Obituaries

Kenneth J. Bialkin, one of the leading corporate lawyers of his generation and the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations from 1984 to 1986, during which time the conference was instrumental in winning freedom for Soviet Jews before the collapse of the Iron Curtain, died of a stroke on Aug. 23 in Manhattan.

Mary Lee Abbott, a noted American painter and art teacher who was one of the few women artists in the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and ’50s, died on Friday at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care on Quiogue after a brief illness.

Richard Rosenthal, a longtime advocate for people with disabilities and the former chairman of East Hampton Town’s Anti-Bias Task Force, died of complications from pneumonia on Aug. 17 at home in East Hampton. He was 93.

Barbara Ann Watson, a real estate agent and entrepreneur, died of congestive heart failure on July 27 at home on Gibson Island, Md. The East Hampton Village summer resident, who had a house at Pudding Hill, was 81 and had been ill for three years.

Mary Ella Reutershan, whose lifelong political associations, both national and local, began during World War II when she was a confidential secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, died on Aug. 14 at the age of 98 at Peconic Landing, the retirement community in Greenport.

Robert Ullman, a theatrical press agent who promoted more than 150 productions, including “A Chorus Line,” which he took from development to a Pulitzer Prize, died on July 31 in Bay Shore.

James Russell Tompkins, a lawyer and businessman who founded the First Suffolk Mortgage Company, died of cardiac and pulmonary failure on Aug. 18 at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. The longtime East Hampton resident was 88.

Paula Trachtman, an author, editor, teacher, and activist with a singular talent for bringing people together, died of a heart attack in her sleep on Friday, less than a week shy of her 88th birthday.

Jeanne Comey Owen, whose volunteer work on behalf of children spanned more than five decades in Vero Beach, Fla., East Hampton, and elsewhere on Long Island, died of pneumonia on June 11 in hospice care in Vero Beach. A resident of East Hampton until 1998, she was 94.

Athos Zacharias, a Springs painter and longtime fixture on the East End art scene, whose long and notable career was launched during the prime of Abstract Expressionism, died of kidney failure on Aug. 18 at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Westhampton Beach.

Daniel Otto died at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center on Aug. 3, after a week on life support.

Henry William Breyer III, the owner of a high-end fishing tackle company, died on July 24 at home in Palm Beach, Fla. The former East Hampton resident was 88 and had been in declining health for several months, his family said.