Obituaries

Irving Markowitz, formerly of East Hampton, died on May 14 in Rockville, Md.

From an early age, Brian Kenneth Russell had a curiosity and love for science, animals, and the outdoors, and could often be found watching National Geographic or the Discovery Channel on television. He loved looking through microscopes, and by the time he was in the seventh grade he was a junior-certified scuba diver.

Barbara Stone, an influential modeling agent and co-founder of Hampton Shorts who lived in Bridgehampton for many years, died of congestive heart failure on April 26 at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn. She had been unwell for two years.

Carole Ann George, familiar here from her jobs at the I.G.A. markets in Amagansett and East Hampton, died of cardiac arrest at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond, Va., on March 8. She was 73 and had been ill for two years.

Pat Lillis of East Hampton died at home on April 23. She was 70. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

Alec Petroulias, an electrical engineer who worked on the Apollo space program in the 1960s, died of heart failure and cancer on April 10 at home in East Hampton. He was 91, and had been briefly ill. 

Joyce Hayes Whitman was proud to be a part of the Montauk community, which she demonstrated in her extensive volunteer work with the Montauk Library. She read stories to children for nearly 20 years -- before there was a children's librarian there -- and held nearly every board position at one time or another with the Friends of the Montauk Library.

Susan Metzger's career was in the world of film. She was a story editor and a unit publicist, a liaison between the set and the outside world, working both independently and for Paramount Pictures.

When David A. Merrill "was making people laugh, he could keep the riotous mayhem going until your sides ached," his family wrote. "He truly shined in those moments." 

Michael J. Finazzo, who pushed for affordable housing when he was an East Hampton Town councilman in the early 1980s, sold insurance, captained sportfishing boats, and coordinated for 20 years the hamlet's popular St. Patrick's Day parade, died in Boca Raton, Fla., on April 15 at the age of 72.

As word of Henry Craig Benzenberg's death reached his former East Hampton High School classmates last month, they remembered him as kind, funny, and "a great guy." 

Terry Stratton Miller, an 11th-generation member of the Springs Miller family, grew up in the close community of Millers in the Springs-Fireplace Road neighborhood surrounding the family farm, once the largest working farm in the area.