Obituaries

    Eric Louis Rooney, who spent childhood summers in Montauk and for whom it remained a favorite place, was buried at Fort Hill Cemetery there on Nov. 21. Mr. Rooney died in Queens on Nov. 17. The cause of death was an accident, his family said. He was 26.

    Mr. Rooney was born on Sept. 16, 1986, to Bruna DiBiase and Richard Rooney in New York City. He grew up  in Flushing, Queens, and on Butternut Drive in Montauk.

   An 18-year-old East Hampton woman had two car accidents in four days last week, both of them involving deer. Ashley Silvertsen was driving a 1995 Jeep on the afternoon of Nov. 20 on Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road in Springs when she thought she saw a deer on the road ahead. She swerved and went off the side of the road, coming to a stop in some shrubbery. The Jeep was towed away with damage to the undercarriage.

    James Bernard Leonard, a former newspaper pressman, died on Thanksgiving Day in a hospital in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. He was 91 and had gone to Florida to visit a son.

    Mr. Leonard’s career in newspapers included a stint as a flyboy, a pressroom apprentice who literally caught stacks of papers as they flew off the presses. He went on to become a pressman for The New York Journal-American, The New York Times, and The Daily News, working for that paper in Long Island City until he retired.

    Visiting hours for Joseph Holmes of Oakview Highway, East Hampton, who died on Tuesday at the age of 70, will be at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m.

    A funeral for him will be Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at the Yardley and Pino. Burial will follow at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in East Hampton.

    Johanna Liesbeth de Kooning of Springs and St. John in the United States Virgin Islands died on Friday while at home on St. John. Ms. de Kooning, who was known as Lisa, was the daughter of the Abstract Expressionist artist Willem de Kooning. She was 56. No services have been announced. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

    An obituary in last week’s paper for William W. Talmage, who died on Nov. 13, gave the street address but not the mailing address for one organization to which his family has suggested memorial contributions. The mailing address for American Legion Post 419 is P.O. Box 1343, East Hampton 11937. His family also suggested donations to the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, 40 West 20th Street, New York City 10011-4211.

    Ray D. Lingwood, a civic-minded member of the Bridgehampton-Water Mill community and founder of the Bridgehampton I.G.A., died on Thanksgiving Day at home in Water Mill. He was three days shy of his 91st birthday.

    Mr. Lingwood was a World War II veteran, a sergeant in the Army Air Corps in charge of a photographic unit in the Pacific theater. He served from August 1942 to the end of the war.

    Tamara Clement Gianis, a sculptor who worked in marble and alabaster, died at her house in East Hampton on Oct. 22. She was 83, and had suffered from pneumonia.

    Ms. Gianis, who was born in New York City on Nov. 2, 1928, began visiting East Hampton as a child, when her family had a house on Jericho Road.

    A memorial service celebrating the life of Elizabeth Fondaras will be held next Thursday at 11 a.m. at St. James’ Episcopal Church, 865 Madison Avenue, in Manhattan. Ms. Fondaras died on Aug. 29 in New York City. She was 96.

    Isabel Theresa Winsch, who worked for the Suffolk County police for 35 years and before that, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while raising seven children, died at home in East Hampton on Sunday. She was 87.

    Ms. Winsch became a clerk at the F.B.I.’s field office in New York City, where she met her future husband, Lawrence A. Winsch, who was a photographer and bureau agent. The couple married on Jan. 25, 1947. Mr. Winsch died in 1994.

    William W. Talmage, who served under Gen. George Patton in the Third Army during World War II and lived in East Hampton for most of his life, died on Nov. 13 at Brookhaven Hospital in Patchogue. He was 89.

  Eugene Simonoff, who had a house in the Georgica Estates section of East Hampton, died at his residence in New York City on Oct. 14. He was 95.

  Mr. Simonoff was a mergers and acquisitions consultant whose firm, Eugene Simonoff and Associates, had clients such as BNA, The New York Times, John Wiley, Wolters Kluwer, and Thomson Reuters over the past 22 years. He was associated with publishing firms and read several newspapers every day. He was a particular fan of The New York Times and the letters section of The East Hampton Star.

    Albert Francis Sharp, a painter who lived on Buell Lane in East Hampton, died at his home studio on Sept. 29. He was 90.

    “His love of life, his love of his many devoted friends, and his love of the arts and nature was his essence,” an obituary prepared by Carroll West Jones and several other of his friends said. “His sense of humor was hilarious and he was a raconteur par excellence, ever ready to regale us with amusing stories from his wide and colorful experiences.”

    “He lived every day with a smile on his face and joy in his heart,” they said.

    Gary Persan, a commercial fisherman in Montauk for many years, died on Oct. 19 in Melbourne, Fla., following a head injury resulting from a fall at home. He was 63 and had suffered from chronic Lyme disease, which left him disabled in recent years.

    His brother Robert Persan said he had been among the first Long Islanders diagnosed with the illness in the 1970s.

    Born in Mineola on Dec. 14, 1949, to Edgar Persan and the former Betty Sanders, Mr. Persan attended school there and began to visit his family’s summer house in Montauk in the 1960s.

    Hilde Tarkel Smith, a gentle woman who spent years maintaining two of Montauk’s more historic buildings, died at Southampton Hospital on Saturday, three weeks shy of her 90th birthday. She had been in failing health for several months.

    Visiting hours for Laura Connolly, 59, of Harbor Street, East Hampton, who died at home on Monday, will be today from 2 to 4 p.m. and this evening from 7 to 9 at Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton.

    A funeral Mass will be said for her tomorrow at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton at 10 a.m. Burial will be at the church cemetery on Cedar Street.

    An obituary will appear in a future issue.

    Martin Benjamin Rubenstein of East Hampton, a former taxicab operator and driver for New York State Assemblyman Perry B. Duryea Jr. and a local youth football, Little League, and biddy basketball coach, died at Southampton Hospital on Nov. 4. He was 86, and been diagnosed with metastasized bone cancer nine days earlier.

    Nancy Anne Byrne of Woodcock Lane in East Hampton died on Nov. 1 while on vacation in Orlando, Fla. She was 41. Her familh did not provide the cause of death.

    Born in Monmouth, N.J., on May 27, 1971, she was adopted and raised on Shelter Island by Bob and Anne DeStefano. She attended school on Shelter Island from kindergarten through her 1989 graduation. While in high school, she played on the field hockey and golf teams and was a class officer.

    Peter Gettinger, a financier and movie producer who had a house on East Hollow Road in East Hampton Village from 1978 to 2005, died at home in Miami on Oct. 23. He was 84 and had been ill with cancer for 11 months.

    He financed many films, including the Martin Luther King Jr. documentary “Montgomery to Memphis,” co-produced the feature “Force 10 From Navarone,” and produced two documentaries on China. In 1973, he was the executive producer of the made-for-TV movie “The President’s Plane Is Missing.”

Walter Herlitschek, a resident of East Hampton for more than 40 years, died at home on Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., just two weeks shy of his 92nd birthday. A man of many interests, he had lifelong passions for painting, travel, cooking, reading, gardening, music, collecting, and dogs. He remained curious and interested in new experiences despite his recent failing health.

    Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in Sag Harbor has announced the death Tuesday of Avis Freidah of that village. Funeral arrangements were not complete as of yesterday afternoon. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

Robert Godfrey Plitt, for more than three decades the owner of Plitt Ford Mercury, died of natural causes at home in East Hampton Village on Aug. 19. He was 87

Ron Sauers, a skilled designer and building contractor known for his attention to detail, died on Aug. 14 after a long battle with cancer. He was 73.

    Visiting hours for Sherry Kiger of East Hampton, who died on Monday at 65, will be at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton tomorrow from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. A funeral is planned for 10 a.m. Saturday at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. An obituary will appear in a future issue.

Stanley R. Schellinger of Sandra Road in Springs died of lymphoma on Aug. 9 at Southampton Hospital at the age of 79.

Thomas Murphy, an educator who lived on Devon Road, Amagansett, and in Lloyd Harbor, died on July 10 at Huntington Hospital. He was 75 years old.

Ward Mohrfeld, a longtime resident of Floyd Street in East Hampton, died on Aug. 12 at the Westhampton Care Center following cardiac surgery on July 27 at Stony Brook University Medical Center. He was 76 years old.

Winifred Peckham Miller, a former East Hampton resident, died on Aug. 21 at the Kate B. Reynolds Hospice Home in Winston-Salem, N.C., after a 12-year battle with breast cancer. She was 68.

Andrea Cavagnaro Tillman died on Aug. 7 at the San Simeon by the Sound Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Greenport. She was 64.

A service for Bobby Charles Shea will be held today at 3 p.m. at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton.