ANN ROBERTS: COOKIE LADY NO MORE

"It is a tremendous pleasure to be involved with this, to say hello to this town again," said Ann Roberts, an East Hampton native, of her work with the town's tricentquinquagenary committee.

For Mrs. Roberts, whose roots here go back more than a dozen generations but who has recently been primarily a summer visitor, helping to plan and carry out the anniversary celebration is clearly a labor of love.

"It's my numero uno priority," she said.

She volunteered her time after running into Averill Geus at Guild Hall last year as the anniversary approached. Mrs. Geus and Eleanor Ratsep, both old friends, are also committee members.

Mrs. Roberts was good-natured about being tagged "the juice and cookies lady" as head of the refreshments squad at history lectures. For the kick-off festivities in January at Guild Hall, she provided an old-fashioned repast of gingerbread, molasses cookies, and punch, and never looked back.

These days, however, Mrs. Roberts is looking ahead to the big parade and celebration on Oct. 10, when Main Street will be closed to traffic from 11 a.m. on for what is expected to be a three-hour procession, followed by various events. She has been named the day's coordinator, and is working to bring about a vision of an old-fashioned fete complete with patriotic decorations on houses and shops along the parade route.

Samples of red, white, and blue bunting, printed cotton bows, versions of flags, and other decorative materials are piled on her couch, ready to be toted up and down Main Street.

As a guide for residents and merchants along the route, Mrs. Roberts is distributing a reprint of an article dating back to the town's 250th anniversary, describing the decorations on houses and churches on the day of the anniversary parade, which included "flags fluttering at each post of a . . . rustic fence," "archways of golden-rod," and "pink buff and green draperies, with wheat leaves and corn," on Mrs. James Gallatin's house.

With Lieut. Kenneth Brown, the East Hampton Village Police Department liaison to the anniversary committee, Mrs. Roberts is overseeing the official program for the event, which among other things will list the participants in the parade, describe their floats, and acknowledge 350th anniversary committee members.

Mrs. Roberts's father was "from away," but her mother was the daughter of Capt. Joshua Edwards, the last of the Amagansett whaleboat captains, and her grandmother was a Mulford.

"Way, way back I think we can claim Fishhooks [Mulford]," she said. (That was the legendary townsman who, on a trip to London in 1716 to protest the King's taxes on the whalers' take, lined his pockets with fishhooks to discourage thieves and cutpurses.)

Mrs. Roberts's involvement in the anniversary celebration has spurred her not only to learn more about local history (with the help of Carleton Kelsey, the Amagansett historian and librarian), but to become reacquainted with many of those who peopled her East Hampton childhood.

"Fred - I feel like I've known him all my life," she said of Fred Yardley, the Town Clerk and another committee member, whose father knew her grandfather, Dr. David Edwards.

As a child, Mrs. Roberts lived with her mother in Dr. Edwards's house on North Main Street in East Hampton, a "big white house with a great big croquet lawn."

"It was a great house to grow up in," she said. "I used to open the door for my grandfather's patients. I felt very much a part of his practice, even as a child."

The doctor practiced in East Hampton for 63 years and brought a good number of today's elder citizens into the world. Addressing the crowd at a 300th anniversary clambake in Springs on July 10, 1948, Dr. Edwards cracked, "I know a good many of you people pretty well. Some of you I've met feet first, and some head first."

For a short time after college, in 1954, she worked as a reporter at The East Hampton Star. Jeannette Edwards Rattray, a first cousin once removed, was the editor at the time.

Mrs. Roberts moved to Manhattan after marrying, then to Bronxville, N.Y., and, for several years, to San Francisco with her family. Summertime, however, always meant Amagansett and Gardiner's Bay, where her three children and their cousins would gather as generations before.

In 1985, Mrs. Roberts, who had majored in English at Smith College, earned a master's in business administration from Pace University. "I didn't know whether I would be a lawyer, or what," she said. She ended up working as a paralegal and administrator at the Teachers Insurance Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund before retiring in 1996.

Since then, she has lent her skills to the Council on Economic Priorities, a nonprofit public interest research organization. The council is headed by Alice Tepper Marlin of Springs.

Mrs. Roberts, who lives part-time in New York City where her husband, Richard, is an administrative law judge, looks forward to the day when East Hampton will be her primary residence. She plans to become more involved with civic groups here, she said, and to spend more time gardening, painting, and playing tennis.

"For years, I have driven, trained, and Jitneyed back to Bronxville, or to New York," she said. "And sometimes nostalgia for this place has taken over. It is special."

JOANNE PILGRIM