Obituaries

Stephen A. Lesser, an architect who had lived in East Hampton for more than 30 years, died on July 12 at the Westhampton Care Center of complications of cerebellar ataxia and biliary cancer. He was 74 and had been ill for seven years.

Albert James Catozzi of Springs, a longtime clerk at the East Hampton Post Office, died on July 8 of complications of multiple myeloma at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

Visiting hours for Barbara Elizabeth Curran, formerly of Wainscott, who died on Sunday in Ocean Breeze, Fla., will be held at the Beecher Flook’s Funeral Home in Pleasantville, N.Y., on Tuesday from 2 to 5 p.m.

A celebration and remembrance of the life of Raymond Marisette, known as Cheech, who died on July 21, 2018, will take place on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. at the Dock restaurant in Montauk. His ashes will be spread on the roots of a tree that will be planted, and there will be a Budweiser toast in his honor.

Liliane M. Chapin, a painter who had lived in East Hampton for more than 20 years, died of heart failure on July 7 at South County Hospital in South Kingstown, R.I.

Mildred Doughty Granitz, a former director of publicity at Guild Hall, died at home in East Hampton on June 21. She was 98.

Albert J. Catozzi of East Hampton died at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital on Monday. He was 71. 

Albert S. Hedges, whose more than 50 years of active service to the Bridgehampton Fire Department also included time as captain and as a Fire District Commissioner, died on June 24 at the Peconic Bay Medical Center’s Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Riverhead, surrounded by family. He was 84 years old and had congestive heart failure.

Due to the lack of an available venue there will not be a memorial gathering for Hortense Carpentier, who died on June 17. Those who wish to pay their respects have been invited to join the family at a graveside service on Aug. 10 at 11 a.m. at Green River Cemetery.

JoAnn C. Morse of Montauk, a high school special education teacher, died of complications of heart failure last Thursday at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. She was 81. 

Barbara Oeffner, an East Hampton native and a 10th-generation descendant of Nathaniel Dominy, one of the town’s early settlers renowned for his woodworking and clockmaking skills, died on Jan. 24 in Moore Haven, Fla. She was 74.

Brian Grinnel to be remembered Saturday and Sunday in Montauk

John D. Kelly, who operated the first commuter seaplane flights between Manhattan and East Hampton in the 1990s, died of cancer last Thursday at home in Guilford, Conn. He was 72.

Betty Rose Morici, who owned Betty’s Bloomers flower shop in Montauk, died of cancer at home in that hamlet on June 14. She was 79 and had been ill for several years.

Hortense R. Carpentier, a longtime Springs resident whose varied career spanned music, film, literature, real estate, retail, and medicine, died on June 17 at the New York State Veterans Home in upstate Oxford, surrounded by her family. Death was attributed to cardiac pulmonary arrest after a more than four-year illness. She was 93.

Maureen Maran Wikane, the longtime director of the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center, formerly the East Hampton Day Care Center, whose caring guidance is remembered by numerous East Hampton children, parents, and teachers, died at the East End Hospice Kanas Center in Quiogue on June 18.

Mildred Doughty Granitz died at home on the Circle in East Hampton on Friday. She was 98. The family will hold a memorial service at a date to be announced. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

Nina Sara Hirschman died on Saturday at her Highland Lane house in East Hampton in the company of her sister, Joan Laufer, and her children, Stephanie Wade and Keith Hirschman. She was 73.

Betty R. Morici died at home in Montauk on Friday.

Brian Grinnell, a former mate on the Pontos and Donna Lee fishing vessels in Montauk, died of brain cancer on April 8 at home in Harpswell, Me. He was 61. 

It is not hyperbole to say there was nothing Chick Bills could not make, fix, or take apart. The East Hampton artist, fabricator, and polymath died at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset on May 5. He was 68 and had been in poor health since a heart attack more than three years ago.

Visiting hours for Paul J. Slevinski of East Hampton, who died on Monday, will be held on Sunday from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton.

Joseph Durand Scheerer Jr., a former resident of Amagansett and East Hampton who had a career as a stockbroker and president of a dairy company, died of heart failure on June 12, surrounded by family at his house in Duxbury, Mass. He was 92, and had been ill for only a short time.

Maureen Wikane of East Hampton died of pancreatic cancer on Tuesday at Quiogue’s Kanas Center for Hospice Care.

Michael P. Miller, a grocery and deli clerk at the I.G.A. supermarket in East Hampton for many years, died of cancer on May 25 at home in Micco, Fla. He was 60 and had been ill for three years.

Mildred Pafundi Rosen, whose distinguished legal career included a seven-year stint as commissioner of the New York State Labor Relations Board under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller — the first woman to hold that position — died on June 9 in New York City. The East Hampton summer resident was 89 years old. 

Services for Gertrude Barnard of East Hampton will be held tomorrow at the First Baptist Church in Southampton, with a viewing at 11 a.m. and the funeral at noon. Burial will follow at Calverton National Cemetery, and a gathering will be held back at the church at 4 p.m.

Marjorie Reese Ludlow, an active member of the Bridgehampton community and its Methodist Church, and a Southampton Hospital volunteer for more than three decades, died last Thursday at her Bridgehampton home. She was 101.

Richard Guenther Davis, who served as executive vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, died in Southampton on April 20 after a brief illness. A resident of Amagansett since the early 1970s, he was 85.

Teresa Barsdis Boothe, who was raised in East Hampton, died at the Aurora Senior Living of Manokin in Princess Anne, Md., on May 29. She was 90 and had been ill.