Samuel Fertig, a former advertising executive who lived on Harbor View Lane in Springs and in Manhattan, died at home in Springs last Thursday. He was 85 and had been diagnosed with lymphoma six months earlier.
In his career, Mr. Fertig worked at the Richard K. Manoff Inc. and McCaffrey & McCall agencies. Later, he moved into real estate, working for Brown Harris Stevens in Bridgehampton.
“He was the most low-key real estate agent you’ll ever meet,” his daughter, Beth Fertig of Manhattan, remembered. “He was genuine, he loved learning about architecture and the Hamptons. He made a lot of close friends through Brown Harris Stevens.”
Mr. Fertig enjoyed music, theater, the New York Knicks, politics, and surfcasting.
He had learned to fish at Rockaway Beach in Queens, his daughter said, and while fishing in Springs one day he met Don Klein and Barry McCallion, who became lifelong friends and fishing buddies, the men making many an early-morning trip to surfcast at Montauk’s ocean beaches.
He met the former Davie Miller on a blind date. They married in 1963. She died in 1974. They had one child together.
Mr. Fertig and the former Florence Reiff, a co-worker at Richard K. Manoff Inc., were married in 1975 and moved to Great Neck the following year. After his daughter graduated from high school, the couple returned to Manhattan and later built a house in East Hampton’s Northwest Woods. Mr. Fertig’s second wife died in 2004.
After her death, “he went through a hard time,” his daughter said. “What was remarkable was the way he still embraced life.” He took an apartment on the Upper West Side and immersed himself in cultural events at places like the Juilliard School, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“My friends all adopted him,” his daughter said. A 2006 trip to the Galapagos Islands helped to “get him out of his funk, and he just loved seeing the nature there, the animals, the birds, and being on the water,” she said. “It was very healing for him. He found it meditative.”
Mr. Fertig and his daughter were very close, she said, “because we’ve been through so much.” She recalled a caring man. “For a man born in 1938, he was very open-minded and in touch with his feelings,” she said. “He taught me so much about how to live and love.”
Samuel Fertig was born on April 5, 1938, in New York City to Carl Fertig and the former Minnie Jacobs. He grew up in Brooklyn and graduated from James Madison High School there. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a sister-in-law, Eleanor Chandler of Lenox, Mass., a brother-in-law, Warren Miller of Kernersville, N.C., and his nieces and nephews, Barbara, Leigh, Larry, and Douglas Chandler, Anderson Miller, and Judy, Jack, and Allen Rosenberg. A sister died before him.
A burial service was held on Monday at Beth Israel Cemetery in Woodbridge, N.J. Mr. Fertig’s family is grateful for the assistance of East End Hospice and has suggested memorial contributions to it at eeh.org.
