Jan Page of North Haven Dies July 31

Jan Page of North Haven died on July 31, she was 86.

In the last decades of her life, she spent a lot of time looking out her window.

She had good reason to. Her home, which her parents built as a second home on a North Haven marsh in 1955, and where she had lived since 1972, had a stunning view.

The backyard was populated by swans, geese, ducks, and deer, and she knew, loved, and fed them all.

On July 31, she died of an infection at the Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, after two separate bouts of metastatic cancer.

“She loved the wildlife and the scenery she had there. You couldn’t drag her away from that place,” said her husband, Fred Vidito, whom she married in 2004. “That was her place. That’s what she wanted to look at.”

Born on September 3, 1938, in Yonkers, to Fred Stuber and Mildred Vidito, Page received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959 from the University of North Carolina.

Throughout the 1960s, she lived upstate, working for her parents’ flower business, Stuber Florist. She married her first husband, Tom Hoffman, in 1961, giving birth to her son John Hoffman in 1964.

When her mother became ill, she returned to Sag Harbor as caretaker. When she died, Page inherited the house.

“She had a big heart,” said her husband. “We relied on one another.”

Hoffman recounted fishing off a neighbor’s dock and running with a pack of kids through North Haven Manor, a memory often cited by Page as well.

“Mom was always back at the house, ready to welcome us all,” he said. “One of my fondest memories was cooking lobster in the backyard with her. She was proud of her many friends. I’d say a lot of them were made because of her real estate background.”

During the 1970s, Page worked in the Wharf Shop on Main Street where she met Scott Weiss, the owner of Harpoon Realty, and worked as a real estate agent until her retirement after the turn of the millenium.

She was also an athlete who enjoyed playing tennis and skiing.

“She loved her tennis buddies,” said her son. “She liked to travel and would travel to Europe to ski in the Alps.”

She held a lifelong love of the beach, which both her son and husband recalled.

“We spent a lot of time at Long Beach and at Sagg Main,” said Hoffman. “She was a beach person,” agreed Vidito.

She is survived by her son; grandchildren Brooks Hoffman of Newport Beach, California, and Cooper Hoffman of Los Angeles; a sister Joan Field, of Danville, California; and her husband, Fred Vidito, of Sag Harbor.

She was cremated. The family will hold a private ceremony to scatter her ashes in her backyard, close to where her mother’s ashes were scattered.

Memorial contributions in her name may be made to the Eastern Long Island Audubon Society (easternlongislandaudubonsociety.org), to honor her love of birds.