Skip to main content

Elisabeth Varese

Thu, 02/15/2024 - 10:50

Nov. 14, 1922 - Feb. 8, 2024

Elisabeth Louise Bastion Varese’s life was a long and an interesting one, her family wrote, recounting how she had been a Girl Scout in Puerto Rico in the 1930s, worked in New York and London, and earned her pilot’s license to fly “submarine watch” over the Gulf of Mexico during World War II.

Mrs. Varese, who was 101, died last Thursday in Florida.

A resident of East Hampton for 35 years before retiring to Lantana, Fla., around 1995, she had been a board member of the East Hampton Library. “Her stories about serving on the library board with famous authors and meeting celebrities at East Hampton charity banquets are the core of many family stories,” her family wrote.

Mrs. Varese was born in Port Arthur, Tex., on Nov. 14, 1922, to John Anthony Bastion and the former Virginia McCauley. She grew up in Puerto Rico, Texas, and London.

In 1951, she joined her older sister, Sue Thisler, in New York City, and worked in advertising for J. Walter Thompson, with tours in London.

She met Michael Varese, who was British, while in London, and they married there in 1965.

When she left the field of advertising, she co-founded the International Foodservice Editorial Council, and was a director for many years. Her husband, who had retired from banking, had over 300 columns published in The New York Times home section on antiques and wood.

Travel for work and pleasure took her to China, Russia, India, Borneo, and around Europe. When she stepped down from the I.F.E.C., “a grand party celebrated her years of service,” a friend wrote. Subsequently the organization’s award for going above and beyond in service was named “The Betty” in her honor.

She wrote and published two mystery novels, “No Just Desserts” in 2004 and “The Marigold Mafia” in 2009.

Her husband died in 2017. She is survived by her nieces and nephews, Gaynel Sue Dishon of Kansas City, Mo., John Thisler of Bend, Ore., and Page Johnson of New Hampshire.

Mrs. Varese was cremated. Her ashes are to be interred at the family plot in Springfield, Mo.

 

Villages

Springs Food Pantry Sees the Need, Addresses It

The last few years have presented challenges the Springs Food Pantry’s founders could not have anticipated when it was first established. More than 600 families are now registered to receive the assistance it provides, and an average of 355 families are served each week.

Jun 26, 2025

A Newsletter on Being a Jew in Today’s America

One of the essential roles of religion, Rabbi Jan Uhrbach of the Bridge Shul in Bridgehampton said this week, is to “help us hold onto our humanity, and remind us of the higher values that go beyond money and power and position and all of those things, in a time when the values that I hold dear are not only being violated, they’re being rejected as values.”

Jun 26, 2025

Item of the Week: The Hemerocallis Garden, 1962

Hemerocallis may be an unfamiliar term, but the garden adjacent to Clinton Academy once bore the name. This photo shows the gate to the garden some two decades after its establishment in 1941.

Jun 26, 2025

 

Your support for The East Hampton Star helps us deliver the news, arts, and community information you need. Whether you are an online subscriber, get the paper in the mail, delivered to your door in Manhattan, or are just passing through, every reader counts. We value you for being part of The Star family.

Your subscription to The Star does more than get you great arts, news, sports, and outdoors stories. It makes everything we do possible.