Obituaries

    As if by magic — though in reality it took an indomitable spirit, tireless cajoling, and a deep belief in music’s universal value — Ruth Widder routinely transformed the folding chairs and wooden bleachers of the Montauk School gymnasium into Lincoln Center for over two decades and counting.

    Ms. Widder died at her Manhattan residence on Feb. 20. She was 84. The cause of death is not known; except for a cold the week before, she had not been ill. A memorial service was held yesterday at the Riverside Memorial Chapel in Manhattan.

    Samuel J. Spielberg, a resident of Springs, died on Friday following an auto accident. He was 31. A memorial service was held yesterday afternoon at Ashawagh Hall in Springs.

    The son of Jason and Sherry Spielberg of Springs, Mr. Spielberg is survived by his parents, his wife, Kariann Spielberg of Springs, and his sister, Summer Wolff of Italy, along with a 6-year-old daughter, Bianca Mar Spielberg.

    Vito Sisti, a Springs auto mechanic-turned art curator, died unexpectedly at home on Monday of causes that are yet to be determined. He was 51.

    The unofficial “mayor” of Springs, Mr. Sisti was an auto mechanic who became known for Vito Sisti Presents art shows at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, which he organized at regular intervals throughout the year for the last two decades. Not only a showcase for the work of local artists, the exhibitions became an occasion for opening, and sometimes closing, parties that were highly anticipated and brought community members together.

    Antoinette J. Doherty, who was 85, died at home in Amagansett on Feb. 12 after a long and crippling battle with fast-onset dementia. Ms. Doherty, who was called Ann, had a house in the hamlet since the 1970s and was a former trustee of the Amagansett Library.

    Louise Jensen, who was a New York Telephone Company  operator in East Hampton for about 15 years, died on Feb. 10 at F.F. Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua, N.Y., due to complications of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 85.

    Marilyn Morris Johnson, a dedicated member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton and a former resident of Woodbine Drive in Springs, died on Feb. 11 at the Westhampton Care Center, after an illness. She was 78.

    Marsha (Nicky) Edlich of Woodcrest Drive in Springs and Lafayette Street in Manhattan died at home in Manhattan on Jan. 31 at the age of 70. Her family said the cause of death was ovarian cancer, which she had survived for 10 years.

    Ms. Edlich taught French at the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan for some 35 years. She had previously been chief of operations for Club Med USA. She also was a member of the board of the New York Women’s Foundation, and had served as chair of its annual benefit breakfast.

    Myrna Omang, a retired advertising executive, died on Feb. 1 at her Breeze Hill Road residence in East Hampton, where she had lived with her partner of 32 years, Beverly Matthews, whom she married in August 2010. She was 78 and had acute myeloid leukemia, Ms. Matthews said.

ay, Montauk, and Jupiter, Fla., died on Feb. 10 after a year’s illness. He was 92.     Mr. Mandel was a founder and partner of Golden and Mandel, a New York City law firm. He had been a lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force during World War II.

    Robert E. Fordham, a lifelong resident of Sag Harbor and a man who was described as kind and gentle, died of complications related to quadruple bypass surgery while at his vacation home in Port Charlotte, Fla., on Feb. 6. He was 69 years old.

    Described by his family as an 11th generation Fordham in Sag Harbor, Mr. Fordham was born to Hiram (Hydie) and Dorothy Fordham on July 13, 1943. He left for the Vietnam War shortly after graduating from Pierson High School. Following two years of service in the Army, he returned home to marry the former Eileen Archibald in 1968.

    Sally Penalosa-Wilson of Montauk, a bookkeeper by trade who emigrated from the Philippines in 1986, died on Feb. 12 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City of breast cancer. She was 76.

    Mrs. Penalosa-Wilson’s daughter Cecy Wilson of Yonkers said her mother was known for her hula dancing. “She loved life. She loved to entertain. She had many friends, and they all knew her for her hula.”

    Diane Wolkstein, a summer visitor to Springs and world-renowned storyteller, died in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, last Thursday following emergency heart surgery. She was 70.

    Ms. Wolkstein is credited with reviving an interest in storytelling, particularly the folklore of countries familiar and more exotic, as New York City’s official storyteller, a position she held from 1967 to 1971. In the year-round post, she would visit parks and schools and share stories from standard fairy tales as well as those lesser known and gathered from all over the world.

    Betty Barton Evans, a summer resident of Pondview Lane, East Hampton, who worked during World War II for the United States Coordinator of Information, the precursor to the Office of Strategic Services, and who later bred a Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes-winning horse, died at home in Greenwich, Conn., on Feb. 5. She was 89. The cause was gastric cancer, her family said.

    Ms. Evans and her second husband, Thomas Mellon Evans, owned Buckland Farms, a Virginia horse farm where they bred thoroughbred horses, including Pleasant Colony, the 1981 Derby and Preakness winner.

    Kelly Anne Doroski loved being a stay-at-home mom and spending her time with the two men in her life, her fiancé, Max Corrigan, and their 22-month-old son, Joshua Aiden.

    Born on May 15, 1989, in Southampton to William J. Doroski and the former Patricia L. Smith, she grew up in Sag Harbor, and graduated from Pierson High School.

    The Rev. Denis C. Brunelle will officiate at a funeral for Marilyn Johnson of  Springs on Wednesday at 10 a.m. at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. Ms. Johnson died on Monday at the Westhampton Care Center. Her ashes will be buried following the service in the church’s memorial garden.

    Those organizing the funeral have said that Ms. Johnson did not care for flowers and would not have wanted them. They suggested donations instead to St. Luke’s. An obituary for her will appear in a future issue.

    Pierre Lucien Schoenheimer, a financier and decades-long summer resident of East Hampton, died at his apartment in Manhattan on Jan. 25. The family did not provide a cause of death. He was 79.

    Mr. Schoenheimer’s parents purchased a house in Montauk in the 1950s. He and his family remained connected to the area ever since.

    Mr. Schoenheimer was born in Paris in July 1933 to Fritz R. Schoenheimer and the former Ellen Berliner. The family fled Europe in 1941, ultimately settling in New York.

    Sallie Rae Hammer, described by her family as a 12th-generation Bonacker and known as Aunt Sal, died last Thursday at the age 60 after a long illness.

    She had lived in Jonesville, Va., where she died, for the last eight years. Prior to that she spent all of her life in Springs, where people knew her as a straight talker who “would give you the shirt off her back” and make people laugh at the same time, according to her daughter Michele Hammer Hill.

    Suzanne May Marks of Treescape Drive in East Hampton and Highland Beach, Fla., died on Jan. 31 in Boca Raton, Fla. At the age of 80. She had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer a little over a year ago.

    Ms. Marks, who for three decades spent several months of each year in East Hampton, was born in New York City on May 16, 1932, to Edward and Piri Schweiger. She grew up in the city and attended Hunter College there.

    Allen Hovey Good, who spent the last 14 summers on Old Orchard Lane in East Hampton, died on Jan. 21 in Naples, Fla., after a short illness. He was 82.

    Mr. Good was born in Newton, Mass., on July 5, 1930, to Herbert and Elizabeth Good. After graduating from high school in Newton, he served in the Army for a year before attending the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1954.

    Brandon Burns Stewart, who found East Hampton a vital extension of his life in the Manhattan art world, died of cancer on Nov. 2 in New York City. He had been sick for two months. He was 58.

    Born in Manhattan, his parents, Jack and Margo Stewart, were both artists, as well as activists for artists. Growing up surrounded by art and artists, he ended up making it his life’s work.

    As a child, he attended the Rudolf Steiner School, then the Hackley School, and went on to college at Case Western Reserve University.

    Asked in 2011 how she felt about turning 100, Elsie Garretson of East Hampton told The East Hampton Star, “I really don’t feel any different. You just go with the years, you keep breathing and living until God says, ‘Come on Elsie, you’ve spent enough time on earth.’ ”

    She had been “a great worrier,” she said. “Then I realized one day, why do you worry? Nothing comes from it. Try to take things in stride. Ride with the waves.”

    Kurt Kahofer of Wainscott, a maitre d’ at Herb McCarthy’s Bowden Square, which in its day was one of Southampton’s most popular restaurants, and a fixture for 35 years at the “21” Club in New York City, died at the age of 80 on Jan. 28 in Florida. His death was unexpected and the cause had not yet been determined, his family said this week.

    Louis C. McDonald, who retired from a career in distribution and freight management to live in Montauk and fish aboard his boat, the Hattaduit, died on Tuesday at home on Old West Lake Drive. He was 77 and had lung cancer, his family said.

    Mr. McDonald, who was known as Lou, was a member of the Montauk Friends of Erin and active with the Montauk Lions Club, among other organizations. He was a past commodore of the Wyncote Club in Huntington, an honorary member of the Joseph J. Gorman Knights of Columbus in Syosset, and a member of the Glendale Kiwanis Club.

    Richard L. Sharpe, a part-time Amagansett resident who had a long career on the business side of the radio industry, died on Jan. 1 in Locust Valley, where he also had a house. He was 72. The cause was a heart attack, his family said.

    Mr. Sharpe began his career as an advertising salesman before moving into national sales for large radio groups. He later ran a New York City radio representation company.

    William J. Hood, a retired senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency and a writer, died at home in Amagansett early on the morning of Jan. 28. He would have turned 93 on April 19.

    During World War II, having just transferred from the Army into military intelligence, Mr. Hood volunteered for the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the C.I.A. He worked for a time on Ultra, a top-secret exploitation of coded German messages that the British and Americans had cracked and that the Germans thought was invulnerable, Enigma.

    Alice Vera Darden, who had been a devoted member of the Bridgehampton First Baptist Church since 1935, died at the age of 101 on Jan. 23 and was eulogized there at a service conducted by the Rev. Frank Bryant on Tuesday.

    Born on Aug. 31, 1911, Mrs. Darden died at the home of one of her granddaughters, Alice Johnson, in Southampton.

    A Sag Harbor native who grew up on Bridge Street in that village, then married an East Hampton man and lived on Pantigo Road in East Hampton Village, Barbara P. Lester died on Sunday at the Riverhead Care Center. She was 93.

    Mrs. Lester worked as a housekeeper for many East Hampton residents, including the actress Dina Merrill, her family said.

    Claude Simon Sarfati, who owned the Huntting Inn in East Hampton for a season and managed the Bridgehampton Club for six years, died after a brief illness on Sunday at his house in East Hampton, three days short of his 83rd birthday.

    William Martin Stahl, M.D., a surgeon and professor of medicine who was considered a master teacher by his peers and legions of students and residents whom he trained, died at home in Larchmont, N.Y., on Dec. 22, at the age of 90. His family described his death as natural and peaceful.

    A memorial service for Dr. Ethel Person of Amagansett and Manhattan, sponsored by the Psychoanalytic Center of Columbia University, will take place on Feb. 9 from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Uris Auditorium of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, 1300 York Avenue in Manhattan.

    Dr. Person, who died in October, was among those profiled in The New York Times Magazine’s annual end-of-year “The Lives They Lived” issue.