“I love people, but I hate politics,” Pat Mansir told The Star in May 2005. She had just learned that the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, which had supported her through two successful campaigns for town councilwoman, would not back her for a third. Instead, Ms. Mansir ran on the Democratic ticket, winning her third and final term on the town board.
Ms. Mansir died on Dec. 10 of complications of heart disease. She was 77.
The 2005 election was only one chapter in Ms. Mansir’s long involvement in local government and politics. Her independent thinking, while it may have frustrated party leaders, was “the very trait” that made her “popular with voters,” Helen S. Rattray, The Star’s publisher and former editor in chief, wrote in a 2005 column. Urging Ms. Mansir to seek re-election as an unaffiliated candidate, Ms. Rattray praised her “willingness to think for herself,” adding that she “knows this town inside and out, and she is experienced in both the official and backroom workings of its boards.”
In the late 1980s and the 1990s, Ms. Mansir was employed at and later managed and owned the Sears catalog store on Pantigo Road in East Hampton, which she converted to a successful combination of the J.C. Penney catalog store and appliance showroom after Sears terminated its catalog franchise locations. From 1988 through 1997, while still running the business, she served on the East Hampton Town Planning Board. “During these years, she was most proud to be involved in preservation of over 1,000 acres of land,” her family wrote.
Ms. Mansir won her first four-year term as a town councilwoman in 1997. Enhancing the town’s infrastructure and emergency response and preparedness was among her primary concerns. Her areas of focus were harbors and docks, public safety, environmental impact and remediation, and affordable housing. She counted among her successes being part of the implementation of the town’s current recycling center, the capping and stabilization of the former landfills in East Hampton and Montauk, and upgrading lifeguard stations and their staffing and equipment. While a councilwoman, she was involved in the establishment of a formal town motor pool, upgrades to public drainage and stormwater management systems, and the rebuilding of public docks.
Ms. Mansir later served as an East Hampton Town trustee and had also been vice chairwoman of the East Hampton Independence Party.
She was born Patricia Ann Schutte at Southampton Hospital on Dec. 13, 1945, to Graham Patrick Schutte and the former Audrey Field. She grew up on Oakview Highway and graduated from East Hampton High School.
She then went to work as a telephone operator for New York Telephone/Western Electric in the days when operator-assisted local telephone calls were the norm, her family recalled.
She and Walter Mansir, who survives, were married on Sept. 18, 1965. They had three sons. While starting their family, she worked at the Pulver Gas Company, where she learned bookkeeping and customer relations.
In the 1970s and 1980s she was involved in many organizations, including being active in a medical search committee “when East Hampton was deemed medically underserved,” her family wrote. She taught CPR and first aid along with Tom Field, logging over 2,000 hours of teaching and training time and helping hundreds here satisfy prerequisites to become emergency medical technicians.
“Mom was always concerned that people in volunteer services” — fire departments, the ambulance, the dory rescue squads, and lifeguards — “were safe and well equipped,” her sons wrote. “She also did what she could to represent baymen and local legacy trades like fishermen and farmers.”
“She was a good mother; she communicated with school teachers, was a Cub Scout den mother, and did her best for our family.”
Ms. Mansir enjoyed keeping a garden and maintaining her yard on Accabonac Road.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by her sons, Brit Mansir of Montauk and Richard Mansir and Devon Mansir of East Hampton, and by six grandchildren.
As per her wishes, a private memorial service is to be held at a future date.
