Ted Stafford Jr.

Ted Stafford Jr., a retired Southampton Town police officer, well-known union leader, and longtime Sag Harbor Fire Department volunteer, died on May 2 after collapsing in the driveway of his house on Palmer Terrace in Sag Harbor. He was 73.

Because he had responded to a fire department call a few hours earlier, his death was being considered a line of duty death, according to Tom Gardella, the department’s chief.

Mr. Stafford was deeply committed to his fellow police officers, working for over a decade as their advocate. He kept in touch with no fewer than 85 retirees, and worked to bring them together with current officers at various events, his sister Helen Diakun said. He had wanted to be a police officer from boyhood, but did not join the Southampton force until 1974, after six years in the Navy and nine years with New York Bell Telephone.

He served for over 20 years, assigned to the patrol division, and was named officer of the year in 1978. Toward the end of his career, he was put in charge of the part-time officers, according to Lieut. Susan Ralph of the department. After retiring, he could often be found at headquarters. “He always had a smile on his face and was just a great person to be around. We will all miss him,” she said.

Well known across the state as a union leader, Mr. Stafford served as president of the Southampton Town Patrolman’s Benevolent Association for 12 years, and on the executive boards of the State Police Conference and the National Association of Police Organizations. In April 2015, the Southampton Town P.B.A. awarded him a citation for dedication and selflessness, and named him a “forever president.”

He was born Theodore A. Stafford Jr. at Jamaica Hospital in Queens on Aug. 17, 1942, to Ted and Helen Stafford. He grew up in Floral Park, attending Floral Park Bellerose Elementary and later St. Paul’s Preparatory School in Garden City, where he was a star soccer and baseball player. He enlisted in the Navy soon after graduation, and was assigned after training to the U.S.S. Rogers as a radioman first-class. The destroyer was touring the Northern Pacific in company with battleships and aircraft carriers when, in the Gulf of Tonkin, she was shot upon. The incident helped lead to war between North Vietnam and the United States.

Mr. Stafford was about to be married and had been told he would be allowed to fly home for his wedding, but it was decided to keep him on ship, as he was one of only two radiomen. His marriage to Frances Trunzo, a Sag Harbor native, was postponed to Oct. 17, 1965.

The couple had met on Long Beach in the village, after Mr. Stafford, then a teenager, bicycled from his family’s Noyac residence to Sag Harbor, his sister said. His father had built a log cabin, one of the nine original homes in the Northampton colony, in 1937, and the family spent summers there.

After the couple married, they lived at the naval base in San Diego for a year, before he was discharged in 1966, and then settled in Sag Harbor.

About a year before Mr. Stafford retired from the police department, he and his wife started a small vending machine business, still in existence, called Rainbow Refreshments. Though both had other jobs, the business gave them the opportunity to spend more time together, his sister said. “They had a marriage made in heaven,” she said.

Mrs. Stafford died of a brain aneurysm in 1998. The police and fire departments rallied around Mr. Stafford, his sister recalled.

A 48-year Sag Harbor firefighter, he was a former captain of the Phoenix Hook and Ladder company. He was the department treasurer from 1975 to 1977, a warden from 1974 to 1978, and a former head of the honor guard. He began dispatching calls from the firehouse a few years ago, Chief Tom Gardella said.

The fire department had been called out the evening he died to stand by for a medevac landing at Havens Beach for an 11-month-old who was being airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital after suffering injuries in a fall. Mr. Stafford took his seat at the firehouse and took over dispatching. After the call was finished, he attended a meeting at the firehouse. He went into cardiac arrest two and a half hours later.

His family said he cared deeply about his community. “He was doing something in the end that he was so dedicated to,” his son Ted Stafford III said.

He is survived by four children, John Stafford of Sag Harbor, Andrea McAree of Sag Harbor, Maureen Stafford of Hampton Bays, and Ted Stafford III of Manhattan. He also leaves six grandchildren and two sisters, Ms. Diakun of Southampton and Priscilla Stafford of Sag Harbor, and a host of nieces and nephews.

His funeral was on May 9 at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor, followed by burial at Oakland Cemetery.

Donations can be made to Cormaria Retreat House, P.O. Box 1993, Sag Harbor 11963, or to the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps, P.O. Box 2725.