Doris Brill Karp, a founding member of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton, “felt passionately about being a part of this community,” her family wrote. While she had always worked outside the home, including as manager of the Atlantic Terrace hotel in Montauk, she also believed in the importance of volunteering and did so with such organizations as the Ladies Village Improvement Society, Girl Scouts of America, Reading for the Blind, the Retreat, and Hadassah.
She died in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Oct. 19, three weeks shy of her 100th birthday.
Mrs. Karp, who was born in New York City on Nov. 14, 1923, to David Zucker and the former Fran Froman, and spent most of her childhood in Kingston, N.Y., attended Rider College in New Jersey as a business major at a time when not many women were going to college.
It was there that she met and fell in love with a fellow business major, Frank Brill. When World War II broke out, both did their parts: He enlisted and she became a nurse’s aide. She never finished college, but when Mr. Brill returned from the war, the two married and moved to East Hampton, which was his hometown.
“Doris always felt so fortunate to raise her family in East Hampton, and to have been accepted so fully within the community,” her family wrote. The couple raised their three children here, and Mrs. Karp “loved having an open-door policy” with her children’s friends.
Mr. Brill, also a founding member of the Jewish Center, died in 1996.
When she was 80, Mrs. Karp “beat breast cancer like a champ,” her family said. Around this time she and her second husband, Jack Karp, moved to Florida, where she volunteered at Planned Parenthood, took community college courses, and became a member of the local theater.
Mr. Karp died in 2005. Her son Jeffrey Brill also died before her.
She is survived by her son Joel Brill of Los Angeles and by a daughter, Judy Linker of Titusville, N.J. She leaves three grandchildren, Lauren Goodman of Los Angeles, Jenna Brill Cadwell of Haddon Heights, N.J., and David Brill of Celina, Tex., and six great-grandchildren.
“Family was the most important part of Doris’s life,” they wrote, from visits to taking delight in photos.
A memorial in her honor will be held at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons at a date to be determined. Her family has suggested donations to the Planned Parenthood of Federation of America at plannedparenthood.org.
