Obituaries

Alan York, an optometrist with a practice in a building he owned at 1 Main Street in East Hampton Village and a founding member of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, died on Nov. 29 at Southampton Hospital. He was 89.

He counted among his patients the artist Willem de Kooning, with whom he spent hours discussing the old masters while watching him paint. Understanding how de Kooning painted helped him make glasses suitable for both his close-up and faraway work.

Frederick Joseph Knapp, a singer and musician who had a career in industrial shows and, with his wife, the former Penny Leka, later founded a company that trained businesspeople in public speaking, presentation, and dress, died of a heart attack in Northport on Nov. 13 at the age of 84. The couple recently sold a house in East Hampton they had owned for 24 years.

Harold Maurice Wit, a lawyer, poet, and longtime resident of East Hampton, died on Dec. 14 at his house in Santa Fe, N.M., after having had several strokes. He was 86.

Mr. Wit was an attorney with the Manhattan firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and was formerly managing director of the investment banking firm Allen & Company. He was also on the board of directors of Toys “R” Us, and M.C.I, a telecommunications company. He had established a lecture series, “Living a Spiritual Life in a Secular World,” at the Harvard Divinity School.

Robert W. (Buzzy) Mott, a member of East Hampton High School’s class of 1967, and the survivor of a traumatic brain injury in 1985, died just before midnight on Dec. 8, succumbing to complications of pneumonia at the Richmond University Medical Center on Staten Island. He had never fully recovered from the 1985 accident and had been institutionalized since then. He was 66 years old.

Arthur Ronald Fisher, who worked in maintenance for 10 years at Hither Hills State Park in Montauk and as a chef in that hamlet and in East Hampton for 28 years before that, died at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., on Monday. He was 72 and had been ill with leukemia for several months.

Mr. Fisher lived in Montauk for 31 years prior to moving to Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton seven years ago. According to his son Art Fisher of Reston, Va., he loved to go fishing with his family and “was a phenomenal wrestler as he was growing up.”

Morris Bradt Jr. of Amagansett and Manhattan, a retired management consultant, died on Dec. 6 at his home in the city. He was 92 and had been ill with cancer for a year.

Edward Hannibal, a novelist and advertising executive, died of lung cancer at Southampton Hospital on Saturday after a short illness. He was 78.

A graveside service for Thomas O. Conklin of Bridgehampton will be held on Dec. 20 at 2 p.m. at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in East Hampton. Mr. Conk­lin died on Nov. 26 at the age of 83.

Lammott Walter Cottman, known to most as Cott, died of a stroke in New York City on Nov. 19, a day before his 72nd birthday.

Mr. Cottman was a longtime summer resident of Azurest in Sag Harbor, where he stayed with his wife and family at her parents’ house. His wife of 50 years, the former Andrea Howard, was the president of the Azurest Association off and on for many years.

Muriel L. Forsberg split her teenage years between Sayville and Montauk. Her father was a fisherman, and when he was working in the summer and fall, the family lived in Montauk in a house not far from the docks and she attended East Hampton High School.

Before Kathleen Ann Aufrecht and her husband, William Aufrecht, started Bill’s Pool Service in 1991, she was a high school home economics teacher at North Babylon High School. The couple bought their house in East Hampton 10 years earlier and decided to retire here, but had divided their time between East Hampton and Marco Island in Florida since 2004.

Ms. Aufrecht died there, surrounded by family, on Nov. 13. She was 67 and had metastic breast cancer for eight years.

Kenneth Glen Rea of Church Lane in Springs, a World War II veteran of the Navy Seabees who served for 12 years on the executive board of American Legion Post 419 in Amagansett, died on Nov. 25 at Southampton Hospital after a fall in which he suffered a broken hip. He was 88.

Lewis Zacks, a much-admired artist who lived in Springs, died on Nov. 16, a day after his 83rd birthday, at New York Presbyterian Hospital, following complications of a failed surgery.

He was born in Taunton, Mass., the only son of Etta Hoberman and Robert Zacks. At the age of 5, he could draw anything his mother placed in front of him. When he was in middle school, a teacher who thought his talent remarkable gave up her Saturdays to drive him to Providence so that he could study at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Richard Douglas Carlson, a naval architect who had trained race horses and designed sailboats for ocean racing, died of  heart attack on Nov. 24 at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Southampton following a six-month illness. He was 90 and a resident of Sag Harbor.

Thomas O. Conklin was born and raised at Breeze Hill Farm in Bridgehampton’s Scuttlehole area, and after graduating from high school in 1949 and earning an agriculture degree from Cornell University in 1953, he returned home to join his father and uncle growing potatoes.

Barbara Gordon Rickards, who lived on Schellinger Road in Amagansett for the last 35 years of her life, died of heart failure at home on Monday. She was 84 and had been in declining health for the past year.

“She enjoyed her family,” said her daughter Liz Pucci of East Hampton. “She enjoyed antiquing and painting — she was a painter.”

Barbara S. Moore, who had lived in East Hampton since 2002, died in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 28 with her husband, children, and beloved springer spaniel by her side. She was 66 and had ovarian cancer.

Evelyn C. Fischer, a longtime resident of Montauk, died peacefully at the Seabury at Fieldhome, an assisted living facility in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., on Oct. 30. She was 95.

Mrs. Fischer was born in the Bronx on Nov. 28, 1918, to Ole and Jenny Christiansen. The family later moved to Pelham, N.Y., where she graduated from Pelham Memorial High School. Prior to getting married, she worked for The New York Times.

Lewis Zacks, an artist who lived in Springs, died on Sunday at the age of 83. He leaves his wife, the poet Fran Castan, two sons, Stephen and Daniel Zacks, a daughter, Jane Birbara, and their families. A full obituary will appear in a future issue.

Thomas A. Twomey, a lawyer, civic leader, and chairman of the East Hampton Library’s board of trustees, died of a heart attack early Sunday morning after collapsing at his house in East Hampton’s Northwest Woods.

Andrew W. Irvine, a Vietnam veteran who lived in Sag Harbor for 25 years before moving to Southampton, died on Monday at Good Shepherd Hospice in Port Jefferson. He was 74.

Mr. Irvine had Parkinson’s disease as a result of the Agent Orange he was exposed to while serving in Vietnam, his longtime friend, Joanne Stratton of Sag Harbor, said. He collapsed in his house last week after experiencing a hemorrhagic stroke.

Claire Mahoney-Haeg, who lived on Springy Banks Road in East Hampton for 10 years, died at home on Monday. She was 70 and had cancer for three years.

She moved to East Hampton from Centerport in 1999 after her now-husband, Richard Haeg, moved here. They would have celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary on Sunday, but had been together about 16 years, Mr. Haeg said.

Frances L. Gaines, who raised three children in the house on Middle Highway in East Hampton in which her husband, Thomas E. Gaines, had been born, died in her sleep last Thursday following a long illness, her family said. She was 91.

She married Mr. Gaines on June 7, 1947, in Little Rock, Ark. After he graduated from Oklahoma A&M, the couple relocated to East Hampton in the summer of 1949. In 1978, they moved to Dayton Lane in the village, where she had lived ever since. Her husband died in 2012.

Jesse M. Rodriguez Jr., who worked for 25 years as a custodian and bus driver for the Amagansett School District, died on Friday at Southampton Hospital. He was 82 and had been ill for several months, his family said.

A lifelong Amagansett resident, Mr. Rodriguez enlisted in the Army in 1952 and served in Germany. He married Magdalene Yurkens of Sag Harbor on Sept. 7, 1957. She died before him.

For 20 years the couple owned a home in Key Largo, Fla., where they spent winters. He enjoyed golf, fishing, camping, and spending time with his wife and family.

Karen D’Avanzo, who had a doctorate in psychology from Long Island University, worked for Yale University in New Haven and the New School in New York City while also running a private practice and conducting clinical research. Her specialty was children and adolescents. She died on Oct. 23 of complications of Alzheimer’s disease at Southampton Hospital. She was 57.

Ruth Constance Garraway, who lived in Springs and East Hampton for about 40 years, died on Nov. 4 at the Rutland Healthcare and Rehab Center in Rutland, Vt., where she had moved two years ago. Her daughter Tammy Brown lives in Rutland. Mrs. Garraway was 94.

If Ben Bradlee was the archetypal American newspaper editor — brash, gravelly voiced, profane, barrel-chested — he also happened to preside over his paper, The Washington Post, during a golden age of journalism, 1968 to 1991, when reporters’ work never mattered more.

Dorothy May Rodriguez, who was known as Darcy and had worked at many deli counters around East Hampton, died at Southampton Hospital last Thursday. She was 48 and had cancer.

Ms. Rodriguez, who grew up in Amagansett, lived in Springs with her children, Colin, 13, and Katalina, 11. “Her sincerity and ability to connect with anyone who walked through the door was contagious, and so many people will remember starting their day with a smile from Darcy,” her family said.

Jack Morelli, a musician and cook who lived in Amagansett and East Hampton for four decades, died on Saturday at Stony Brook University Hospital of complications from a stroke. He was 61.

Mr. Morelli had worked as a property caretaker and, most recently, as a private chef. “He loved to cook for people,” his daughter, Janae Anderson of Nashville, said.

Joan Wyckoff adopted East Hampton as her second and then primary residence as an adult, but was an active and devoted member of the community here whose contributions were felt at the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, the Springs Library, Bay Street Theater, East Hampton Presbyterian Church, and Meals on Wheels.

Ms. Wyckoff, who was 84, died in hospice care on Oct. 25 in Melville after a six-week illness with heart disease. She had lived on Argyle Lane in East Hampton for 35 years and summered in Amagansett for 20 years before that.