Obituaries

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Raymond Hildreth Halsey, a farmer who was an owner of the Green Thumb in Water Mill, died on Friday at home in that hamlet. He was four days shy of his 89th birthday.

A wake will be held at the O'Connell Funeral Home in Southampton on Monday, Jan. 19, from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m.

His funeral will be held at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, Jan. 20, at 11 a.m.

Alice Cole Lazarus, a longtime summer resident of Barnes Landing in Springs, died on Dec. 27 at the Alzheimer’s Resource Center in Plantsville, Conn. She was 90.

Mrs. Lazarus, who was known as Allie, first came to the South Fork with her husband, Budd Lytton, in the summer of 1947 to visit her parents, Leon (Tut) and Dorothy Cole, who were renting on Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett. Two years later, the Coles bought a summer cottage in Barnes Landing and the Lyttons bought a bungalow nearby.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday for Charlotte Rogers Smith of Water Mill, the choir director of the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church for more than 40 years and the founder of the Choral Society of the Hamptons. Ms. Smith died of pneumonia on Dec. 14 at Southampton Hospital. She was 95.

The service will take place at the Southampton Presbyterian Church at 2 p.m. In last week’s paper, the service was reported to be on Jan. 10.

Jesse F. James, a master carpenter who lived on Hog Creek Road in Springs, died at Southampton Hospital on Jan. 5 at the age of 81. The cause of death was pulmonary arrest.

Mr. James worked for many local builders, among them Wesley Miller, Ed Pospisil, Dell Cullum, and Gene Futterman. Later in life he was a caretaker for the late Susan Tepper, an artist and philanthropist who founded the East Hampton Center for Contemporary Art. Most recently he worked for Sandpebble Builders until retiring just last year.

John James Stavola Sr., a longtime resident of Montauk, died at home last Thursday. He was 93.

Mr. Stavola, who worked as a construction supervisor for the New York Telephone Company, had a summer house in Montauk since the 1960s, and retired there full time 35 years ago. He loved clamming and fishing, his family said.

Born in Manhattan on Nov. 4, 1921, to Fillipo Stavola and the former Maria Lombardi, he grew up in the Bronx, and served in the Navy during World War II.

Funeral arrangements for John Stavola of Montauk, who died on Friday, have been announced. 

Visiting hours will be on Sunday  from 2 to 4 p.m. at Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. There will be a prayer service for him at the funeral home on Monday morning at 10. A graveside service will follow at  Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church Cemetery on Cedar Street, East Hampton.

Alfred Charles Hines, a retired tool and die maker who made some of the dies for parts of a popular 1950s children’s toy called Robbie the Robot and built a telescope that won a prestigious prize, died in Springs on New Year’s Day. He was 93 and had been in good health until that morning, said his son Patrick Hines of Amagansett.

A memorial service will be held on Jan. 17 at 2 p.m. at the Southampton Presbyterian Church for Charlotte Fordham Rogers Smith of Water Mill, who died of pneumonia at Southampton Hospital on Dec. 14 at the age of 95.

Eva Ecker, who survived the Nazi period in Hungary during World War II, died on Dec. 29 at home in Springs. She had just finished dinner and was sitting with family.

During the war, Ms. Ecker helped to protect and hide her younger sister, Juidith Leiber, when Jews were called to assemble in the streets of Budapest for deportation. Their father had been sent to a labor camp, but the family was spared after he obtained a Swiss pass, which provided diplomatic immunity. The pass is now in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

A funeral Mass for Dorothy Marie McGinnis-Haberstroh, who died on Dec. 26 in Weeki Wachee, Fla., at age 104, will be said tomorrow at 10 a.m. at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton. Mrs. Haberstroh was a former East Hampton resident. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

A service for Patricia Liptrot of Springs will be held on Saturday at 11 a.m. at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton. A wake is being planned with the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home, but details had not been finalized as of press time. Mrs. Liptrot, who was 84, died on Tuesday at Stony Brook University Hospital. A full obituary will appear in a future issue.

“There’s only two kinds of music,” Jeff Golub reportedly said, “the kind that’s from the heart and the kind that’s not.” That observation was not just an accurate assessment of music, about which the guitarist was so passionate, it served as a blueprint for his life.

“She was the strongest woman I ever met,” Jenna Vertullo’s mother, Gail Lia, said Tuesday of her daughter.

Joyce L. Coleman, a nurse’s aide and an expert scallop-shucker, died on Dec. 29 at home on Spring Lane in Sag Harbor. Her family said the cause was a pulmonary embolism. She was 62.

Ms. Coleman worked for many years taking care of residents at the Huntting Lane Rest Home in East Hampton Village. She later went to work at the Todd Nursing Home in Southampton, which became the Southampton Nursing Home.

Margaret Keller, the matriarch of an extended family and a charter member of the Montauk Fire Department’s Ladies Auxiliary, died of natural causes on Sunday at Southampton Hospital. She was 87 and had lived in the same house on South Delphi Street for more than 60 years.