Obituaries

Remembering A True Sag Harbor Character: Renowned Decoy Carver, Robert Hand Sr., Dies at 77

Former Assemblyman John L. Behan, Advocate For Veterans, Dies At 76

William F. McCoy, Jr. of Sagaponack, beloved husband of Barbara Brummer McCoy, passed away peacefully December 24 at the age of 91.  He was born on December 10, 1929 at the Norwegian Lutheran Hospital in Brooklyn to William F. and Marian (Jacobsen) McCoy of Bridgehampton.

Barry Lynwood Vaughn of Sag Harbor died at the East End Hospice Kanas Center on Quiogue January 24. He was 83.

Dr. Martin Shepard, a psychiatrist, author, and with his wife, Judith, a trailblazing publisher, has died. Dr. Shepard passed away at his home in Sag Harbor surrounded by family on December 17, 2020, after a brief illness. He was 86.

In an unexpected blow to the East End community, Ms. Spilka — a steadfast civic leader, role model and friend — died on December 28 after a short bout with metastatic lung cancer and was buried on January 3 at Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Queens.

Harriett Crippen Brown Gumbs, the matriarch and oldest female of the Shinnecock Indian Nation — a woman who lived her life as an educator, activist, feminist and historian — died on November 25 of natural causes. She was 99

Throughout the course of his long career, Keith Sonnier was known as an artist who broke new ground and embraced emerging technologies as well as non-traditional materials in his work. Mr. Sonnier, who lived in Bridgehampton, died on July 18 at Southampton Hospital. He was 78.

On Tuesday, July 21, at around 6:30 p.m., Mr. Murphy, the former editor of the Independent newspaper based in East Hampton, died at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. He had been hospitalized on Friday and suffered a heart attack on Saturday morning, from which he never regained consciousness.

For 40 years, the Mark Humphrey Gallery was a Southampton Village fixture. Established in 1980 by Mr. Humphrey and his partner, Larry Rundie, as a purveyor of posters, prints, miscellaneous art objects and framing, the gallery shifted focus several times over the decades and carried works by some of the most successful artists of the last half century. On June 11, Mr. Humphrey died of complications from cancer at The Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Westhampton Beach. He was 71.

Elise Pickering Quimby, who left her mark on the Hampton Library as well as her many friends and acquaintances in her adopted Bridgehampton, died on May 3 in Washington, D.C.

Robert “Bobby” Hopson, 48, the leading scorer in Bridgehampton High School basketball history, died at his home in Bridgehampton on April 21.

Cheryl Bedini, Longtime Owner of Java Nation, Dies at 55

Robert D. Loomis, one of the last of the great post-war book editors, widely admired for his devotion to writers in his more than 50 years at Random House, with a breathtaking roster of prize-winning titles, as many in fiction and non-fiction, died earlier this week in a fall

Summertime visitors to Sag Harbor might have thought Thomas W. Horn Sr. lived in the old firehouse next to the Municipal Building on Main Street. After all, he treated the open bay, where he sat behind a card table most evenings chatting with passersby and selling raffle tickets to benefit his pet project, the Sag Harbor Fire Department Museum, as though it was his own front porch. This week, that firehouse is adorned with purple and black bunting as a memorial to Mr. Horn, a 69-year veteran of the department, who died on February 25 at the age of 90 after a short stay at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, his family said. When he died, his five surviving children were at his bedside.