Lee Walter, who produced classical music concerts and presided over a popular Sunday public radio show of classical music heard on the East End, died unexpectedly, possibly as the result of a fall, on Jan. 17 at the Bridge at Inverrary, an assisted living community in Lauderhill, Fla. The former Springs resident was 82.
Mr. Walter was born on Jan. 6, 1940, and grew up in Cleveland. As a young man he moved to New York City, where, before going out on his own as a concert producer, he worked with Sol Hurok, a well-known impresario who managed Marian Anderson as well as many other classical music artists and introduced Americans to Russia’s ballet companies.
“He ran away from Ohio and joined the circus,” said Laura Lyon, who worked with Mr. Walter for several years at Guild Hall. “He was lots of fun.”
In announcing his hiring as its first full-time director of marketing and public relations in November of 1986, Guild Hall said that Mr. Walter, after parting with Mr. Hurok, “worked at the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall, where he launched their subscription operations, and as marketing director of the Nederlander Producing Company’s ballet performances. Closer to home, he recently orchestrated the premiere of Alan Alda’s ‘Sweet Liberty’ in Southampton.”
“He was the best,” Christina Strassfield, Guild Hall’s curator, who also worked with Mr. Walter, said, “such a sweet and generous person, kind, always helping others. A smile on his face, always quick with a joke, a very witty person.”
“Lee always loved people,” Carol O’Rourke, Mr. Walter’s next-door neighbor for a number of years on Longwoods Lane in Springs, said, “he must have known half of East Hampton. And he always had dogs. One was Mozart, another was Abigail. He had a cat too, a stray, Minnie. Whenever friends of his from here would go down to Fort Lauderdale,” where Mr. Walter retired in 2002, “they always connected with Lee.”
Asked about the first time she’d met him, Ms. O’Rourke, whose husband is Bruce Colbath, said, “We were breaking ground next door in December of 1986,” and Mr. Walter and his partner, Hans Kline, an artist who was to die in 1994, “came over and introduced themselves and welcomed us to the neighborhood. He brought everyone together at parties he had at his house. We called him the Mayor of Longwoods Lane.”
Mr. Walter and Hector Martinez, who met in 1999, were joined in a civil union in Florida in 2003 and were married in Delaware in 2013. Mr. Martinez died in February of 2020.
A brother, Chuck Walter, a daughter-in-law, Laura Martinez Daly, a son-in-law, Andrew Martinez, and five nephews — Raymond, William, and Jeff Kuehn and Kevin and Daniel Walter — survive. Mr. Walter’s sister, Joanne Walter Kuehn, died in 2015.
Mr. Walter was cremated. A graveside service is to be held at Green River Cemetery in Springs in the spring.
