Sue Feleppa, a real estate broker and former restaurateur whose community spirit led her to serve on the board of directors of the Amagansett Village Improvement Society and as chairwoman of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, died at home in Springs on July 28 of respiratory failure related to lung cancer. She was 77 and had been ill for three years.
Ms. Feleppa was born on Dec. 9, 1944, at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport. Hers was “a modest home where hard work and good relationships were encouraged,” wrote her husband, Richard A. Feleppa. She and her two siblings grew up in Southold on a creek next to potato and cauliflower fields, and as children they were given permission by farmers to “gather what was left after the harvest for their winter larder,” Mr. Feleppa wrote. “Sue’s ancestors were whalers, fishermen, bootleggers, pioneers of a sort.”
Her father, William Wilson Worth, was an engineer at the Grumman aircraft company, and her mother, the former Anne Denzler, cut hair at home. When she was 18, Ms. Feleppa moved to New York City with $8 in her pocket, her husband wrote. Enterprising from a young age, she had gone to work in Southold even before she was old enough to do so. When she moved to the city, “She made her own dress and was at work by Monday morning.”
In New York, she worked as a stockbroker from 1962 to 1964 and as a bartender at Mother’s, a neighborhood bar on 85th Street and Second Avenue, from 1964 to 1967.
She and Mr. Feleppa were married on Aug. 16, 1969, at the United Nations Chapel in Manhattan. That fall, with the guidance of Stella Terry, a real estate agent, they bought their first house, a 20-by-20-foot cottage on Hedges Lane in Amagansett with a fireplace, a large deck, and a half-acre of land. The price was $16,000. “It seemed like a good investment,” Mr. Feleppa wrote. Like similarly minded people leaving New York at that time, they were attracted to the area by “the beauty, the serenity, the light, and the water.”
In 1973, Ms. Feleppa opened the Royale Fish restaurant in Amagansett Square. It was one of the only restaurants at the time to serve fresh fish caught in local waters, rather than the frozen fish more common in restaurants in the 1970s and ‘80s. “It was immediately successful and a favorite for writers, artists, composers, TV celebrities, filmmakers, and actors,” Mr. Feleppa wrote. It closed in 1985.
While running the restaurant, Ms. Feleppa earned a bachelor’s degree at Stony Brook University and raised her two boys, Gian Carlo and Alexander Edward, and her stepson, Tim. She was a loving mother and always quick to welcome her sons’ friends and make space for them at the dinner table. She loved children and was “often quick to say to relatives and friends, ‘May I hold your baby?’ “ her husband wrote. Her three granddaughters, Ea, Fay, and Jolie, all living just minutes from their Grammy, were “her prize.”
Ms. Feleppa was passionate about buying, remodeling, and building houses and had done that several times over by the time she got her real estate license and went to work helping other people buy and sell their properties in 1998. She was a broker until last year, most recently for Corcoran.
Ms. Feleppa helped found the Amagansett Action Committee in the 1980s and served on the board of the Amagansett Village Improvement Society in the 1980s and 1990s, assisting in promoting the work of the society and generating income for it. Later, she was a chairwoman of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee.
In 1994, the Feleppas bought a 1959 Studebaker Amagansett Fire Department fire truck, saving it from leaving town and later donating it back to the Fire Department.
Ms. Feleppa enjoyed reading, taking walks on the beach, and traveling. She “became an incredible chef,” her husband wrote. Above all, “she loved spending time with family and friends and believed in communication, dinners together, and people getting to know themselves and each other.”
The couple would have celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary this month. In addition to her husband and granddaughters, Ms. Feleppa is survived by her sons, Gian Carlo Feleppa of Springs and Alexander Edward Feleppa of East Hampton. Her stepson, Tim Feleppa, died last year. She was very close with both of her daughters-in-law, Krissy Feleppa and Jennifer Hoopes. Her sister, Lillian (Bonnie) Rose Wilcenski of Fort Pierce, Fla., also survives.
Her younger brother, William Wayne (Whoop) Worth, died before her.
A service will be held on Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton.
Memorial donations have been suggested to East End Hospice, at P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978 or online at eeh.org.
