Zach Cohen, a Springs resident who became a dedicated, unelected participant in East Hampton Town government, died on Oct. 7 at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Quiogue. He was 72 and had been ill with glioblastoma for over two years.
Lewis Zachary Cohen was born in Miami Beach on June 28, 1949, to Wolfie Cohen and the former Miriam Goldhaber. As a child he was expected to work in the family's restaurant business, but he wanted to be a mathematician and live in New England. As soon as he graduated from Miami Beach High, he headed north.
He met his future wife, Pamela Bicket, while they were undergraduates at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., and they spent the next 50 years together.
The couple moved to Berkeley, Calif., in 1973, where Mr. Cohen attended a Ph.D. program in logic and the methodology of science but dropped out in his sixth year, unwilling to learn German to complete his studies. At that time, he, with Ms. Bicket as architect, started investing in and renovating real estate.
A lover of piano, he began serious study at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He also concentrated on photography and archival printmaking. Many of his photographs were exhibited up and down the West Coast in the late 1970s.
Both Francophiles, the couple moved to Paris in 1985, and there Mr. Cohen continued piano study with Inger Sodergren. He also completed a massive photographic documentation of the gentrification of the Bastille and the dismantling of the old Auvergnat neighborhood that housed his studio. While in Paris he began to write poetry, working with Lise Goett as his mentor.
In 1991, they moved from Paris to East Hampton, where Mr. Cohen continued to cultivate a variety of interests and talents. He studied piano with Edith Kraft, a Juilliard faculty member, and commuted to the University of Chicago, where he received a master's degree in business with concentrations in analytic finance and economics. All the while, his involvement in the East Hampton community increased.
He was appointed to the East Hampton Town Nature Preserve Committee in 2002 and was its chairman from 2011 to 2020.
In 2007 he discovered financial misappropriations from the town's community preservation fund. Mr. Cohen worked relentlessly through years of audits and budgets to unravel the financial mess. Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. wrote, "He was the lone voice of honesty and integrity when we worked on East Hampton Town's budget problems back in the day. He was the one true source of information that I could rely on and he didn't get the credit he deserved for bringing it all to light."
In 2011, as a neophyte politician, Mr. Cohen ran against Bill Wilkinson for East Hampton Town supervisor; he lost by 19 votes. He later lost a primary for a town board seat, but remained active in politics as a member of the East Hampton Democratic Committee.
His work in photography continued, and in 2014, with Robert Storr curating, Mr. Cohen received the best new artist award in the Members Show at Guild Hall. At the time of his death, he was working on photographic projects on the gentrification of Fabric Row in Philadelphia and a series called "In Transit."
Mr. Cohen had a passion for the arts and for public service. In addition to the nature preserve committee, he served as vice chairman of the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee from 2014 to 2020. On occasion he provided technical advice to the town's airport management advisory committee and to the budget and finance advisory committee. Over the years Mr. Cohen was an active member of numerous other committees that addressed the needs of East Hampton's citizens. He was most pleased to have been a founding board member of several not-for-profit organizations, most notably East End for Opportunity and the Arts Center at Duck Creek.
Ms. Bicket said, "to his friends Zach was a poet, a bike racer, a pianist, a baker, a cat lover, and an artist. In public he was seen as someone who could be trusted to solve problems. He found all people vastly interesting and took pride in working well with others. Tenacious and sometimes stubborn, he always fought for those who he believed were overlooked or underserved."
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a sister, Robin Sherwood of Bronxville. A private burial took place at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in East Hampton on Oct. 10.
A gathering to celebrate Mr. Cohen's life will take place on Sunday at Duck Creek Farm on Squaw Road in Springs from 3 to 5 p.m. All will be welcomed.
Memorial contributions have been suggested to the Kanas Center for Hospice Care, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978.
