Allan Abraham Retzky of Amagansett, who came to creative writing later in life and published works of fiction in the pages of The Star and elsewhere, died at home on Saturday with his wife of 61 years, Susan Retzky, at his side. He was 86 and had congestive heart failure.
Known to family and friends as a “tremendous storyteller and true raconteur,” Mr. Retzky retired early from a trading career and decided to explore his longtime hobby of writing short stories. At 70, he received a master’s degree in creative writing from Southampton College. Four years later, he published his first novel, “Vanished in the Dunes,” a murder mystery set on the East End. Mr. Retzky treasured the literary community here, participating in many writing workshops.
In his youth he faced physical challenges, beginning with a series of experimental surgeries to address a hip dislocated by a breech birth. He spent nearly a year with his right leg in a cast and didn’t learn to walk until he was 5. He lived his life with that leg three and half inches shorter than the other, which led to many health difficulties and decades of chronic pain, according to relatives.
“Still he persevered,” his family said. He went on to become a stellar athlete, particularly excelling in football and baseball; he even had a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but with his shorter leg was unable to move fast enough to make the cut.
Mr. Retzky was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 6, 1937, to Harold Retzky, the owner of Bronx Bakers Supply Company, and the former Pauline Adelman, a homemaker who later became a teacher. He had fond memories of tagging along with his father on delivery runs and being handed soft, delicious bread fresh from the oven at stops along the way. When Mr. Retzky was 12, his father died of a heart attack, leaving his mother to rear him along with his older sister, Laura, and younger sister, Barbara.
Allan Retzky graduated in 1955 from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, where he was a member of the Arista Club for exceptional students.
“Fiercely intelligent, artistic, and possessing a sharp wit,” his family wrote, he was initially interested in studying architecture but settled on a more practical route, attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he studied metallurgical engineering and had a great time making mild mischief with his fraternity brothers.
After working in New York City for a few years, he attended Harvard Business School. It was during this time that he met the love of his life, Susan Kotlus, at a friend’s wedding. Mr. Retzky was immediately smitten, courting her while she was an undergraduate student at Tufts University and crossing the Charles River in more than one snowstorm to visit her. Within four months, he had proposed, and they married in New York in December 1962.
The couple made their home in Queens before moving to New Rochelle with their two young daughters. Mr. Retzky worked at a metals trading firm in Manhattan, Primary Industries, which took him on travels to London, Moscow, Japan, and Germany. Along the way, he often made close friends of his colleagues and their families. His profession also sparked an enthusiasm for travel that he shared with his wife and his daughters.
With Primary Industries, he led what his family said was the first U.S. joint venture with an Eastern Bloc nation, a steel mill outside Budapest. In the later years of his career, he served in leadership roles for several nonprofit organizations.
When the children were small, the Retzky family spent summer vacations at the old Driftwood, a motel near Montauk, falling in love “with the beach and the light.” In the early 1980s, they bought land in Amagansett and built a house; the Retzkys have called it home full time for the past 25 years.
Mr. Retzky’s children grew up familiar with their father’s favorite quote from Bertrand Russell: “To be without some of the things you want in life is an essential part of happiness.” For Mr. Retzky, “this wasn’t about being abstemious, but about prioritizing what mattered most: family, art, cooking, embracing intellectual curiosity, and living by his moral compass,” his family wrote.
“His was a life of great joy brought most of all by his family,” they wrote. In addition to his wife, Mr. Retzky’s daughters and their spouses survive. They are Deborah and Bob Shaul of La Jolla, Calif., and Andrea Retzky and Brian Lessig of Manhattan. He also leaves three grandchildren, Anna Shaul, Daniel Shaul, and Jack Lessig, and a sister, Barbara Peppas of Queens.
He was cremated and the memorial service will be private. Memorial donations have been suggested to Organización Latino Americana of Eastern Long Island, online at olaofeasternlongisland.org.
