1 Photo
Elizabeth Marie Barton of Westhampton Beach died January 18, following a period of declining health.
She was born in 1947 and raised in a world that she loved, amidst the swampy, mosquito-infested streams and crabby, Dickensian bars and boatyards of Prince’s Bay, Staten Island. Fog horns, buoy bells and train whistles were the music of what was still, at that time, the heady, salty, very smelly world of New York’s lower Bay. She was the loving companion of her father Roger Barton: sanding, polishing and repairing a series of family sailboats and dinghies, culminating in the beautiful Fox-trot, the MacIntosh cutter that was wrecked in Hurricane Donna. She had her own dinghy with her own outboard engine. Full of energy and high-spirits, she took to the water for sailing and swimming. She grew up tall and strong and athletic. In Tottenville High School she took up tennis, playing with an old wooden racket on an old clay court and continued to play the game with enthusiasm for the rest of her life.
As a young woman she went away to Elmira College, where she majored in both chemistry and biology, later earning a master’s degree in health administration from The New School. She devoted most of her working life to alleviating the sufferings of men and women with HIV/AIDS and drug dependencies in the New York area. Even after her retirement, she continued to work, often voluntarily, as a grant-writer for several health services.
Although she worked and lived in Manhattan, salt water and tennis were two of the great loves that brought her to establish her second home in Westhampton Beach and the cottage to which she happily retired. There she could be near a beach, a bay and tennis courts, and to so many kind and congenial folks whose company she greatly enjoyed.
She learned from her mother, Clarissa, and her father, Roger, how to be a friend. Like her parents, she was stubbornly, endlessly loyal, rarely giving up, or giving up on a friend.
She is survived by a sister, Carlin; her companion, Nancy Fedder; two godsons, Jay and Corey; and friend and mentor, Lee Hamilton.
Memorial donations may be made to Maureen’s Haven, (www.maureenshaven.org), an organization that is devoted to helping the homeless on Eastern Long Island and one that Ms. Barton regularly supported.
on Feb 17, 2015