Paula Trachtman, an author, editor, teacher, and activist with a singular talent for bringing people together, died of a heart attack in her sleep on Friday, less than a week shy of her 88th birthday.

Arthur Carl Thommen, a longtime history teacher in the Sayville school district, died of congestive heart failure on July 17 at home in Moneta, Va. The East Hampton native was 76, and had been ill for 15 months.

Athos Zacharias, a Springs painter and longtime fixture on the East End art scene, whose long and notable career was launched during the prime of Abstract Expressionism, died of kidney failure on Aug. 18 at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Westhampton Beach.

James Russell Tompkins, a lawyer and businessman who founded the First Suffolk Mortgage Company, died of cardiac and pulmonary failure on Aug. 18 at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. The longtime East Hampton resident was 88.