'Beach Mayor' Lester Jary Elliston Remembered as Community Pillar

Lester Jary Elliston lived his life in full color.

From his vibrant Hawaiian-print shirts to his signature white Panama Jack hat, he was easily recognizable across the East End as the self-proclaimed “beach mayor” of Sagg Main Beach in Sagaponack, where he would walk every day, feed the seagulls, and strike up a conversation with anyone willing to listen.

He was quirky, optimistic, cheery and gregarious. He loved to dance and listen to music of the 1950s and 1960s, and he was always ready for a party. And, yet, he also thrived on his routine, appreciated nature and simple pleasures, and he did it all with a free spirit.

On May 24, Elliston died of heart failure at the East End Hospice Kanas Center for Hospice Care on Quiogue. He was 76.

“The one thing I can think of, the blessing I can think of, is that he’ll always be in these waves,” his daughter, Rebecca Goren, said of Sagg Main Beach during a recent telephone interview from her home in Israel. “He’s gonna be there. He’ll always be there. You can’t look at the beach without thinking about him.”

Lester Jary Elliston was born on December 30, 1946, at Southampton Hospital, and it wasn’t long before his parents, Ruth and William, introduced him to the beach close to their home in Bridgehampton.

As a child, Alice Martin was often there, too.

“We all would go to the beach almost every single day, I remember, from the time I was 2 years old,” his lifelong friend said. “We spent lots and lots of time there. He was always happy, always liked to be with other people. He never seemed to be unhappy, ever.”

Summer was the Elliston family’s favorite season, his sister, Sue Daniels, recalled, and they anticipated swimming at Long Beach, attending the Fourth of July parade in Southampton and family picnics at Hither Hills in Montauk, and hopping on the train to visit their grandparents in upstate New York, where they would fish and eat ice cream cones — 6 cents for a single, 11 cents for a double.

As teenagers, Elliston taught Martin how to drive in the vacant lot next to his home, she recalled, and his sister made the same request when she turned 16 — except she wanted to get on the road.

“As we were entering Montauk Highway, a cute guy in a cute car passed by,” she recalled. “Lester said, ‘I know that guy.’ I tried to pass him, but instead I drove him off the road into a potato field. Long story short, I married the cute guy 54 years ago.”

Both Elliston and his sister’s future husband, Al Daniels, enlisted in the military, the former joining the U.S. Air Force in 1967 as a civil engineer. He was stationed in Tuyhoa, Vietnam, for a year, followed by Phoenix, Arizona, before exiting the service as a sergeant in 1971.

When he returned to the East End, he joined the WLNG team, selling ads for over 20 years — and abruptly retired when he had a stroke at age 46, following the advice of his doctor.

“He was told he needed to change his life,” Goren said. “And that day, I swear, I believe he did. Looking back, I think he changed his life.”

There is a certain lore surrounding Elliston’s role as “beach mayor,” but it is largely believed that, following his recovery, this is when it took off.

One time, he received a hat in the mail — it was blue, his favorite color — with his unofficial title embroidered across the front. He never knew who sent it, Goren said.

“I don’t remember him walking around saying he was ‘beach mayor’ — I think he might have projected backward,” his daughter said. “My assumption always was, the Manhattanites came out and saw him at the beach, and at some point someone started calling him the beach mayor, and it stuck.”

But, recently, she found a piece of paper that challenged her version of the story. It read: “Beach Mayor: 1987 to 2023,” she said — dated five years before his stroke.

“I got confused, and I’m, like, ‘Whoa, he says 1987 — did he start telling people he was the beach mayor?’” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know, it’s kind of a mystery.”

Either way, Elliston embraced his position wholeheartedly and took it quite seriously. Every day, he could report the temperature of the water, what direction the wind was blowing, and greeted locals and tourists alike — asking who they were, where they hailed from, the names of their dogs, and maybe their political and religious affiliations, as well, Martin said.

If there was a local issue coming up for a vote, he would poll everyone he saw and made sure they knew where their neighbors stood, she said. He was especially close to the lifeguards and beach attendants, and they embraced him, too, his daughter said.

“It got to the point where he was blowing the whistle on the final day at 5 o’clock,” she said, adding, “He loved seagulls and named them. He would save bugs out of the water — not even a bug was too small for him to save.”

Elliston instilled a deep reverence for nature and the sea in his daughter, carrying that tradition forward in her children, Yael and Naama. Together with her husband, Oren, the family visited the patriarch for nearly a month each summer — a tradition they’ve held for the past decade, she said.

And they came to expect a production.

“He got us hats every year — we all had to have matching hats for the beach,” Goren said. “He had an entire set of beach chairs and a tent he got for the kids, and the umbrella, and the cooler with the melon. He had a whole setup. My daughter mentioned at the funeral that she doesn’t like melon, so he was always happy to have a peach for her.”

He was a loving, adoring, doting grandfather, his daughter said, teaching them to “husk” — not “shuck,” Goren noted — fresh summer corn and buying them ice cream at the beach. He was adamant about attending the Southampton Cultural Center’s annual concert series in Agawam Park, where he would show up at least an hour early and mingle with fellow patrons as she watched from afar, often arriving much later.

“He’s just always smiling,” she said, “and, no matter what happened to him, he just smiled through it.”

He brought that same energy to the Bridgehampton Senior Center, which he visited every weekday for both its programming — from chair yoga to crafts — and to see the assistant manager, Tatiana Love.

“He really felt that this place was his home and that the people here were his family,” Love said. “He was probably the most colorful person I’ve ever met, in every way.”

Over the last six years she has worked there, Love came to know Elliston as a man who could energize a room and saw the world through rose-colored glasses. He lived to the fullest and on his terms, she said, “the way he wanted to live it.”

“I think, in a way, having to work with Lester made me better at my job, because I had never known anybody quite like him and it really kept me on my toes,” she said. “And, also, it showed me that you can be unwell, you can be in a bad mood, you can be crabby and still have a good day if you just decide to. That’s the way he was.”

Shortly before he died, Elliston made three matching hats at the senior center for his daughter and grandchildren, which they wore to the funeral service on May 27 at the Bridgehampton United Methodist Church. He was buried next to his parents with full military honors in Edgewood Cemetery.

“I was honored at his funeral to see how many people said nice things about him, at the senior center, how many friends he had there, and how loved I felt he was,” Goren said.

Without question, Goren and her family will still make their annual pilgrimage to the East End, visiting the beach and attending the concerts in her father’s memory.

“My father did this thing called ‘twirls,’ where he would twirl 360 degrees in the water and we’d all join him — my daughters and I, sometimes my husband — and in line, we would twirl,” she said. “So my girls will definitely twirl a couple times in his honor.”

At the first Agawam Park concert of this season, on May 26 — just two days after Elliston died — Goren walked through the crowd and thought she saw her father a few times, only to realize they were men wearing a similar Panama Jack-style hat.

For the bittersweet moment, she was hopeful, she said, then wracked with sadness, and brought back to the present when headliner Nancy Atlas dedicated a song to him — to his tenacity and positivity and steadfast presence.

“He would want us to just keep moving on, but we’re gonna take a moment to put this out to him as he floats on to his next journey,” she said. “Alright, Lester, this one’s for you.”

With a final strum of her guitar, after she finished singing, Atlas blew two kisses to the sky.

“To the beach mayor,” she said. “There will only always be one.”