Obituaries

Maryse Armin Wyatt, who graduated from East Hampton High School in 1949 after having spent her childhood in Brooklyn, died on Sept. 11 at home in Greenfield, Mass.

Visitation and a funeral service for Earl Edmund Arrington, a longtime Sag Harbor resident who died on Sept. 9, will be on Sunday at J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home at 179-24 Linden Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens. Visiting begins at 11 a.m., with the funeral to start at noon.

An obituary for Mr. Arrington, who was 82, will appear in a future issue.

William Becker, whose vision and financial savvy helped bring modern European film to American audiences, died of kidney failure at his house in Southampton on Saturday. He was 88.

A celebration of the life of Deborah Ann Light, formerly of Amagansett, East Hampton Village, and Sag Harbor, will be held at the Peconic Land Trust’s Quail Hill Farm orchard in Amagansett on Saturday.

Elizabeth McGuire, who had been a familiar presence in a number of East Hampton’s popular restaurants over the years, died at home on Sept. 8 in Melbourne, Fla.

Joan S. Heitner, a retired professor who taught at La Guardia Community College for more than 25 years, died on Sept. 6 in New York City.

Gregg Denis de Waal died unexpectedly after collapsing at the Whalebone Market in Noyac on Sept. 3.

Michael de Vlaming Flinn, a lawyer and former member of the Connecticut House of Representatives who grew up on Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton, died on Aug. 1 at his house in Greenwich, Conn.

Harry F. LaMonda, a dairy farmer at the old Dune Alpin Farm in East Hampton and a World War II Army veteran who served in Japan, died last Thursday at the Riverhead Care Center in Riverhead.

Antoinette D’Angelo, a longtime resident of Sag Harbor and North Haven who once ran Sag Harbor’s Emporium Hardware Store with her husband, was a true Rosie the Riveter, joining the war effort by helping manufacture planes for the Navy at the Grumman plant in Bethpage after the United States entered World War II.

She died on Sunday at the Westhampton Care Center after a brief illness. She was 92.

An obituary that appeared in The East Hampton Star on May 12, 1938, incorrectly gave the names of Phoebe Scott of Amagansett’s mother and first husband.

Her mother was the former Harriet Miller; her stepmother, the former Abigail Topping, married her father, Daniel Loper of Springs, after her mother’s death.

Mrs. Scott’s first husband was Edward Payne. She married James H. Scott some time after Mr. Payne disappeared in about 1885, following his departure for a school for sailors in New York City. She was born on June 25, 1853, in Springs.

Jordan L. Gruzen, an architect whose firm played a significant role in the landscape of New York City, died of cancer on Jan. 27 at home in Manhattan’s Battery Park City on Jan. 27  He was 80 and had been ill for the past year.

Mr. Gruzen lived in the apartment buildings and houses he designed, including the building on South End Avenue where he died. He summered in Amagansett for more than 50 years, living at Lazy Point for the last eight and building a house on Cranberry Hole Road, which is to be completed in June.

Peter Remington Nixon, who had been an East Hampton Little League coach and Cub Scout leader when his son was younger and worked as a viticulturist, died on Sunday in Millerton, N.Y. He was 62 and had been ill with cancer for a year.

“Children just flocked to him,” said Emily Liss, his former wife.

Douglas Pierson Strong, who had been a Wainscott potato farmer and longtime volunteer with the Bridgehampton Fire Department, died on Sunday at home in Richfield, N.C., at the age of 92. He had had Alzheimer’s disease.

A 12th generation farmer and volunteer firefighter for over 70 years, Mr. Strong also worked for East Hampton Town and was a member of the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church.  

Jean McGrath counted her family among her greatest interests. A mother of three, grandmother of nine, and great-grandmother of eight, she was a knitter, baker, and seamstress who enjoyed embroidery and loved to read.

Mrs. McGrath worked as a secretary at Windward Realty in East Hampton for nearly a decade and was an administrative assistant at the Stella Maris School in Sag Harbor for over 20 years.

She died at Southampton Hospital on Jan. 19 after an illness of several weeks. She was 89.

Denise Parker, an actress and the widow of the abstract painter Ray Parker, who lived in New York’s Greenwich Village and East Hampton, died on Jan. 20 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital following a stroke. She was 86.

A wake for Jeremiah Harrington of East Hampton, who died in a car accident last Thursday in Sarasota, Fla., will be held tomorrow from 3 to 8 p.m. at the Graham Funeral Home in Rye, N.Y. A funeral will be held on Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Church of the Resurrection, also in Rye.

An obituary for Mr. Harrington, who was 67 and known as Jerry, will appear in a future issue.

Jerry Russell Ruschmeyer of New Port Richey, Fla., a Montauker who moved to Florida, where he was the captain of sportfishing boats for many years, died on Jan. 24 at Tampa General Hospital two weeks after suffering a brain aneurysm. He was 64 years old.

John Robert Lemmon, a craftsman who also painted landscapes and seascapes, died of lung cancer on Dec. 5 at the Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin, Vt. He was 69.

Mr. Lemmon had lived in East Hampton his entire life, but spent time at his partner’s, Carrie Kessler’s, farm in Corinth, Vt.

Esther Laufer died at home on Highland Lane in East Hampton on Sunday at the age of 101. Mrs. Laufer had been a concert pianist and a piano teacher. “One of the highlights of her life was playing a Rachmaninoff piece during a piano lesson and later learning that Rachmaninoff himself had heard and admired her rendition,” her family said in an email. Her prized possession was a Hardman baby grand.

Nancy Janssen, one of the first female members of the Montauk Fire Department, serving as an emergency medical technician, died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease on Jan. 20 in Lancaster, Tex. She was 76 and had been ill for the last five years.

Her family will remember her as a kind, happy, loving person who enjoyed the outdoors and being around her eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, said her daughter Dawn Stavola of Montauk. “She was really into the grandkids and great-grandkids,” Ms. Stavola said.

Milton Freeman, an art collector and enthusiastic theatergoer who for many years owned 1780 Antiques House in Water Mill, died on Sunday at Southampton Hospital. He was 92.

He was a designer of bed linens and bath towels when, in 1952, friends introduced him to Robert Ullman, a press agent working in the theater world of Broadway. Both men enjoyed attending the theater, and a lifetime partnership was formed. They also made regular trips to the city’s art galleries and museums.

Carl Victor King, a Vietnam veteran who came from a large East Hampton family, died on Jan. 3 of complications during heart bypass surgery at the Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Manhattan. He was 71.

After he graduated from East Hampton High School, he joined the Army in the mid-1960s, seeing action in Vietnam. When he returned, he moved to Hampton Bays and later Flanders. He was most recently living in Riverhead, where he had moved last year. He worked as a self-employed plumber.

Arthur E. Connors of Cooper Lane, East Hampton, who served as an assistant captain with the East Hampton Fire Department, died of a brain aneurysm on Jan. 13 at Ochsher North Shore Medical Center in Slidell, La. He was 90.

“A wonderful man,” his daughter Pamela Schenck said.

Raymond Hildreth Halsey, a farmer who owned the Green Thumb farm stand in Water Mill, died on Friday at home on Halsey Lane in that hamlet. He was 88. His family said he had heart problems.

One of the last of a generation of potato farmers who found ways to adapt to the changing times in order to stay in business, Mr. Halsey was a 10th-generation descendant of Thomas Halsey, one of the original English colonists of Southampton.

Joseph John Brennan, who had been the superintendent of the East Hampton Town wastewater treatment plant from 1986 to 2001, died at home on Montauk Avenue in Sag Harbor on Saturday. He was 62 and had been ill for about a year and a half, his wife, East Hampton Town Clerk Carole Brennan, said.

Mr. Brennan, who was known to friends for much of his life as Jody, was born at Southampton Hospital on May 26, 1952. His parents were Joseph W. Brennan and the former Maria Wobst. He grew up in a house on Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton and graduated from the public school there.

Visiting hours for Marion D. Tuma of Fairfield Drive, Montauk, who died at home on Tuesday, will be today from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. Mrs. Tuma was 90. An obituary for her will appear in a future issue.

Jean-Claude Baker, a charismatic maitre d’hotel and restaurateur who owned Chez Josephine in New York and found sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of his working life at his house in East Hampton’s Northwest Woods, died last Thursday outside of his house here. The cause was suicide, according to Steven Gaines, a friend. Mr. Baker was 71.

Roberta Anne Caglioti, who spent many summers in East Hampton while her husband, Victor Caglioti, worked as a visiting artist at Southampton College, died on Jan. 19 in Westhampton Beach after a struggle for decades with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 80.

In earlier years, Mrs. Caglioti was a valuable partner in her husband’s work, helping to solve problems of stretchers and canvasses and later assisting in the documentation of his work. They lived a bohemian life, with Mrs. Caglioti routinely putting a pot of pasta on the stove at 2 or 3 in the morning.

Jane Wilson, whose singular landscape paintings, many inspired by the East End, secured her reputation as one of the leading painters of the postwar era, died of heart failure on Jan. 13 at the Calvary Hospice of the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home in New York City. She was 90.