Obituaries

Jesse F. James, a master carpenter who lived on Hog Creek Road in Springs, died at Southampton Hospital on Jan. 5 at the age of 81. The cause of death was pulmonary arrest.

Mr. James worked for many local builders, among them Wesley Miller, Ed Pospisil, Dell Cullum, and Gene Futterman. Later in life he was a caretaker for the late Susan Tepper, an artist and philanthropist who founded the East Hampton Center for Contemporary Art. Most recently he worked for Sandpebble Builders until retiring just last year.

John James Stavola Sr., a longtime resident of Montauk, died at home last Thursday. He was 93.

Mr. Stavola, who worked as a construction supervisor for the New York Telephone Company, had a summer house in Montauk since the 1960s, and retired there full time 35 years ago. He loved clamming and fishing, his family said.

Born in Manhattan on Nov. 4, 1921, to Fillipo Stavola and the former Maria Lombardi, he grew up in the Bronx, and served in the Navy during World War II.

Funeral arrangements for John Stavola of Montauk, who died on Friday, have been announced. 

Visiting hours will be on Sunday  from 2 to 4 p.m. at Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. There will be a prayer service for him at the funeral home on Monday morning at 10. A graveside service will follow at  Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church Cemetery on Cedar Street, East Hampton.

Alfred Charles Hines, a retired tool and die maker who made some of the dies for parts of a popular 1950s children’s toy called Robbie the Robot and built a telescope that won a prestigious prize, died in Springs on New Year’s Day. He was 93 and had been in good health until that morning, said his son Patrick Hines of Amagansett.

A memorial service will be held on Jan. 17 at 2 p.m. at the Southampton Presbyterian Church for Charlotte Fordham Rogers Smith of Water Mill, who died of pneumonia at Southampton Hospital on Dec. 14 at the age of 95.

Eva Ecker, who survived the Nazi period in Hungary during World War II, died on Dec. 29 at home in Springs. She had just finished dinner and was sitting with family.

During the war, Ms. Ecker helped to protect and hide her younger sister, Juidith Leiber, when Jews were called to assemble in the streets of Budapest for deportation. Their father had been sent to a labor camp, but the family was spared after he obtained a Swiss pass, which provided diplomatic immunity. The pass is now in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

A funeral Mass for Dorothy Marie McGinnis-Haberstroh, who died on Dec. 26 in Weeki Wachee, Fla., at age 104, will be said tomorrow at 10 a.m. at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton. Mrs. Haberstroh was a former East Hampton resident. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

A service for Patricia Liptrot of Springs will be held on Saturday at 11 a.m. at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton. A wake is being planned with the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home, but details had not been finalized as of press time. Mrs. Liptrot, who was 84, died on Tuesday at Stony Brook University Hospital. A full obituary will appear in a future issue.

“There’s only two kinds of music,” Jeff Golub reportedly said, “the kind that’s from the heart and the kind that’s not.” That observation was not just an accurate assessment of music, about which the guitarist was so passionate, it served as a blueprint for his life.

“She was the strongest woman I ever met,” Jenna Vertullo’s mother, Gail Lia, said Tuesday of her daughter.

Joyce L. Coleman, a nurse’s aide and an expert scallop-shucker, died on Dec. 29 at home on Spring Lane in Sag Harbor. Her family said the cause was a pulmonary embolism. She was 62.

Ms. Coleman worked for many years taking care of residents at the Huntting Lane Rest Home in East Hampton Village. She later went to work at the Todd Nursing Home in Southampton, which became the Southampton Nursing Home.

Margaret Keller, the matriarch of an extended family and a charter member of the Montauk Fire Department’s Ladies Auxiliary, died of natural causes on Sunday at Southampton Hospital. She was 87 and had lived in the same house on South Delphi Street for more than 60 years.

Nancy Brunn, who taught art and a high school-level art history class at the Montauk School, died at home on Accabonac Road in East Hampton on Dec. 31. She was 67 and had primary progressive aphasia, a degenerative brain disease, her family said.

Susan Ellen Akin of Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., a part-time resident of Montauk until 2002, died of emphysema on Jan. 3 at Phelps Memorial Hospital in Sleepy Hollow. She was 78 and had been in declining health since 2007.

Known as Ellen, she was born on Dec. 9, 1936, in Charles Town, W.V., to Laurence W. Lloyd and Susan Ellen Jones Lloyd and grew up there, eventually attending Duke University in Durham, N.C. She married Robert M. Akin III on July 2, 1960, and they began coming to Montauk after their marriage. Mr. Akin died in 2002.

Sydney Steven Griffin, a longtime resident of Northwest Landing Road in East Hampton and a dedicated merchant seaman, died on Christmas Day at Southampton Hospital. He was 76 and had been in declining health for several years.

Tyler Robert Buckley, who was 22 years old, died at Southampton Hospital on Sunday evening after being found  without breath in his mother’s, Susan Buckley’s, house on Crystal Drive in East Hampton. He had been sick for several months, and his family believes he was suffering from pneumonia when he went to sleep and did not wake up. The cause of death is being investigated, but police said no foul play is suspected.

Yaeko Lawler, who lived in East Hampton with her husband, Thomas H. Lawler, in the late 1950s and early ’60s and kept a house here until the 1990s, died in Bowie, Md., on Dec. 22 after a long illness. She was 82.

Mrs. Lawler was born in Osaka, Japan, on Oct. 15, 1932, to Eitarou Yukawa and the former Ikuno Ohe. She grew up in Japan and was married in June 1956 to Mr. Lawler, an East Hampton native. The couple lived on Three Mile Harbor Road from 1957 to 1963, when they relocated to Bowie.

Margaret (Peggy) Keller, 87, of South Delphi  Street in Montauk died Sunday evening of natural causes at Southampton Hospital surrounded by her family. Family and friends have been invited to gather at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton between 2 and 4 p.m. and 7 and 9 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 8. A funeral service will be held at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk at 11 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 9, with the Rev. Thomas Murray officiating.

A memorial service for Jeff Golub of New York City and Bridgehampton will be held Thursday at the Society for Ethical Culture at 2 West 64th Street in Manhattan at 1 p.m.

Mr. Golub, a jazz, blues, and rock guitarist with a long solo career and who also played with Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Peter Wolf (of the J. Geils Band), John Waite, Vanessa Williams, Gato Barbieri, and Bill Evans, among many others, died on New Year's Day at home in New York.

He was 59 and had been diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a brain disorder.

Isabelle Ray Morgan, a lifelong East Hampton resident who helped baymen by opening shellfish at her shucking shack in Springs, died of pneumonia on Christmas Day at Southampton Hospital. She was 86.

Marianne Ajamy, an artist and designer, succumbed to leukemia on Saturday at her Hoppin Avenue house in Montauk. She was 66 and had been ill for a year.

Ms. Ajamy’s paintings had been exhibited on the East End, and a vase she had decorated, her “Butterfly Fantasy Vase,” was included in the book “The Painted Butterfly: 15 Painting Projects for Home Décor.” She also was known for painting children’s faces at birthday parties.

Robert Joseph Langs, a psychoanalyst and author of more than 40 books on psychiatry for professionals as well as the public, died of amyloidosis, a rare blood disease, at home in New York City on Nov. 8 at the age of 86.

An obituary in last week’s paper for Robert W. Mott, who was known as Buzzy, failed to include some of his survivors. In addition to his father, Harry L. Mott of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., his children, Christopher Mott of Venice, Fla., and Shelly Mott Fisher of Sarasota, Fla., and four grandchildren, Mr. Mott is also survived by his sister, June Bubka, and her husband, Tom Bubka, of East Hampton, who took charge of his care for 30 years following a traumatic brain injury in 1985, and their daughter, Jennifer Bubka of Brooklyn.

Robert T. Snyder, a labor lawyer and former judge with the National Labor Relations Board, died in his sleep at his Sag Harbor house on Dec. 10, after returning from a rehearsal for the annual holiday concert of the Sag Harbor Community Band, with which he played clarinet.  He was 84 and had not been ill.

Mr. Snyder, who also lived in New York City and spent the month of January in Sanibel, Fla., “was passionate about his music, and passionate about the law,” his wife of 16 years, Elaine Congress, said.

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.