Marion Asch, 86
Though she spent 45 summers in the Amagansett dunes, Marion Asch never more than dipped her toes in the Atlantic Ocean that was her front yard, her family said. Ms. Asch, who divided her time between Amagansett and Manhattan, died on Oct. 21. She was 86.
With her husband, Stuart Asch, in 1965 she bought a house in Beach Hampton that had been built in 1941 for Sonja Henie, the Olympic figure skater, and her husband, Dan Topping, who was president and part owner of the New York Yankees. The house, clad in pink siding, stood out among its neighbors, and she loved it and its Art Deco styling. As Beach Hampton became more developed and pavement was laid down over the old dirt roads, she left the pink house largely as it was.
The couple frequently shared the beach house with friends from the city, who were always delighted by an invitation.
Meals she cooked were described by her family as elegant, influenced in part by her formal training in French and Chinese cooking but based substantially on meals made in her mother 's Brooklyn kitchen.
She cooked simple meals, too — fresh corn and tomatoes, bluefish collected from haulseiners and grilled that night. She would coat bluefish with mayonnaise and wrap it in an aluminum window screen before placing it on a grill.
Ms. Asch loved the theater, her family said. In New York she would attend performances every week, and she attended shows at Guild Hall in East Hampton.
She enjoyed going to the shops in East Hampton Village, especially the Bargain Box, as well as dinner at Gordon 's restaurant in Amagansett, the Amagansett Fire Department chicken barbecue, soft ice cream at Snowflake on Pantigo Road, and clam bellies from the Clam Bar on Napeague.
She was born Marion Mednick in Brooklyn in 1925 to Avram Mednick and the former Sarah Grotenstein. Her father died when she was 6, and her mother raised her and her older brothers, Edward and Henry, by herself though the Great Depression.
She was the first woman in her family to go to college, which she entered when she was 15. Her travel time from Brooklyn to her classes at Barnard College in Upper Manhattan was an hour and a half each way.
She met her future husband across the street at Columbia University. They married in 1948 and lived briefly in Queens, then settled in Manhattan, where she worked for a time for the New York Department of Welfare before devoting herself to home and family.
Ms. Asch is survived by her son, Dr. David A. Asch of Gladwyne, Pa., and two daughters, Ellen Meyer and Laurie Asch, both of New York City, as well as three grandchildren.