Obituaries

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

Donald T. McDonald, a retired East Hampton High School science teacher, died on June 10 from kidney cancer at home in East Hampton, surrounded by family. He was 90.

Mr. McDonald was born in a house on Church Street in East Hampton Village on April 2, 1930, to Zena Petitpas McDonald and Elmer McDonald. He was the youngest of four brothers who came of age during the Depression. 

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.

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.

Arthur J. Cortes, who owned and operated Halfback Charters in Montauk for 30 years, died from a fall at his home adjacent to Montauk Downs State Park on May 28. He was 74.

Sportfishing and the ocean were Mr. Cortes’s passions, and he worked on many Long Island charter boats before moving to Montauk in 1991, because “that was where the fish were,” as he put it on the Halfback Charters website. He owned the company, which operated from a 39-foot Hatteras Express, from that year until his death.

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.