For Phil Gamble, it all began in Montauk.
He loved to fish, particularly offshore fishing, which was what brought him to the South Fork more than 60 years ago. It was where his relationship with his wife, Sandy DiSunno Gamble, flourished.
On the South Fork, he devoted many hours to community service, as a founding member of the Amagansett Ambulance Association and longtime member and chairman of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals.
Mr. Gamble, who was known by loved ones as Pa, died at home in Amagansett on Aug. 3. He was 83.
He was in the plumbing industry for decades, owning two companies with which people here will be familiar: first, with Joe Smyth, there was Gamble & Smyth, and later Phil Gamble and Sons Plumbing and Heating. “His dedication and hard work laid the foundation for a successful family business that has now been passed down to his sons,” his family wrote.
He joined the Amagansett Fire Department shortly after moving to the hamlet in 1962. He later took up emergency medicine and eventually became one of the Amagansett ambulance squad’s first advanced life-support technicians. During his tenure there, his family wrote, Mr. Gamble helped deliver three babies and saved many lives.
On the town zoning board, where he was a member for 30 years and chairman for more than 20 of them, Mr. Gamble earned a distinguished reputation. “He was fair and balanced as a chair, and he never, ever lost his sense of humor,” Cate Rogers, an East Hampton Town councilwoman and the deputy supervisor, said at Tuesday’s town board work session.
Philip Gamble was born in Brooklyn on March 30, 1941, to Dean Gamble and the former Angelina Rago. He grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from Brady Gray High School in 1959, and later served four years in the Navy, stationed at the Virginia Beach Naval Air Base.
He and Sandy DiSunno, whom he met in Montauk in 1961, were married in May of 1963.
She survives him, as do four children: David Gamble and his wife, Allyson, of Amagansett; Douglas Gamble and his wife, Lynn, also of Amagansett; Lori Roth and her husband, Kevin, of Warren, N.J., and Jennifer Casalinuovo and her husband, John, of Miller Place. He is also survived by a sister, Joan Auerbach of Phoenix, and by seven grandchildren.
Mr. Gamble was cremated and his ashes buried at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Cemetery in East Hampton. Memorial donations have been suggested to the Amagansett Fire Department’s ambulance company, P.O. Box 911, Amagansett 11930, or to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, online at t2t.org.
