Between the years 2011 and 2018, members of the East Hampton Town Board could be pretty confident that Jeanne Frankl was somewhere in the audience during their public meetings. Chances were that she would have something to say, too, on whatever they were discussing — open space, beach access, affordable housing, you name it — and would enlarge on her comments the week after, in a letter to the editor of this newspaper.
Chairwoman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee during those years, and, for decades before an unwavering advocate for her adopted hamlet on the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, the five-foot-tall Ms. Frankl was, as her stepson, Keith Frankl, wrote, “a diminutive giant with a powerful presence.”
She died at home on Town Lane on June 9, six days after her 92nd birthday, having been in failing health for two years. Those who knew or worked with her over her long life, whatever their politics, almost invariably agreed about her erudition and skill.
Ms. Frankl was born on June 3, 1931, in Manhattan, to Gertrude and Milton Silver. She graduated from Hunter College High School, which was all-girls at the time and almost as hard to get into as Harvard, and then summa cum laude from Pembroke College/Brown University. At Yale Law School, she was elected to the editorial board of the prestigious Yale Law Journal, graduated in 1954, and was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study in Europe a year later. In the years that followed, she distinguished herself as the first woman to clerk for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Ruth Bader Ginsburg succeeded her in the role.
Sometime in the late 1960s, “She decided to make the world a better place,” her family wrote, and left her job at an eminent New York law firm to become the legal director, and later executive director, of the Public Education Association, an organization of civic-minded New Yorkers concerned with the city’s public schools and colleges. “She had a superpower — her shocking intelligence,” said Eileen Foley, a longtime colleague there.
Jeanne Silver and Kenneth Frankl, a corporate lawyer and assistant district attorney in Manhattan, were married in 1973. They lived in Greenwich Village with their daughter, Kathryn Frankl Balcuns, and spent summers on the South Fork until 1996, when they moved full time to a house on Old Montauk Highway in Amagansett. Here, she became a tireless worker on behalf of Democrats running for elected office at a time when local voter registration tipped distinctly Republican.
“Phone banker, delegate, mentor,” Ms. Frankl could often be found at election time outside the Amagansett Post Office with her dear friend Betty Mazur, on the lookout to register new voters, especially younger ones. During her tenure as Democratic Committee chairwoman, the Democrats took control of the town board, and voters elected an all-Democratic body of town trustees as well (including one Republican endorsed by the committee). “Under her leadership, this town went from roaring red to beautifully blue,” Anna Skrenta, the committee’s current chairwoman, said this week. “We miss Jeanne dearly.”
Vicki Littman, vice chairwoman of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, and Jim Macmillan, a member, said much the same. “She was tenacious in her effort to keeping Amagansett a unique and beautiful hamlet,” Ms. Littman wrote in an email. “She also helped to keep 555 in Amagansett from being developed and keeping it open space for the community.” (“555,” about a mile east of the commercial district, is now known as the Amagansett Plains Preserve.)
“Jeanne spoke of affordable housing constantly, and continued to encourage its importance in a nonpartisan way,” said Mr. Macmillan. A real estate broker, he helped her move from Old Montauk Highway after her husband died in 2014, to a more manageable house on Town Lane, where, he said, “she converted her own basement to a town-approved affordable apartment.”
Ms. Frankl’s “analytical mind and cheerful personality were the perfect combination to be an effective leader,” he added. “Her ability to identify a problem and open it to discussion was invaluable.”
Her daughter, Ms. Balcuns, was with her at the end. “She would want people to know that what she fought for, she truly believed in,” she wrote, “and knew that it was worth all the hard work she was always doing, even in the last year of her life. She was my role model, my smart and beautiful mom.”
Ms. Frankl is also survived by her stepson, Mr. Frankl, who lives in Colorado, and two grandchildren, Paige Frankl and Tyler Balcuns. She was cremated, and a private ceremony was held. The family plans a celebration of her life in early fall, at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, at a time and date to be announced.
