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East Hampton attorney William J. Fleming, a famously convivial and erudite man-about-town, died at his home on Thursday morning, January 11. He was 69.
A voracious consumer of history, literature, music, conversation and college basketball, Mr. Fleming was remembered in disparate corners of the East End this week as a Luddite, a giver of advice (some solicited, some not), a lover of dogs and dinner parties and family and friends, an eager travel planner and a dedicated servant to the East End.
“He was really a renaissance kind of guy,” State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., a longtime friend, said. “He loved the arts, he loved history, he loved politics, he loved sports. He was one of the few people who you’d go to the Big East [college basketball] tournament with and you’d spend the morning before the games in a museum.”
Friends recalled Mr. Fleming’s seemingly bottomless generosity, from organizing rollicking dinner parties to weekend retreats for large groups to overseas vacations that he would not be attending himself. They recalled basketball games, and protest marches, political campaigns and his wry wit.
“He got the most out of life and he loved sharing it with his friends,” said Claude Beudert, who met Mr. Fleming shortly after the young attorney had moved to the South Fork in the 1970s.
Mr. Fleming, proudly, eschewed technological advancements like computers and cellphones—none of which ever found room in his schedule between the stacks of books by his bed and the three daily newspapers he read cover to cover each day. His wife, Abby, recalled him spending hours planning trips to Europe for their friends using only his dog-eared Michelin guide, right down to calling hotels to ensure the best rooms were reserved.
He was an insatiable traveler himself, who loved Ireland and Europe most of all and visited both regularly.
“Ireland was a very special place for Bill,” his wife said. “He loved history and our trips always revolved around that.”
It was on one of those trips, their first together, during a ferry crossing from Ireland to France, that he proposed to his future favorite traveling companion.
“He said he did it on a boat because he knew I couldn’t get away,” Ms. Fleming recalled. “And he said he was into long engagements. I wasn’t sure what that meant. It was May. He said he would not get married in June, but definitely by September, of that same year.”
They were indeed married in September—of 1985—the day after Hurricane Gloria swept across Long Island, leaving most of the region without power, in a candlelit Most Holy Trinity Church in East Hampton. The reception was held at Elaine Benson’s art gallery in Bridgehampton, a late substitute for the Southampton Yacht Club, because Ms. Benson’s gallery had generator power.
“We had no rehearsal dinner and no power but … people still talk about our wedding,” she added. “Elaine wrote about it in her column. We were her hurricane story.”
The couple had met a few years earlier at a Southampton Yacht Club potluck following the Wednesday night regattas.
“He was a young lawyer, without a lot of money or very many clients,” Ms. Fleming remembered. “His office was above the Barefoot Contessa and … I think he slept there sometimes and took showers at the public beaches.”
Despite his thirst for traveling it was on the South Fork that Mr. Fleming’s passions found root.
He once served on the East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board and on numerous boards and committees dedicated to the history and culture of the area, including the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Society, the East Hampton Historical Society and the board of directors of the Thomas Moran House.
He was long one of the region’s most seasoned followers of local politics. He ran, albeit unsuccessfully, for East Hampton Town Trustee and Suffolk County legislator and hosted numerous political fund-raisers or campaign gatherings at his home in Wainscott—the most recent, for 1st Congressional District candidate Kate Browning, was to have been held just this past weekend.
“The East End Show,” which he hosted on East Hampton’s public access network, LTV, for 32 years—he was the network’s longest serving host—featured mostly one-on-one interviews with members of the East End community. He would open the show each Thursday by sharing “Newsday’s best guess at the weather” and the headlines from the week’s local newspapers, but the topics of discussion ranged widely, through culture and politics to national collegiate and professional sports, each explored with Mr. Fleming’s perspicacious interview style.
“I would do his show three to four times a year and, the show would start at 6, and he would invariably crash through the door at 5:59 and put on his microphone and, boom, you’d be on the air and he’d start talking about what he had read in the Wall Street Journal that day,” Mr. Thiele remembered. “It’s hard for me to believe that I’m not going to get to sit in that studio with him again. We are all richer for having known him.”
Along with his wife, Mr. Fleming is survived by a daughter, Catharine.
The family said this week that in lieu of a funeral they will host a memorial service in the spring.
Mr. Fleming grew up in Garden City, the son of Anne (Thoet) and William Joseph Fleming Jr. He attended Chaminade High School but transferred to Garden City High School for his senior year to play basketball. He went to George Washington University and Adelphi University and earned his law degree from Willamette University in Oregon.
He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1971. He joined the Army’s team handball squad—a relatively obscure sport in the U.S., but his favorite, his wife said—and was not sent to Vietnam.
The team was destined to represent the U.S.A. in the ill-fated 1972 Olympics in Munich, but Mr. Fleming was hurt shortly before and was cut from the team. No longer deferred from deployment, he was sent to South Korea, where he served until his discharge in 1973.
Mourning friends said that Mr. Fleming’s absence from the East End—from TV screens to public podiums to barrooms to the dance floor at the Stephen Talkhouse—will be glaring.
“He went after life full bore,” Mr. Beudert said. “I’m going to miss him a great deal.”
on Jan 16, 2018