James Marshall Kramon Of Westhampton Beach Dies February 25

James Marshall Kramon of Westhampton Beach died on February 25 at East End Hospice Kanas Center for Hospice Care on Quiogue. He was 78.

Known as “Jim,” he was born in Manhattan on January 23, 1944, to Jack Kramon, a founder of the MAJER slacks garment company who immigrated from Russia as a child, and Hortense Sarot, a teacher, of Maplewood, New Jersey.

As a kid, “Jim was mischievous, no doubt about it,” said his sister Patricia Pincus of New York. “He loved to show us how, just as the laundry on the line of the building next to us was drying, a water balloon could soak it all over again.”

Kramon was the eldest of three siblings. When he was 12, his father died.

“I truly felt he saw it as his responsibility to step in after our father died,” said Pincus. “He made it his mission to safeguard us from that point forward. He was very loyal and enormously generous of spirit.”

Kramon attended The Fieldston School for high school. In college at Carnegie Tech, Jim met Susan “Paula” Kramon, who became his wife of 44 years prior to her death.

He attended law school at George Washington University (J.D.) and Harvard University (LL.M.), before starting the well-regarded law firm Kramon & Graham in Baltimore with his partner, Andrew Jay Graham. Kramon was known in the Baltimore legal community for his precise and tenacious legal mind, as well as his honesty and deep ethical commitments. “Jim led by example,” said his colleague Philip Andrews. “His work ethic and his dedication to his clients were legendary. He was truly a giant in the Maryland legal community.”

Among Kramon’s many diverse clients was the renowned conductor David Zinman, who said of him, “There was no way of knowing that this warm and wonderful man was to become our dearest friend for the next 40 years. Our conversations ranged from the necessary business calls to deep and unforgettable discussions of music, literature, and the state of the world. It would be impossible to forget Jim.”

With his wife, Kramon raised two children, Justin and Annie. Before the children reached school age, Kramon began to suffer from an undiagnosed neurological disease that eventually caused him to become wheelchair-bound and lose the use of his hands. Despite this, he kept up a thriving legal practice; mentored many young lawyers; stayed active in the arts community; engaged in philanthropic work; wrote articles for The Baltimore Sun, The Southampton Press, and many other general interest and legal journals; served on the board of his children’s school; read nonfiction and novels avidly; debated current events and philosophy with his close friends; and cared for his wife as she underwent an extensive cancer treatment before the kids reached high school.

As his law partner and co-founder of Kramon & Graham, Andrew Jay Graham put it: “It was a horribly tough life for Jim with his illness and Paula’s. Many people would have given up. But Jim showed extraordinary courage. He was dealt a terrible hand, but he lived a wonderful life. He had a tremendous reputation, and he had a lot of good friends.”

One of those longtime friends, Janet Weiss of New York, said, “We met when our kids were eating sand together at the beach. He had a dry sense of humor, and the slightest limp. Over the years, we watched him slowly, slowly lose his body. But he never lost his sense of humor. He had an inner strength.”

In 2011, after his wife died, Kramon moved full-time to Westhampton Beach, where he’d spent summers as a kid. “My dad loved the peacefulness of Westhampton,” said his daughter Anna Kramon, “the nature, the small-town community, The Swordfish Club. He always looked forward to summer, when he could see his friends at the beach and spend afternoons watching the ocean, like he did with my mom when she was alive.”

Kramon’s friend Jacques Capelluto of New York said, “In word and deed, Jim personified courage, compassion, integrity, and uncompromising fidelity to moral and ethical principles, all of which he gave to us wrapped in friendship and caring.”

He is survived by his two children, Justin and Annie; sisters Patricia Pincus and Elizabeth Harlan; step-sister Ellin Sarot; daughter-in-law Lynn Trieu and son-in-law Joseph Weiner; three grandchildren, Oscar, Tai, and William; and a fourth grandchild on the way.