Skip to main content

Mary Ann Whitehead

Thu, 12/14/2023 - 09:07

Aug. 12, 1938 - Nov. 3, 2023

Mary Ann Whitehead, a New York City schoolteacher for many years, died at home in Sag Harbor on Nov. 3 after a short illness. She was 85. 

Mrs. Whitehead was a board member of the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor and sang as an alto with the Choral Society of the Hamptons. She belonged to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Manhattan and sang in its choir as well.

In the Azurest community in Sag Harbor, she was a well-known “beach potato” who, with a group of friends, spent almost every summer day on the beach. She enjoyed doing the New York Times crossword puzzles.

A daughter of T. Colson Woody and Irma Madden Woody, she was born on Aug. 12, 1938, in Newark and grew up in Orange, N.J., spending every summer in Sag Harbor from the age of 7 until she and her husband became full-time residents in 1989.

She graduated from Smith College, for which she served as class secretary for several terms, and earned a master’s degree at New York University.

For 49 years, she was married to Arch S. Whitehead, proprietor of the executive search firm Arch S. Whitehead Associates, first in Manhattan and later in Sag Harbor, where she worked after her retirement from teaching. Mr. Whitehead died in 2009. Later, Mrs. Whitehead was engaged part time in her family’s funeral business in Orange, the Woody Home for Services, where her funeral service took place on Nov. 11.

She is survived by three children: Ann Moore of White Plains, Colson Whitehead of Manhattan, and Lynn Whitehead of Springfield, Mass. Her son Clarke Whitehead died in 2018.

She is also survived by two sisters, Ida Woody-Wells and Irma Francis, both of New Jersey, and five grandchildren, Alexander and Christopher Moore, Richard Goods, and Fig and Beckett Whitehead.

Villages

Listed: House in Dunes With Pedigree in the Arts

Through a window in the second-floor den of a house on Cranberry Hole Road, the undeveloped dunescape of Napeague State Parks comes into view. The house — on the market with Sotheby’s at $3.8 million — was sited deliberately to take in as much of the landscape as possible.

Jul 31, 2025

This Time, the Treasure Was Personal

Jess Garay, an avid thrifter, is “always hunting for a treasure” when shopping for vintage clothing. But earlier this month in Amagansett, she found one she is sure she will never be able to top: a jersey that had belonged to her late cousin, who died at 24.

Jul 24, 2025

Seniors Mourn Loss of Nutrition Center Director

People who attend the Montauk Playhouse’s Senior Nutrition Program are in an uproar over the recent resignation of its executive director, Anna Ostroff, and angrily let the program’s board of directors know it during a combative meeting on Tuesday.

Jul 24, 2025

 

Your support for The East Hampton Star helps us deliver the news, arts, and community information you need. Whether you are an online subscriber, get the paper in the mail, delivered to your door in Manhattan, or are just passing through, every reader counts. We value you for being part of The Star family.

Your subscription to The Star does more than get you great arts, news, sports, and outdoors stories. It makes everything we do possible.