Obituaries

Donald Francis Fromm, a former captain on the Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Ferry, died of brain cancer on June 27 at home in Shoreham. The Amagansett summer resident was 68 and had been ill for four weeks.

Ronald Ralph Galione of East Hampton, a former senior vice president of the Alexander Proudfoot management consulting firm, died of pneumonia on June 11 at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center in Florida. He was 89. 

Maria Whelan, a longtime advocate for children and families in the Illinois educational community, died of a heart attack in Chicago on June 10. Formerly of East Hampton, she was 69 years old.

Renee Schilhab Bullock, who had been a journalist, landscape designer, musician, and documentary filmmaker, died of liver and peritoneal cancer at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., on June 14.

Jacqueline Penney, an award-winning painter and the owner of an eponymous art gallery in Cutchogue, died on June 18 at home in the hamlet. She was 90. 

Gen Barry Casey, an accomplished athlete, dance teacher, and New York City advertising executive, died in St. Petersburg, Fla., on April 5 at the age of 82.

Murray Skurnik, an award-winning advertising executive, died of pancreatic cancer at home in Sagaponack on Sunday. He was 86 and had been ill for three years.

A graveside service for Renee Schilhab Bullock will be held at Cedar Lawn Cemetery on Cooper Lane in East Hampton on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. The Very Rev. Denis C. Brunelle of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in East Hampton will give remarks. 

Ruth D'Eon, who made custom draperies and upholstery at the former Diamond's furniture store in East Hampton, died of a stroke on Saturday at the Peconic Bay Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation facility in Riverhead. She was 91 and had been ill for a week.

Born on Dec. 3, 1928, in East Hampton to Thomas Dedato and the former Lena Sonberg, she grew up here and earned an associate's degree at the New York School of Interior Design.

Diana D. Plitt of East Hampton, a painter, watercolorist, and sketch artist who was a past president of the Artists Alliance of East Hampton, died in Southampton on June 4. She was 83.

In 1955, when she was 18 and still Diana Deutsch, her cousin Margaret Guissinger nominated her for the Miss America beauty pageant, and she was crowned Miss New York State. She went on to study at the Pratt Institute in Manhattan, the beginning of a distinguished career in the arts.

Connie Dembia of Wainscott and Ramsey, N.J., died on May 20 at home in Ramsey at the age of 98. Her family wrote that she had not been ill, “just very, very old.”

 Her interests and accomplishments were varied, from reading and sewing to politics, social issues, and social justice. As a child growing up in Brooklyn, where she was born Carmela Di Paola on Dec. 11, 1921, she was a champion handball player, and all through her life loved dancing. 

Vincent Christopher Carillo, the owner of Liars' Saloon and Offshore Sports Marina in Montauk, died at home in that hamlet on May 26. He was 80.