Sidney B. Silverman, a longtime resident of Amagansett, died at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan on Nov. 4. His health had declined and he decided that his time was up, his family said. He would not brook argument, but waited for his children and grandchildren to arrive from Israel and Oregon to say goodbye. After that, he refused food and water. He was 88.
Born in Brooklyn on Dec. 30, 1932, to David L. Silverman and the former Bertha Schlefer, Mr. Silverman attended James Madison High School there before graduating from the Horace Mann School. A graduate also of Colgate University and Columbia Law School, he became a trial lawyer.
Among his cases, none satisfied him more than representing the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association in their victory over the General Electric Company.
G.E. had long been discharging wastewater containing a carcinogen into the Hudson River. Striped bass, which winter in the Hudson, ingested enough of the poison to make the fish unsafe to eat, and in 1986 the state, recognizing the danger, imposed a five-year ban on their harvest. The loss of its “money fish” was a huge blow to the commercial fishing industry.
Baymen from all around Long Island joined the lawsuit. After six contentious years, and on the eve of the trial, G.E. settled. The fishermen were awarded $7 million — 100 percent of what they had lost during the five-year ban.
Mr. Silverman was also proud of his role in preserving an environmentally prized site in the Arctic National Wildlife Region. In 1987, he represented stockholders of Standard Oil of Indiana after British Petroleum made a takeover bid for the company. Standard Oil had an exploration well there — the only one ever drilled — but B.P. assigned no value to it, and neither oil company would divulge the results of the drilling.
Mr. Silverman fought to be allowed to depose B.P.’s chief petroleum engineer, and succeeded. A single copy of the deposition, the only one made, was lodged in B.P.’s lawyers’ safe. Mr. Silverman agreed to keep the information confidential.
In 2019, 33 years later, after the Trump administration announced a controversial plan to open ANWR — one of the nation’s few remaining pristine habitats for caribou and other native species — to oil and gas drilling, a New York Times reporter called. Mr. Silverman sided with the caribou and broke his confidentiality agreement. “This is important for the whole country,” he said, telling The Times that the well was not a potential gusher, but a dry hole. The story ran on the front page, dealing a setback to Mr. Trump’s proposal.
In 1967, Mr. Silverman and his wife, Irene, bought a house in Amagansett.
That same year they joined the newly opened, now state-owned, Montauk Golf and Racquet Club, and won the mixed-doubles tennis championship for several happy summers.
Mr. Silverman’s tennis career ended when a hip injury sustained in a college car accident developed into arthritis. He switched to golf, joining the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett, and remained a member for 30 years. His game was dogged, but undistinguished, his wife said.
He was also a keen still-water swimmer. Almost every morning, he swam laps from Little Albert’s Landing to Big Albert’s and back, with a group of equally determined elderly ladies who lived nearby.
One day, work in Los Angeles prevented him from catching the red-eye back to New York. He rose early the next morning, swam in the Pacific Ocean, and raced to return. Arriving in Amagansett at 9 p.m., he jumped into the Atlantic. “Not many people,” he would say later, “have swum in both oceans on the same day.”
In 2000, after retiring, Mr. Silverman returned to Columbia to take a master’s degree in philosophy. With an M.A. in hand, he then turned to writing. He wrote a memoir, six novels, and a collection of short stories, certain that one would be optioned by Hollywood. To his surprise, none was.
Among several charitable grants, Mr. Silverman funded three professorial chairs, two at Columbia and one at its medical school. At the law school, he established a program that repays student loans in return for a commitment to work for five years in the public interest, and a scholarship in the name of his father-in-law, Daniel Levy. He honored his own parents as well by supporting aspiring opera stars at the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv. Much to his joy, his grandson, Noam Heinz Lowenstein, is pursuing a career as a professional opera singer, and has performed at several summer concerts at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons.
As he aged, Mr. Silverman’s balance became precarious. Seven years ago he fell, fracturing his spine. Two operations and months of intensive physical therapy later, he was out of a wheelchair, but needed a walker. He and his walker were a familiar sight at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter here, where he made almost daily trips to use the treadmill, stationary bike, and weight machines. He was a strong supporter of the Y and its programs.
A voracious reader of nonfiction, he took enormous pleasure from the two-man book club he formed with his neighbor Robert Thompson. Another great passion was chess. He spent hours playing online, cursing at the computer when he lost and celebrating when he won.
Mr. Silverman is survived by his wife of 60 years, Irene Silverman, a longtime editor at this newspaper, and three children, Emily Ann Silverman of Tel Aviv; David L. Silverman of Portland, Ore., and Julia R.L. Silverman, also of Portland. Six grandchildren survive as well: Daniel, Leo, and Tamara Silverman; Noam Heinz Lowenstein, and Eleanor and Benedict Azerrad.
He requested a private funeral, which was held on Friday at the Jewish Center, followed by burial at the center’s cemetery, Shaarey Pardes-Accabonac Grove in Springs.
