Obituaries

Philip Wayne Hummer, a summer resident of East Hampton who had a wealth management company for nearly five decades, died at home in Chicago on Dec. 18. He was 89 and had been ill with cancer for three months.

Betty A. Vail of Miller Lane East in East Hampton died at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Quiogue on Tuesday. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

Bruce H. Baldwin of East Hampton and Naples, Fla., who was a founding member of the Springs Fire Department, died of a heart attack at home in Naples on Dec. 11. He was 84 years old.

Catherine D. Bennett, a Bridgehampton native and resident of East Hampton Village for 65 years, died of complications of Covid-19 on Dec. 20 at the Hampton Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton. She was 87.

Marion Wheeler, who lived in East Hampton for the last 40 years, died at home on Montauk Avenue on Dec. 18. Ms. Wheeler, who was 95, had been ill for the past year.

Patricia Skidmore Kyle, a Mad Men-era advertising, promotions, and merchandising executive at Ladies Home Journal, Time Inc., and Conde Nast, died of complications from pneumonia on Dec. 8 at Peconic Landing in Greenport. She was just 20 days short of her 90th birthday.

Peter J. Steckowski, a former Amagansett resident, died on Dec. 22 in Boomer, N.C. He was 60. A spring memorial will be announced, and an obituary will appear in a future issue.

Beulah Mae O'Neal, 82, a longtime resident of Bridgehampton who, with her husband, William Samuel O'Neal, reared seven children in that hamlet, died on Dec. 12 at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital from complications of Covid-19.

Gert Murphy, a resident of South Etna Avenue in Montauk, who in her 82 years was a nun, teacher, volunteer, artist, writer, and onetime "hell-raising urchin in her Morningside Heights neighborhood" in Manhattan, died on Dec. 16 at Sky View Rehabilitation and Health Care in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. The cause was Covid-19, though Ms. Murphy had had a debilitating stroke in August.

Mary Schellinger of Sag Harbor, a former French teacher at the Amagansett and Springs Schools, died on Dec. 14 of complications of Parkinson's disease. She was 72. 

Pamela Lee Black, a food service employee for the East Hampton School District for many years, died on Dec. 14 of respiratory failure as a complication of coronavirus infection at the Westhampton Care Center. She was 80 and had been ill with lung cancer.

Teresa Flanagan of Montauk, an accomplished artist, illustrator, and business owner who was known as Terry, died on Aug. 8 at home, surrounded by family. She was 92.

The internationally known textile designer, collector, and author died at his home at the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton on Tuesday.

Anton Hallinger of Montauk and Glendale, Queens, died last Thursday at home in Glendale. He had just turned 95 in October and had been in hospice care for only a day, after returning from Long Island Jewish Hospital in Forest Hills to be at home with family members around him.

Charles Mac Meyer of Hampton Bays, a Suffolk County senior public health sanitarian for 35 years, died on Sunday in St. Louis. The former East Hampton resident was 77 and had been ill for seven months.

The Star has received word of the unexpected death of Karie Renee Gardiner, formerly of East Hampton Village, who was found at home in Fullerton, Calif., on Dec. 3. Ms. Gardiner, who had been in declining health, was 62.

Carla Margaret Grimm of Montauk, who had been an employee at the former Gin Beach Market there, died of a heart attack on Nov. 17 at the Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in Lakeway, Tex. She was 64.

Robert P. Lawler, a member of the East Hampton Fire Department's Company No. 6 for 40 years, died of cancer at home here on Dec. 2 in the company of family and friends. He was 68 and had been ill for four years.

Selma Stein of Manhattan, Springs, and Boca Raton, Fla., died on Nov. 20 at home in Greenwich Village. Ms. Stein, who had been a longtime social worker and who loved the theater, was 89 and had been in diminishing health for five years, her family said.

Christopher Avery Clark, a lifelong visitor to Drew Lane in East Hampton and the founder of Clark Construction in New York City, died of congestive heart failure in New York on Sept. 26. He was 62.

John J. Mullen, an environmental activist and founding partner of Mullen & McCaffrey Communications, died of a heart attack on Friday at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. He was 73.

Richard Lawless of Springs, a self-employed painter and writer, died on Nov. 23 at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Quiogue. He was 75.

Howard John Lebwith was recognized around town as the dentist who ran, sometimes from his house in Springs all the way to his office on Main Street in East Hampton. Mr. Lebwith died at home, surrounded by his loved ones, on Nov. 20 at the age of 90.

A former vice chairman of the East Hampton Town Planning Board who had been a co-chairman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee and an editor at The East Hampton Star before that, Robert S. Schaeffer died on Nov. 17 at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. A longtime Wainscott resident, Mr. Schaeffer had been ill with cancer for five years. He was 76.

The Star had word this week of the death of Janet Zobel of Amagansett and Greenwich Village, on June 29 at N.Y.U. Medical Center in Manhattan. She was 78 and had been given a diagnosis of primary peritoneal cancer five years ago, although she was in remission until this year.

Robert S. Schaeffer, a former member and vice chairman of the East Hampton Town Planning Board and a former editor at The East Hampton Star, died Tuesday morning at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital following a long illness. Mr. Schaeffer was 76. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

Marianne Bernadette Egan Ketcham, formerly of Springs, died on Friday at the Chautauqua Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Dunkirk, N.Y. She was 87 and had been ill for six years.

Living here from 1985 to 2015, Ms. Ketcham frequently worked as an election inspector and loved camping in Hither Hills, among other places, with her family. She once made an eight-week, cross-country trek that her family said was her most memorable trip. Also an avid gardener, she loved "sharing" her flowers with the deer that visited her property in Springs, her family said.

Marion Ruth Horner, a former nurse at the East Hampton Medical Group, died of Covid-19 on Oct. 19 at the Deerfield Episcopal Retirement Community in Asheville, N.C. She was 99.

Wilson Stone, a lyricist, composer, conductor, and piano accompanist, died at the Middle Island home of his daughter, Susanna Stone, of metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer on Nov. 2. He was 93 and had been ill for two and a half years.

David Geiser, an artist whose career ranged from the underground comics he created in San Francisco in the late 1960s and 1970s to heavily textured mixed-media works he focused on after moving to New York in 1979, died unexpectedly of heart disease in his sleep at home in Springs on Oct. 14. He was 73.