Obituaries

    Diane Wolkstein, a summer visitor to Springs and world-renowned storyteller, died in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, last Thursday following emergency heart surgery. She was 70.

    Ms. Wolkstein is credited with reviving an interest in storytelling, particularly the folklore of countries familiar and more exotic, as New York City’s official storyteller, a position she held from 1967 to 1971. In the year-round post, she would visit parks and schools and share stories from standard fairy tales as well as those lesser known and gathered from all over the world.

    Betty Barton Evans, a summer resident of Pondview Lane, East Hampton, who worked during World War II for the United States Coordinator of Information, the precursor to the Office of Strategic Services, and who later bred a Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes-winning horse, died at home in Greenwich, Conn., on Feb. 5. She was 89. The cause was gastric cancer, her family said.

    Ms. Evans and her second husband, Thomas Mellon Evans, owned Buckland Farms, a Virginia horse farm where they bred thoroughbred horses, including Pleasant Colony, the 1981 Derby and Preakness winner.

    Kelly Anne Doroski loved being a stay-at-home mom and spending her time with the two men in her life, her fiancé, Max Corrigan, and their 22-month-old son, Joshua Aiden.

    Born on May 15, 1989, in Southampton to William J. Doroski and the former Patricia L. Smith, she grew up in Sag Harbor, and graduated from Pierson High School.

    The Rev. Denis C. Brunelle will officiate at a funeral for Marilyn Johnson of  Springs on Wednesday at 10 a.m. at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. Ms. Johnson died on Monday at the Westhampton Care Center. Her ashes will be buried following the service in the church’s memorial garden.

    Those organizing the funeral have said that Ms. Johnson did not care for flowers and would not have wanted them. They suggested donations instead to St. Luke’s. An obituary for her will appear in a future issue.

    Pierre Lucien Schoenheimer, a financier and decades-long summer resident of East Hampton, died at his apartment in Manhattan on Jan. 25. The family did not provide a cause of death. He was 79.

    Mr. Schoenheimer’s parents purchased a house in Montauk in the 1950s. He and his family remained connected to the area ever since.

    Mr. Schoenheimer was born in Paris in July 1933 to Fritz R. Schoenheimer and the former Ellen Berliner. The family fled Europe in 1941, ultimately settling in New York.

    Sallie Rae Hammer, described by her family as a 12th-generation Bonacker and known as Aunt Sal, died last Thursday at the age 60 after a long illness.

    She had lived in Jonesville, Va., where she died, for the last eight years. Prior to that she spent all of her life in Springs, where people knew her as a straight talker who “would give you the shirt off her back” and make people laugh at the same time, according to her daughter Michele Hammer Hill.

    Suzanne May Marks of Treescape Drive in East Hampton and Highland Beach, Fla., died on Jan. 31 in Boca Raton, Fla. At the age of 80. She had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer a little over a year ago.

    Ms. Marks, who for three decades spent several months of each year in East Hampton, was born in New York City on May 16, 1932, to Edward and Piri Schweiger. She grew up in the city and attended Hunter College there.

    Allen Hovey Good, who spent the last 14 summers on Old Orchard Lane in East Hampton, died on Jan. 21 in Naples, Fla., after a short illness. He was 82.

    Mr. Good was born in Newton, Mass., on July 5, 1930, to Herbert and Elizabeth Good. After graduating from high school in Newton, he served in the Army for a year before attending the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1954.

    Brandon Burns Stewart, who found East Hampton a vital extension of his life in the Manhattan art world, died of cancer on Nov. 2 in New York City. He had been sick for two months. He was 58.

    Born in Manhattan, his parents, Jack and Margo Stewart, were both artists, as well as activists for artists. Growing up surrounded by art and artists, he ended up making it his life’s work.

    As a child, he attended the Rudolf Steiner School, then the Hackley School, and went on to college at Case Western Reserve University.

    Asked in 2011 how she felt about turning 100, Elsie Garretson of East Hampton told The East Hampton Star, “I really don’t feel any different. You just go with the years, you keep breathing and living until God says, ‘Come on Elsie, you’ve spent enough time on earth.’ ”

    She had been “a great worrier,” she said. “Then I realized one day, why do you worry? Nothing comes from it. Try to take things in stride. Ride with the waves.”

    Kurt Kahofer of Wainscott, a maitre d’ at Herb McCarthy’s Bowden Square, which in its day was one of Southampton’s most popular restaurants, and a fixture for 35 years at the “21” Club in New York City, died at the age of 80 on Jan. 28 in Florida. His death was unexpected and the cause had not yet been determined, his family said this week.

    Louis C. McDonald, who retired from a career in distribution and freight management to live in Montauk and fish aboard his boat, the Hattaduit, died on Tuesday at home on Old West Lake Drive. He was 77 and had lung cancer, his family said.

    Mr. McDonald, who was known as Lou, was a member of the Montauk Friends of Erin and active with the Montauk Lions Club, among other organizations. He was a past commodore of the Wyncote Club in Huntington, an honorary member of the Joseph J. Gorman Knights of Columbus in Syosset, and a member of the Glendale Kiwanis Club.

    Richard L. Sharpe, a part-time Amagansett resident who had a long career on the business side of the radio industry, died on Jan. 1 in Locust Valley, where he also had a house. He was 72. The cause was a heart attack, his family said.

    Mr. Sharpe began his career as an advertising salesman before moving into national sales for large radio groups. He later ran a New York City radio representation company.

    William J. Hood, a retired senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency and a writer, died at home in Amagansett early on the morning of Jan. 28. He would have turned 93 on April 19.

    During World War II, having just transferred from the Army into military intelligence, Mr. Hood volunteered for the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the C.I.A. He worked for a time on Ultra, a top-secret exploitation of coded German messages that the British and Americans had cracked and that the Germans thought was invulnerable, Enigma.

    Alice Vera Darden, who had been a devoted member of the Bridgehampton First Baptist Church since 1935, died at the age of 101 on Jan. 23 and was eulogized there at a service conducted by the Rev. Frank Bryant on Tuesday.

    Born on Aug. 31, 1911, Mrs. Darden died at the home of one of her granddaughters, Alice Johnson, in Southampton.

    A Sag Harbor native who grew up on Bridge Street in that village, then married an East Hampton man and lived on Pantigo Road in East Hampton Village, Barbara P. Lester died on Sunday at the Riverhead Care Center. She was 93.

    Mrs. Lester worked as a housekeeper for many East Hampton residents, including the actress Dina Merrill, her family said.

    Claude Simon Sarfati, who owned the Huntting Inn in East Hampton for a season and managed the Bridgehampton Club for six years, died after a brief illness on Sunday at his house in East Hampton, three days short of his 83rd birthday.

    William Martin Stahl, M.D., a surgeon and professor of medicine who was considered a master teacher by his peers and legions of students and residents whom he trained, died at home in Larchmont, N.Y., on Dec. 22, at the age of 90. His family described his death as natural and peaceful.

    A memorial service for Dr. Ethel Person of Amagansett and Manhattan, sponsored by the Psychoanalytic Center of Columbia University, will take place on Feb. 9 from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Uris Auditorium of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, 1300 York Avenue in Manhattan.

    Dr. Person, who died in October, was among those profiled in The New York Times Magazine’s annual end-of-year “The Lives They Lived” issue.

    Irene McClain Weidert, who grew up in Sag Harbor and lived in Southampton and Lady Lake, Fla., over the years, died at home in Southampton on Jan. 20. She was 85 and had had a long illness.

    Josephine Iacono, the last surviving sibling of the six children who grew up on the Iacono Farm on Long Lane in East Hampton, died at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton on Sunday. She had lived there for the last two and a half years but her family, who visited her there the previous day, said she seemed in good health and her death was unexpected. She was 88.

    Robert Ellsworth Bennett, a locksmith who had worked at many trades as a younger man, died of cancer at home in Springs on Jan. 15. He was 77.

    He was born on July 14, 1935, to Lewis and Lily Wood Bennett on Cedar Street in East Hampton “in the little white house next door to the firehouse, which has since been torn down,” his family wrote. He was a tenth-generation East Hampton Bennett.

    Susan Alling Miller, a summer resident of Amagansett for many years, died in her sleep at home in Stamford, Conn., on Jan. 17. She was 85.

    Born Helen Susan Alling in Newark, N.J., on Dec. 21, 1927, she was the oldest daughter of Dr. Frederic A. Alling and Helen Stearly. Her maternal grandfather was the Rt. Rev. Wilson Stearly, the fourth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark.

    In the 1930s, her family moved to Montclair, N.J., where she lived for most of her life. The family spent summers on Buzzards Bay, Mass., and in Quiogue.

    Sven E. Danielson Jr., whose passion and career, the restoration of historic buildings, were one and the same, died in Castine, Me., on Jan. 17 of metastatic melanoma. He was 70 and had moved to Castine 10 years ago.

    William J. Hood, a writer and former Office of Strategic Services and Central Intelligence Agency officer, died at home in Amagansett early in the morning on Monday. The cause was a stroke. A full obituary will appear in a future issue.

    William R. Peters, a corporate lawyer and businessman who had lived in East Hampton for the last 12 years, died on Jan. 21 after a sudden, short illness. His wife of 22 years, Shelley McBee Peters, was by his side. He had just turned 67.

    Mr. Peters was born on Jan. 18, 1946, in Great Neck, and grew up there. He was a graduate of the University of Rochester, where he received a bachelor’s degree, and of New York University Law School, where he earned juris doctor and master’s degrees. During the Vietnam era, he served in the Army.

    Ethyl C. Comerford, formerly of Noyac, a teacher at the Most Holy Trinity School in East Hampton for many years, died on Jan. 8 at the Fairview, a nursing home in Groton, Conn., where she had lived for the past nine months. Ms. Comerford was 92.

    Born on Jan. 14, 1920, in Astoria, Queens, to Joseph Masheck and Rose Cermak, she received a bachelor’s degree from what was formerly known as St. Joseph’s College for Women in Brooklyn. After graduating, she worked first as a secretary at Universal Pictures and later as an executive secretary at the Kimberly-Clark Corporation.

    James Albert Christensen of Laurel Trail in Sag Harbor, a 91-year old World War II Veteran, died at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton on Jan. 14, seven weeks after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

    Born on Sept. 25, 1921 in Carrollton, Mich. to the former Iva King and Albert Christensen, Mr. Christensen grew up in Saginaw, Mich., where he graduated from St. Andrew’s High School. While there, he served on the Eucharistic committee, English club, Sodality fellowship, and was a member of the football team.

    James H. O’Connell of Bayberry Lane on North Haven, who appeared in numerous community theater productions and was an active member of the Sag Harbor Knights of Columbus and  a lector at St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Sag Harbor, died of pneumonia at Southampton Hospital on New Year’s Day. He was 99.

    Mr. O’Connell had retired from Met Life in 1978, where he had a 44-year career as an underwriter and in marketing.

    Mary Michell Kernell, 87,  who came to Amagansett in the early 1980s by way of Beverly Hills, New York City,  Port Washington, and the village of Sands Point in Nassau County, and whose family described her as savvy, extremely well read, kind, and strikingly beautiful, died on Jan. 14 at Southampton Hospital following a brief illness.