Henry Charles Schwatzman of Bridgehampton, a former builder and crane operator who had helped set the steel on the old World Trade Center towers, died on Oct. 14 at the Oasis Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Center Moriches following a stroke. He was 86.
Born on Feb. 6, 1933, in Brooklyn to Henry Charles Schwatzman and the former Emma Grace Comisky, he grew up there and in Broad Channel, a Queens neighborhood on an island in Jamaica Bay, where he developed a lifelong love of boating, fishing, and swimming.
When he was a teenager, his father became incapacitated, and Mr. Schwatzman became the family’s breadwinner. At 16, he got a job at the Waldorf Astoria hotel bar, where he cleaned out the beer tap pipes. He was also a lifeguard at Rockaway Beach.
While attending Brooklyn College, he bought his first airplane and began working as a pilot. He would often do his class assignments while in the cockpit, a longtime friend, Caroline Marshall, wrote. He played on the college’s football team.
After graduation, Mr. Schwatzman joined the Navy and served during the Korean War by flying cargo planes along the Eastern Seaboard. He loved the work and “considered becoming a commercial airline pilot, but started building instead because he had a young family to spend time with,” Ms. Marshall said.
He had built a house in Broad Channel when he was only 16, according to his daughter Lori Miskines of Castle Rock, Colo.
In 1963, he built a house at Lion’s Head Beach in Springs, and moved there with his family. He started a marine bulkhead business, Henry C Schwatzman Contracting. Mr. Schwatzman would go on to build two more houses, one in Water Mill and another in Bridgehampton.
He had four children with his first wife, the former Carol Murphy, who now lives in Rochester. That marriage ended in divorce, as did two others.
Mr. Schwatzman was a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton, the Masonic Lodge in Southampton, the East Hampton Waterfowl Association, the Quiet Birdmen (an elite club for aviators), and East Hampton’s Tuesday Club.
He loved traveling, woodworking, and hosting barbecues for friends on his deck in Lion’s Head, which overlooked Gardiner’s Bay.
He is survived by four children, Henry Charles Schwatzman and James William Schwatzman, both of New York, Lynn Atene of North Chili, N.Y., and Ms. Miskines, and by six grandchildren.
The Rev. Leandra Lambert officiated at a service for Mr. Schwatzman on Oct. 20 at St. Luke’s, and burial took place the following day at Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Memorial contributions have been suggested to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 18 James Lane, East Hampton 11937.
