Clara Hamilton, who had been the secretary of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church for 30 years before she retired about 10 years ago, died on Jan. 18 at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton, where she had been for six months. She was 85 and had been in poor health for a number of years, her family said.

In addition to her work at the church, she was a member of its women’s guild and had been a past member of the Amagansett Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary. She also served for 15 years as the treasurer of Ducks Unlimited’s East Hampton chapter.

She was born in Greenport on Aug. 4, 1931, to Carl Creaser and the former Elsie Berg. Her childhood years were spent in the fishing village in Montauk, where her father ran a fishing dragger. After the Navy took over the land along Fort Pond Bay in the run-up to World War II, her family moved to Amagansett, living for a time on Oak Lane before having a house built on Miankoma Lane.

She graduated from East Hampton High School with the class of 1949.

Once she married Richard M. Hamilton of Amagansett, the couple lived on Windmill Lane in that hamlet for 35 years and then moved to the Hamilton family house on Abraham’s Path in East Hampton after her husband’s parents died. She was fond of needlepoint, crossword puzzles, and reading, her family said.

Mr. Hamilton died in 2007.

She is survived by a sister, Evelyn Merrill of East Hampton, and a brother, George Creaser of Micco, Fla. Two sons, Richard Hamilton Jr. and Carl Hamilton, live in Amagansett. She is also survived by three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

A brother, Carl Creaser Jr., died before her. Her family expressed their thanks to Lisa Charde and the East Hampton Town Adult Day Care program for all they did for her during the past six and a half years.

A service was held at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton on Saturday, with burial following at Oak Grove Cemetery in Amagansett.

Memorial donations have been suggested to the Amagansett Presbyterian Church or to the Amagansett Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary, P.O. Box 911, Amagansett 11930.

Despite his young age, Matthew Lester, who was a senior at East Hampton High School, felt a great civic duty, not only to his community, but to the whole world, his parents said. From writing a letter to President Barack Obama about climate change in 2009, to a mission trip to Cuba, or his proposed Eagle Scout project of planting a pollinator garden, Matthew looked for ways to make a difference.

A member of Cub Scout Pack 426, he bridged up to Boy Scout Troop 298 in 2010. He participated in many community service and Eagle Scout projects with his fellow scouts, and was in the planning stages of his own Eagle project, a perennial garden that would provide food for bees throughout the year at the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum. The plight of the honeybee led to a hobby in beekeeping, which became a family affair. His mother said he was so concerned about the declining numbers of bees that he wanted to raise awareness.

As a freshman in high school, he wrote a letter to this paper challenging people in East Hampton not to put herbicides or pesticides on their lawns because, as he explained, poisoning dandelions means poisoning bees. “Let’s see who can have the most dandelions in their lawn this season. Perhaps dandelions could turn into a new fashion in lawns,” he wrote.

That concern sparked his Eagle Scout project. His troop has promised to continue his project and dedicate it to his memory, his parents said.

Matthew, who lived on Copeces Lane in Springs, died of an apparent suicide on Jan. 16. He was 17.

Also very active in the East Hampton Presbyterian Church, he participated in the children’s choir, the handbell choir, and the youth group. At the age of 12, he was ordained a deacon, a position that until then had been held only by adults, his mother said. During the summer of 2015, he went with a group of youths and adults from the church on a weeklong mission trip to Cuba to teach Bible school in Güines. His mother said he had hoped to go back one day.

Matthew Lawrence Lester was born on June 8, 1999, at St. Charles Hospital in Smithtown to Jeffrey T. Lester and the former Dana Miller. He attended Picket Fences Daycare, and then the Springs School from prekindergarten through eighth grade. He started East Hampton High School in 2012.

In 11th grade, he decided to attend a new Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services program that focused heavily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It was there that he became involved with a program called Skills U.S.A., and he helped organize a Quiz Bowl team. With his leadership, the team won gold medals at the Skills U.S.A. Region VI Regional Championships, and went on to compete at the state competition. He had returned to East Hampton High School for his senior year.

Matthew loved to bowl and had been bitten by the acting bug, his family said. Since the 10th grade, he participated in school productions, including “Grease” in 2015, in which he played Vince Fontaine. He met his girlfriend and best friend, Iris Arellano, while working on the musical.

He began bowling at the age of 5 and was devastated when East Hampton Bowl closed in 2013, but it did not keep him from the sport, his parents said. He bowled on a traveling youth league, Bowlympics, and made the trek to Shirley every Saturday with his friend, Sammi Schurr. “He found many special friends there that were very important to him,” his mother said.

In addition to his parents, Matthew is survived by his sisters, Michelle Lester of Smithtown and Meredith Lester of Springs, a grandmother, Linda Miller of Springs, and a grandfather, Harry Lester. He also leaves a host of aunts, uncles, cousins, and a niece and nephew.

A service was held at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church on Saturday, with the Rev. Scott McCachren and the Rev. Nancy Howarth officiating. His ashes will be buried at Round Swamp Farm Cemetery at a later date.

Visiting hours for Victoria M. Carillo of Surfside Drive in Montauk and Key West will be at Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton on Friday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m.  A funeral Mass for her will be said at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. Burial will follow at Fort Hill Cemetery in Montauk. Ms. Carillo was 70. An obituary for her will appear at a later date.

Harvey M. Spear, an attorney who served with the United States Marine Corps during World War II, died on Jan. 22 at his home in Manhattan. A longtime resident of East Hampton, as well, he had been ill for some time. He was 94 years old.

Mr. Spear practiced law at private firms in New York and in a variety of roles for the U.S. government. After graduating in 1948 from Harvard Law School, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.; as legal assistant to the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel, and as an examiner in the Division of Corporate Finance.

In 1950 he was a special assistant in the Justice Department to Attorney General J. Howard McGrath. In 1956, he was legislative assistant to Senator John O. Pastore, and in 1962, he was special counsel to Senator Claiborne Pell. Both senators were from Rhode Island, where Mr. Spear was born.

In 1954, he formed his own firm, Spear and Hill, in New York City. Later, he was a partner at Jacobs, Persinger, and Parker, and counsel to Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft and to McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney, and Carpenter.

Mr. Spear had extensive investigative experience with matters involving the Securities Exchange Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He called his work as chief counsel to a commission investigating the 1991 collapse of the Rhode Island Share and Depositor’s Indemnity Corporation “the most rewarding experience” of his professional career, according to his family.

He loved East Hampton, where he and his wife, the cookbook author Ruth Spear, had a house on Hither Lane. He also loved and owned horses, and enjoyed jumping and fox hunts. As president of the Washington International Horse Show, he was instrumental in rescuing the organization from bankruptcy.

Mr. Spear was a classical music fan from childhood, when he played the violin. A former chairman of the National Council of the Metropolitan Opera’s executive committee, he also organized the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and served as its president and treasurer.

He was a longtime student of international affairs, including the Spanish Civil War, and a Shakespeare scholar.

From 1963 to 1969, Mr. Spear was treasurer for the New York City Democratic Committee. He was on the administrative council of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, and on the president’s council of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

He was born on May 24, 1922, in Providence, a son of Alfred Spear and the former Esther Marcus. As a sophomore at Brown University in 1940, before America entered World War II, he enlisted in the Marines, and was commissioned a first lieutenant after graduating. He was assigned at first to radar duty on Midway Atoll in the Pacific. After a year, told he would be reassigned there, he responded that he had not enlisted to sit out the war on Midway; he was then sent, via Guadalcanal, to the island of Peleliu, now called Palau, where Marines fought from September to November 1944 before prevailing. Upon landing on the island, while a battle with Japanese forces was raging nearby, he participated in Yom Kippur services alongside a recently secured airstrip runway.

His journey to Guadalcanal, with Mr. Spear dozing en route, was depicted in a photograph that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post.

He returned home to Providence in 1944 and was discharged from the Marines the following year. An active Brown alumnus, Mr. Spear was appointed chief marshal of the university’s 224th commencement in 1992, the year of his 50th reunion.

Mr. Spear married the former Ruth Abramson on June 27, 1965. The couple had two daughters. Elizabeth Spear predeceased her father; Jessica Spear of New York City survives. Also surviving is a brother, Gerald Spear of Newport Beach, Calif., and a granddaughter. Two brothers and a sister died before him.

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman officiated last Thursday at a funeral service at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, of which Mr. Spear was an early member. Burial followed at the temple’s Shaarey Pardes Cemetery in Springs.

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Correction: The photograph that originally appeared with this obituary was printed in error and was not a photograph of Harvey Spear. 

Funeral services for Donald M. Halsey of Fithian Lane, East Hampton, will be held at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church tomorrow at 11 a.m.

A full obituary for Mr. Halsey, who was 93, will appear in a future issue.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., for Mary Hawke, 89, of Southampton, who died on Jan. 20. Funeral services were held on Jan. 23 at the Southampton Presbyterian Church, followed by private burial in Flemington, N.J.

A full obituary will appear in a future issue.

Monty Silver, a talent agent whose clients were among the stars of stage and screen, died at his home in Springs on Jan. 19 of bladder cancer. He was 83 and had been ill for 13 months. His family said he had been treasured for his warmth and sharp sense of humor.

Mr. Silver, who started an eponymous agency in New York City in the 1950s and launched SMS Talent in Los Angeles with two partners in the 1990s, discovered and helped develop the careers of Peter Boyle, Lou Gossett Jr., Frank Langella, Jon Voight, Roy Scheider, and Bonnie Bedelia. He later represented Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, Sylvia Sidney, Celeste Holm, Reed Birney, and many others. He also discovered the Emmy Award-winning actor Zeljko Ivanek as a last-minute understudy at Williamstown.

According to his wife, Tracy Jamar, who survives, Laurence Fishburne was another of his discoveries. “I was with Monty when Laurence told him during a chance meeting at Joe Allen’s [a Manhattan theater district restaurant] that he had named his daughter after him.” Her name is Montana and he calls her Monty.

Monty Silver was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 7, 1933, to Irving Silver and the former Lillian Rock. He attended Erasmus Hall High School and earned a B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1957. He had enlisted in the Army in 1951 and served at a postal officer in Biarritz, France.

Mr. Silver lived in New York City and had a summer home on Fire Island until 1986, when he moved to Springs. After retiring in 2003, he made his permanent home here.

“Monty loved telling and hearing a good story — even if it was at his expense,” Ms. Jamar said. “He was infuriatingly and delightfully multifaceted, from being quite particular about certain things to his wonderful sense of humor. He had a caring generosity on many levels. Without him everything has dimmed.”

Ms. Jamar said her husband was a voracious reader of nonfiction, history, and biographies, especially theater biographies. Among his many other interests were the New York Giants, both football and baseball, the New York Mets, the New York Rangers, horse racing, card, word, and number games, and crossword puzzles. He also collected American country antiques with his wife.

Charles Silver, a nephew who is a partner in SMS Talent, said, “I’ve been reminded a few times recently of something Monty said when I started out at the agency: ‘The only thing harder to deal with than an out-of-work actor is a working actor.’ While that was often true, he never stopped trying to get them that next job.”

In addition to Ms. Jamar, two daughters, Deirdre Silver and Emily Barere, both of Hoboken, N.J., and three grandchildren survive. A first marriage, to Pamela Burrell, ended in divorce.

Mr. Silver's ashes are to be dispersed at his favorite local places, his family said, and a memorial service will be held in the spring. Memorial contributions have been suggested to the Actors Fund, 729 Seventh Avenue, 10th floor, New York 10019.

Eugene Lyle Stoler of East Hampton and New York City died at home in the city on Saturday. He was 80 years old and had had leukemia for a long time.

Mr. Stoler was a certified public accountant and a member of the New York Bar Association. He had a degree from

Brooklyn Law School and a master’s degree in taxation from New York University. His family said he was considered by many of his peers and friends to be a “walking encyclopedia” of tax information. At his death, he was a partner emeritus at Raich, Ende, Malter & Company in New York City.

Mr. Stoler began his career at his father’s firm, Elias A. Stoler and Company, in Manhattan. Besides his accounting and law practice, he was an adjunct assistant professor at Long Island University, a frequent lecturer for the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants and the Bar Association, as well as a contributor to professional publications and an editor of the Journal of Taxation.

 Mr. Stoler, who was called Gene, was born in Brooklyn in October of 1936 to Elias Stoler and the former Katherine Levine. After primary and secondary schooling in Brooklyn, he graduated from the Wharton School in Philadelphia. An athlete, he played Division I lacrosse at the University of Pennsylvania and also competed in water polo and swimming. He was a certified scuba diver, had a captain’s license, and earned a black belt in tae kwon do.

He was a proud member, according to his family, of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary and a part owner of the former Captain’s Cove Marina in Montauk. He enjoyed fishing and cruising in his boat, the E&L’s Midabet III, off Montauk and at one time ran a charter boat, the Midabet I. His son Michael Stoler, of Chatham, N.J., said his father would have loved to make a career of boating and fishing, but he had been discouraged by his parents.

After remarrying in 2008, he and his wife, the former Linda Landau, divided their time between the South Fork and Manhattan. In addition to his wife and Michael Stoler, Mr. Stoler is survived by his other children from a previous marriage, David Stoler of Jericho and Beth Glazer of Montvale, N.J. He also is survived by his wife’s children, Debra Freedman of Syosset and Dina Garza of Columbia, Md., 10 grandchildren, and a sister, Diane Levy of Chicago.

A private memorial service was held on Tuesday in the city. Donations have been suggested to the Coast Guard Auxiliary, cgaux.org, and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, vnsny.com.

George Ward Jr., a former Sag Harbor police officer and 29-year Fire Department volunteer, died at his home in the village on Jan. 8 at the age of 75. Death was attributed to B-cell lymphoma.

Mr. Ward had an innate knack for things mechanical and, after graduating from Pierson High School, he began working for the garage business his father had started, Ward’s Garage, and also worked from 1970 to 1979 as a policeman. He later switched to a garage in Southampton.

He was born at Southampton Hospital on Feb. 24, 1941, one of two sons and four daughters of George Ward Sr. and the former Julia Buttonow of Sag Harbor. His brother, Donald, died before him.

On May 5, 1963, he married the former Carol Vernon; the couple had known each other from a young age. When their two children were grown, they moved to Daytona Beach, Fla. A few years after the 2006 death of his wife, Mr. Ward sold their Florida house and moved to Corbin, Ky., where his son, George William Ward, lives. After that he came home to Sag Harbor.

In addition to his son, Mr. Ward is survived by a daughter, Cindy Capalbo of Sag Harbor. He leaves four sisters, Eileen Iacono of East Hampton, Miriam Guildi of Southampton, Kathleen Spalding of West Islip, and Judith Lattanzio of North Sea; two grandchildren, 14 nieces and nephews, and 20 great-nieces and great-nephews.

Ms. Capalbo said her father collected beat-up old cars, classic or not, that he would restore meticulously and then sell. While living in Florida, he was a member of several car clubs.

Mr. Ward’s family treasured him, she said, as did his many friends and his comrades at the Sag Harbor Fire Department, who helped get him home from Kentucky when he was already ailing. “The last-moment memories that were carried with George in his passing live on in the hearts of his firemen brothers, who enjoyed his visits to the department and were by his final resting bed,” she wrote.

The family received visitors at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in Sag Harbor on Jan. 11 from 4 to 8 p.m., with a walkthrough by the Sag Harbor Fire Department Honor Guard. A funeral Mass was said on Jan. 12 by the Rev. Manuel Zuzarte at St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Sag Harbor.

Memorial donations may be sent to the Fire Department or its Benevolent Association, at P.O. Box 209, Sag Harbor 11963, or to East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978.

Robert D. Hildreth, who won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star as a soldier in Germany during World War II, died at home on Tuesday morning. Although he had had other health problems, his death was caused by a cerebral blood clot. He was 94 years old.

Mr. Hildreth was born on Jan. 12, 1923, into one of Bridgehampton’s oldest families. His only sibling, a sister, died before him. He enlisted in the Army after graduating from Bridgehampton High School. Once back from the war, in 1945, he met and married the former Olive Marie Ranalli, who died in September. After living for a while in Bristol, Conn., and in Sea Cliff, where their daughter was born, the couple moved to East Hampton, where Mrs. Hildreth had grown up, in addition to Greenport and Sag Harbor. Mr. Hildreth went to work in customer service for the Long Island Lighting Company.

In addition to his daughter, Marlene Hildreth Ross of East Hampton, Mr. Hildreth is survived by two nephews and a niece. He was to be cremated and his ashes buried at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in East Hampton; plans had not been confirmed by press time.