William E. Segelken Jr.

William E. Segelken Jr. died on June 8 at home on Oakview Highway in East Hampton of cirrhosis. He was 48.

According to Mercedes Dekkers, his former partner and the mother of his three children, Mr. Segelken was “a beautiful surfer and a talented carpenter, with hands of gold.” Surfing buddies said “he was just a good guy who always seemed happy,” no matter what else might have been going on. 

He was born in Patchogue on Oct. 31, 1969, one of two children of William Segelken and the former Patricia LaMarco. His sister, Tracy Ann Segelken, a public safety dispatcher who was one of the first female firefighters in the Springs Fire Department, died in 2016.

When Mr. Segelken was a toddler, the family moved to East Hampton, where his father was a town police officer who retired in 1996 as a detective captain. The younger Mr. Segelken went through the East Hampton school system, attended college for a year or so, and then spent a year traveling. He was a skilled carpenter and could build anything, Ms. Dekkers said. He also enjoyed surfing the jetties in East Hampton and at Montauk, playing golf at the Sag Harbor Golf Course, drawing, and fishing.

“He really had a heart of gold but was sick,” said Ms. Dekkers, from whom he had been apart for many years. Their three children, Aspen, 18, Morgan, 16, and Reiley, 14, survive, as does his father, who lives in Georgetown, S.C. His mother died in 2003. 

Mr. Segelken was cremated. The family received visitors on June 14 at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. A priest from Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton presided at a short service there as well.