Harvey Battell Loomis of Sagaponack Dies March 20

Harvey Battell Loomis died peacefully from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease at his home in Sagaponack on March 20. He was 93.

He grew up in Manhattan, attended the Buckley School and Deerfield Academy, where he played varsity lacrosse and soccer, was president of the debating club, managing editor of the school newspaper and the president of the senior class. He graduated from Yale University in 1953 and after OCS joined the U.S. Navy for three years. Stationed in Charleston, Sout Carolina, he served aboard the USS Coral Sea in the Mediterranean.

His mother, Priscilla Lockwood Loomis, was a suffragette, and later was honored by New York Mayor Ed Koch for her role as the creator and director of the child care program at the Union Settlement and a founding member of the New York Child Care Council. Harvey’s father, Alfred F. Loomis, was a distinguished yachtsman, the editor and a columnist for Yachting magazine and author of several sailing books, including “Ranging the Maine Coast.”

Harvey Loomis, the youngest of four children, and predeceased by his siblings, Worth Loomis, Robert Loomis, and Sally Loomis Campbell, started sailing at a young age, and become a sought-after ocean racing crew completing 15 Newport-Bermuda Races, two Fastnet Races, three Annapolis-Newport Races, two Marblehead-Halifax races, two trans-Atlantic crossings, the Buenos Aires-Rio Race, the Sydney-Hobart Race, the Miami-Montego Bay Race, among many others, as well as cruises to the Azores and in Norway and Tahiti, to name just a few. He was a member of the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC), the Cruising Club of America (CCA) and a founding member of the Ocean Cruising Club (OCC), for which he served as Rear Commodore USA East for five years.

When ashore, he worked for Time-Life Inc. in Manhattan, first in the photography department at LIFE then as a reporter and finally as a writer and editor at Time-Life Books. He oversaw the publication of Time-Life’s “Library of Sailing,” as well as many other subjects. When the book division re-located to Alexandria, Virginia, he opted to stay in New York and become a freelance editor from his new office in Times Square, producing the Time-Life Music series, “Great Men of Music,” as well as editing nautical books for Simon & Schuster, Knopf, Dorling Kindersley of London and W.W. Norton.

For two decades, he lent his tenor voice to the Blue Hill Troupe, an amateur theater company in New York, producing Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and Broadway musicals for charity, and served as president in 1970.

He continued singing when he moved to Sagaponack in 1980 and joined the Choral Society of the Hamptons. With a colleague, he produced the program notes and was such a stickler for detail that one of his edits is still known at Long Island East Printers as a ‘Harvey Loomis.’

He was also a trustee at the Hampton Library, served on the Tree Committee for Sagaponack Village, and sailed his iceboat, Rose of Mecox, when the pond froze.

He is survived by his wife and partner of 45 years, author Linda Bird Francke of Sagaponack; three step-children, Andrew Mackenzie (Julie) of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Caitlin Francke Boyle (Tom) of Chatham, New Jersey, and Tapp Francke Ingolia (Lawrence) of Sag Harbor; 10 nieces and nephews, Ethan Campbell, Lucy Loomis, Priscilla Campbell, Ruth Loomis, Michael Campbell, Alfred Loomis, Tim Loomis, Charles Loomis, Lia Loomis, Charlotte Loomis; and numerous friends.

A memorial service will be held in the summer.