Stephen Randolph Gretz, a finance executive who had a house in East Hampton for 50 years, died in Chicago of a stroke on Jan. 21. Known as Randy, he was 74.
Mr. Gretz met his future first wife, Connie Vigneri, while at Trinity College in Hartford. She grew up on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, where her father owned a barber shop. Married on June 24, 1972, they lived in New York City but always had a house here. She died in 1996.
Mr. Gretz, who had an an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, worked for Chase Manhattan Bank and Bache, Halsey, Stuart, an investment bank, both in New York City, before moving to Merrill Lynch, where he was a financial adviser in New York and Chicago for more than 45 years.
He was a member of the Maidstone Club in East Hampton and the Devon Yacht Club in Amagansett, as well as a benefactor of the East Hampton Library, where the Connie V. Gretz Reading Room is named after his first wife. He also belonged to the Richmond County Country Club on Staten Island and the Penn Club in Manhattan.
Mr. Gretz was born in Philadelphia on May 26, 1948, to William Gretz and the former Janice Dobson. He grew up in that city before the family moved to East Aurora, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo, where he attended the Nichols School.
In 2017, he married Patricia Paarlberg, who survives. His other survivors include his children, Laura Cassidy of Holbrook, Stephen Randolph Gretz Jr. of Brooklyn, and James Paul Gretz of Nantucket, Mass., as well as four stepchildren, Brittany Duncan, Catriona Duncan, Peter Paarlberg Stevens, and Andrew Paarlberg Stevens.
His siblings, Bill Gretz of Lake Bluff, Ill., Libby Blank of Charlottesville, Va., and Rick Gretz of Louisville, Ky., also survive.
The family will receive visitors on Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Saturday morning at 11 at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church here, to be followed by burial at the church cemetery and a reception in the Baldwin Room of the East Hampton Library.
The family has suggested memorial donations in his name to the East Hampton Library, at easthamptonlibrary.org/help/donate, or the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation, easthamptonhealthcare.org.
