Roger G. Lang seemed to know everyone in East Hampton and everyone seemed to know him, his son, Alexander Lang, said. An executive with Federated Department Stores starting in the mid-1960s, Mr. Lang and his wife, Gloria Jacobson Lang, built their first house in East Hampton in 1973 on Hand’s Creek Road. After moving here full time in 2002, they built their second house on Hand’s Creek Harbor in 2006.
Mr. Lang “enjoyed the quieter side of East Hampton” and the “small-town feel” that he still found even as the area began to change. “He remained by Hand’s Creek Harbor, only going into town on weekdays or the winter when the ‘city idiots’ weren’t fighting over a parking spot,” his son wrote.
He liked taking his boat out for sunrise and sunset fishing on Gardiner’s Bay, and when he did venture into the thick of things he would stop in to talk to friends he had made at places like Village Hardware, Round Swamp Farm, Sam’s Auto and Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle, Harvey Bennett’s Tackle Shop, and Villa Italian Specialties.
For a few years in the 1980s, he owned and operated David’s Cookies, which was next door to the movie theater on East Hampton’s Main Street. “He was always making deals with the other locals,” his son wrote. “From building decks and docks to lawn care and household projects. He had dozens of friends who would call him first when something happened at their house and he would make a call or go over to take care of it . . . basically he had everyone’s number in town in his Rolodex before Google existed.” He had been a member of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons since the early 1980s.
Mr. Lang died on Nov. 28 at Peconic Landing in Greenport, where he and his wife had moved in 2021. He was 83.
He began his career at Abraham & Straus and worked his way up the ranks in various Federated Department Stores subsidiaries. He served as vice president of divisional merchandise and manager of big-ticket divisions for Stern’s, where he was later promoted to general merchandise manager and ultimately senior vice president.
In 1996, his son said, Mr. Lang was “part of an initial group owned by Macy’s that started the entire operation for logistics and operations.” He was also part of the direct-to-consumer retailer Fingerhut. Mr. Lang retired in 2000.
Born in Teaneck, N.J., on April 12, 1942, to Roger Grant Lang and the former Claire Stroh, he grew up there and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester in 1964. He served in the Army Reserves, assigned to the 356th Civilian Affairs unit in New York City, and was released from active duty as a first sergeant around 1970.
Mr. Lang lived in Manhattan from the 1960s until the 1990s and in Cresskill, N.J., in the late 1990s.
In addition to his son, who lives in Colorado, he is survived by his wife of 55 years and by a sister, Ginny Nagy of California.
