” he said, even when he disagreed with him. “He really looked at the evidence.”

Mr. Marley had a number of strokes in recent years and had been in declining health for some time. He died on Sunday at home on Hedge Row Lane in East Hampton. He would have turned 79 later this month. A memorial Mass will be said on Saturday at 11 a.m. at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton. A celebration of his life will be held at a later date.

He was born on Sept. 30, 1935, to Steve L. Marley and the former Ethelyn Carbrey, and grew up on the Circle in East Hampton. A sports fan from an early age, he would often go to Marley’s Stationery Store on Main Street, owned by his uncle, James Marley, to anxiously await the daily newspapers so he could check sports scores. His father was the village mayor and an East Hampton fire chief in the late 1950s.

After graduating with East Hampton High School’s class of 1953, Mr. Marley earned a bachelor’s in history from Colgate University in 1957 and a master’s in education from the State University at Albany in 1959. He returned to East Hampton to teach and coach. Among the electives he particularly enjoyed teaching was one called Wars of America, his wife said.

In the summer, Mr. Marley worked at the Maidstone Club and later for East Hampton Town’s summer recreation program. He also was supportive of local Biddy basketball, she said. In the early 1980s, Mr. King recalled, he and a couple of softball teammates started the Relics, for players 35 and over. “We won the championship in 1983, but it was downhill from there,” Mr. King said. Still the Relics soldiered on, playing into the mid-1990s, sponsored first by Wolfie’s Tavern and later by the Three Mile Harbor Inn. After the games, there was always a cold beer at the sponsor’s establishment to celebrate with or cry into, depending on how the game went.

“In the soothing post-game light of the tavern’s back room routine, bloop singles are magically transformed into vicious line drives, and losing, with the help of a few pitchers of beer, becomes easier to swallow,” The East Hampton Star wrote in a 1985 article on the team.

After retiring in 1992, Mr. Marley participated in two dozen Elderhostel programs throughout the country and enjoyed played golf with friends, some of whom he had been close with since his school days. He was an ardent fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and loved to watch college football and basketball and professional golf on TV.

He and his family loved warm weather holidays and would often take villa vacations in Jamaica with fellow East Hampton teachers and their families. He later enjoyed Naples, Fla., where he and his wife had a condominium.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children, Stephen L. Marley III of Wilmington, Del., Catherine Anne Marley of Manhattan, Susan Kip Payne of Lahaina, Hawaii, and James Marley II of Newburgh, N.Y. He also leaves five grandchildren.

His family has suggested contributions to the Colgate University Maroon Council, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, N.Y. 13346, or the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, P.O. Box 901, Wainscott 11975.