Obituaries

Steven P. Balcuns, who grew up in Montauk, died of heart failure on Dec. 29. He was 49.

A funeral Mass for Laura Hegner, 55, of Coram, will be said on Sunday at 1 p.m. at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk with burial to follow at Fort Hill Cemetery. Ms. Hegner, a former resident of Montauk, died in her sleep on Saturday. An obituary will appear in a future issue of The Star. 

Jack S. Kelleher, who worked with the East Hampton branch of Saunders and Associates for 12 years, until 2017, died in Santa Fe, N.M., on Dec. 11. He was 66 and had contracted Covid-19 three weeks earlier.

James Gleason Conzelman III, who spent summers in East Hampton with his wife and their three children, died at his house in Fairfield, Conn., on Dec. 25 of bile duct cancer. He was 58 and had been ill for six months.

Juliana C. Vandervloed Nash, a native New Yorker who owned houses on Montauk Highway in Amagansett and Flaggy Hole Road in Springs, died at home in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan on July 11. She was 81 and had been ill with lung cancer for eight months.

Kathleen E. Gosman of Montauk died on Dec. 29 at the Fairview Avenue house she shared with her husband of 60 years, Emmett Gosman. Mrs. Gosman had been diagnosed with cancer eight months ago. She was 79.

Marillyn Buelow Wilson, a prominent conservationist and philanthropist whose involvement with the Nature Conservancy and the Peconic Land Trust spanned five decades, died at Peconic Landing in Greenport on New Year's Day. She was 96 and had been in declining health for several years.

Philip Wayne Hummer, a summer resident of East Hampton who had a wealth management company for nearly five decades, died at home in Chicago on Dec. 18. He was 89 and had been ill with cancer for three months.

Betty A. Vail of Miller Lane East in East Hampton died at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Quiogue on Tuesday. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

Bruce H. Baldwin of East Hampton and Naples, Fla., who was a founding member of the Springs Fire Department, died of a heart attack at home in Naples on Dec. 11. He was 84 years old.

Catherine D. Bennett, a Bridgehampton native and resident of East Hampton Village for 65 years, died of complications of Covid-19 on Dec. 20 at the Hampton Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton. She was 87.

Marion Wheeler, who lived in East Hampton for the last 40 years, died at home on Montauk Avenue on Dec. 18. Ms. Wheeler, who was 95, had been ill for the past year.

Patricia Skidmore Kyle, a Mad Men-era advertising, promotions, and merchandising executive at Ladies Home Journal, Time Inc., and Conde Nast, died of complications from pneumonia on Dec. 8 at Peconic Landing in Greenport. She was just 20 days short of her 90th birthday.

Peter J. Steckowski, a former Amagansett resident, died on Dec. 22 in Boomer, N.C. He was 60. A spring memorial will be announced, and an obituary will appear in a future issue.

Beulah Mae O'Neal, 82, a longtime resident of Bridgehampton who, with her husband, William Samuel O'Neal, reared seven children in that hamlet, died on Dec. 12 at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital from complications of Covid-19.

Gert Murphy, a resident of South Etna Avenue in Montauk, who in her 82 years was a nun, teacher, volunteer, artist, writer, and onetime "hell-raising urchin in her Morningside Heights neighborhood" in Manhattan, died on Dec. 16 at Sky View Rehabilitation and Health Care in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. The cause was Covid-19, though Ms. Murphy had had a debilitating stroke in August.

Mary Schellinger of Sag Harbor, a former French teacher at the Amagansett and Springs Schools, died on Dec. 14 of complications of Parkinson's disease. She was 72. 

Pamela Lee Black, a food service employee for the East Hampton School District for many years, died on Dec. 14 of respiratory failure as a complication of coronavirus infection at the Westhampton Care Center. She was 80 and had been ill with lung cancer.

Teresa Flanagan of Montauk, an accomplished artist, illustrator, and business owner who was known as Terry, died on Aug. 8 at home, surrounded by family. She was 92.

The internationally known textile designer, collector, and author died at his home at the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton on Tuesday.

Anton Hallinger of Montauk and Glendale, Queens, died last Thursday at home in Glendale. He had just turned 95 in October and had been in hospice care for only a day, after returning from Long Island Jewish Hospital in Forest Hills to be at home with family members around him.

Charles Mac Meyer of Hampton Bays, a Suffolk County senior public health sanitarian for 35 years, died on Sunday in St. Louis. The former East Hampton resident was 77 and had been ill for seven months.

The Star has received word of the unexpected death of Karie Renee Gardiner, formerly of East Hampton Village, who was found at home in Fullerton, Calif., on Dec. 3. Ms. Gardiner, who had been in declining health, was 62.

Carla Margaret Grimm of Montauk, who had been an employee at the former Gin Beach Market there, died of a heart attack on Nov. 17 at the Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in Lakeway, Tex. She was 64.

Robert P. Lawler, a member of the East Hampton Fire Department's Company No. 6 for 40 years, died of cancer at home here on Dec. 2 in the company of family and friends. He was 68 and had been ill for four years.

Selma Stein of Manhattan, Springs, and Boca Raton, Fla., died on Nov. 20 at home in Greenwich Village. Ms. Stein, who had been a longtime social worker and who loved the theater, was 89 and had been in diminishing health for five years, her family said.

Christopher Avery Clark, a lifelong visitor to Drew Lane in East Hampton and the founder of Clark Construction in New York City, died of congestive heart failure in New York on Sept. 26. He was 62.

John J. Mullen, an environmental activist and founding partner of Mullen & McCaffrey Communications, died of a heart attack on Friday at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. He was 73.

Richard Lawless of Springs, a self-employed painter and writer, died on Nov. 23 at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Quiogue. He was 75.

Howard John Lebwith was recognized around town as the dentist who ran, sometimes from his house in Springs all the way to his office on Main Street in East Hampton. Mr. Lebwith died at home, surrounded by his loved ones, on Nov. 20 at the age of 90.