Obituaries

Mary Ella Reutershan Richard, a former East Hampton and Amagansett resident and community leader, died yesterday at Peconic Landing in Greenport.

Ms. Richard was politically active from the 1960s onward, including serving on the East Hampton Town Board. She was a preservation advocate and activist as well, organizing blood drives and pressing for services for the town’s older residents.

A memorial service is to be announced. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

Ines Angelica Wildner-Fox, a former teacher at the Montauk School who started the school’s English as a foreign language program and co-founded the hamlet’s food pantry, died of pulmonary fibrosis on July 17 at Hope Hospice in Lehigh Acres, Fla.     

A funeral Mass for Daniel Otto will be said on Saturday at noon at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton.

In any inventory of the most influential documentary filmmakers, certain names inevitably appear: Dziga Vertov, Robert Flaherty, Marcel Ophuls, Frederick Wiseman, Michael Apted, Errol Morris, Albert and David Maysles, and the Maysles’ contemporary and onetime associate, D.A. Pennebaker.     

Services will be held on Saturday for Jhony Chumi-Rodas, who died in a car crash in Flanders on Sunday night.

A celebration of the life of Maureen Wikane will be held on Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center in East Hampton, where she was the administrative director. Ms. Wikane, who was 71, died of pancreatic cancer on June 18.

Frederick W. Ritz, a lifelong resident of Bridgehampton who owned a tree service company and an insurance company and volunteered with the local ambulance corps, died of complications of a stroke on July 18 at Quiogue’s Kanas Center for Hospice Care. He was 85.

Family and friends of Audra Schutte Balcuns will gather for a celebration of her life at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett on Saturday. The reception will be from 2 to 5 p.m., and those who knew her have been invited to drop in anytime, her brother, Patrick Schutte, said.

Barbara Curran, a retired teacher of English at Lehman College in the Bronx who helped the school found a campus in Hiroshima, died of pneumonia on July 14 at her home in Jensen Beach, Fla. The longtime summer resident of Wainscott was 85.

Brian J. King of East Hampton, a self-employed handyman who could fix almost any broken-down bicycle or lawnmower, died of cardiac arrest on Pantigo Road in East Hampton Village on July 22, while driving his truck. He was 68, and had been diagnosed with cancer three months before.

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.

Jarvis James Slade, a part-time resident of Middle Lane in East Hampton Village and a retired investment banker and venture investor, died yesterday at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City of complications of a stroke. He was 93.