U.S., Obituary Collection, 1930-Current
Joseph Ostroski
Riverhead resident Joseph Ostroski, 80, a native and longtime resident of Southold, died on Jan. 8, 2001 at Grandel Nursing Facility in Nassau County.
Born June 12, 1920, to Paul and Mary Ostroski, he was a mason and worked for his brother, Alec Ostroski of Southold.
He is survived by his sister, Helen Ruthinowski of Riverhead, and nieces and nephews. His brothers, Peter, George and Alec, all originally of Southold, predeceased him.
Visitation is today, Thursday, from 9 to 11 a.m. at F.J. McLaughlin Funeral Home, Riverhead. A funeral mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. today at St. Isidore's R.C. Church, Riverhead, followed by interment at Calverton National Cemetery.
Anne Dermigny-Sirianni
Anne Dermigny-Sirianni, 92, of Riverhead died Jan. 9, 2001 at San Simeon by the Sound nursing home in Greenport.
The daughter of Thomas and Rose Callahan, Mrs. Sirianni was formerly of Mineola, where she was a charter member of the Mineola Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary Company No. 3.
Mrs. Sirianni was predeceased by her husbands, Henry Dermigny and Anthony Sirianni. She is survived by a son, Henry Dermigny of Jamesport.
Visitation will be held tonight (Thursday), 7 to 9 p.m., at F.J. McLaughlin Funeral Home, Riverhead. Burial will take place Friday afternoon at Nassau Knolls Cemetery in Port Washington.
Catherine R. DeRose
Catherine R. "Peggy" DeRose of Laurel died at her residence on Dec. 29, 2000 at the age of 95.
Ms. DeRose was born in Brooklyn July 27, 1905, to Hugh and Harriet Joyce. She graduated from Flushing High School and received her nursing degree in 1926 from St. John's Hospital School of Nursing, Long Island City. After graduation, she worked at St. John's as an operating room nurse.
She married James DeRose, M.D., one of the founders of Astoria General Hospital, now known as Western Queens Hospital.
Ms. DeRose was a charter member and past president of the Women's Auxiliary of the Medical Society of the County of Queens and a member of the State Auxiliary, which she served in various offices.
She and her late husband lived in Astoria, N.Y., for 38 years. After his death, she took up full-time residence in their summer home in Laurel. This coming June, 2001, would have been her 65th summer in Laurel.
A family statement noted, "Peggy, as she was affectionately known, had a true Irish wit and enjoyed telling stories of times past. Her wit stayed with her to the very end of her life."
She is survived by a daughter, Agnes Stark of Riverhead; three sons, Joseph, of Florida, James, of New Jersey, and Robert, of Albertson, N.Y.; 12 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren.
Prayer services were held Jan. 2 at Reginald H. Tuthill Funeral Home, Riverhead. A Mass of Christian Burial was offered Jan. 3 at Our Lady of Good Counsel R.C. Church, Mattituck.
Memorial donations may be made to East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach, NY 11978 or St. Jude Children's Hospital, Memphis, TN.
Shirley Young Hallock
Northville lost its patriarch, 90-year-old Shirley Young Hallock, who died at Central Suffolk Hospital on January 3, 2001. Mr. Hallock was born May 13, 1910, on the family farm on Sound Avenue, the fifth of six children of Herman and Sarah Young Hallock. The Hallockville Museum homestead was the birthplace of his grandfather, Charles H. Hallock.
In a 1991 interview, Shirley recalled traveling to Riverhead High School the first year in a horse-drawn buggy, the next years in a friend's Model T Ford. Family trips to Riverhead were all-day events, with the horses drinking from a brook where later the Shuberts had a duck farm. He remembered wonderful holiday and birthday parties, picnics at the 1910 bungalow on the Sound, often with an extended family of Youngs, Aldriches and Hallocks.
In 1929, after two years of working on farms, Shirley attended flying school in St. Louis, receiving an advanced pilot's license. For a short time he flew the air mail from St. Louis to Chicago in an open cockpit biplane through all kinds of weather. He returned to the farm during the Great Depression.
As a part-time chauffeur for Frank Young Sr., an ardent Democrat of Aquebogue, he witnessed firsthand the 1932 inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the celebration that followed.
Shirley worked for L.I. Produce Co. as a salesman, then for G.L.F. buying and selling potatoes. Still later he ran his own company, selling and distributing potato bags. He was manager of Jeep sales at Vail Motors when he retired in 1980.
Over the years his many involvements included secretary of L.I. Agriculture and Marketing Association, several years as secretary of the Rotary Club, master of Sound Avenue Grange, deacon of the Northville Congregational Church and president of Hallockville Museum Farm restoration.
Always a lover of the outdoors, Shirley in his retirement enjoyed watching the sun over the Sound at Iron Pier Beach, along with other members of the "Senior Sunset Society."
He leaves his wife of 60 years, Hilda Burd Hallock, a retired Riverhead schoolteacher, two daughters, Jayne Zebrowski, a schoolteacher of Patchogue, and Susan Klock, a lawyer of Glastonbury, Conn., and a son, Geoffrey Hallock, an electrical contractor of Northville. Five grandchildren, Robert Zebrowski, Kate Z. Brennan, Anson, Fil and Andrew Klock, and three Zebrowski great-grandchildren also survive.
Cremation and a private burial in the family plot in the Sound Avenue Cemetery will be followed by a memorial service at a later date.
John C. Valek
John C. Valek, 83, a native and longtime resident of Jamesport, died on Jan. 31, 2001 at his home.
Born Jan. 6, 1918, to Antone and Theodora (Pulaski) Valek in Jamesport, he served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and during World War II and the Korean Conflict. He retired with the rank of lieutenant and received many decorations.
He went on to work for 20 years with Brookhaven National Laboratory. He was a 46-year member of Jamesport Fire Department and a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars, where he had served as chaplain.
According to his wife, Sophia (formerly Nausedos), he was an avid gardener and fisherman and served as a communicant and usher for St. John the Evangelist R.C. Church in Riverhead.
Besides his wife, he is survived by four sons, James, of Tolland, Conn., Jerome, of Cocoa Beach, Fla., Richard, of Flanders, and John, of Alpharetta, Ga.; a daughter, Roberta Roth of Huntington, N.Y.; a sister, Susan Martin of East Bridgewater, Mass.; and 10 grandchildren. His brothers, Edward, James and Antone, predeceased him.
The family received friends Friday, Feb. 2, at Reginald H. Tuthill Funeral Home, Riverhead. A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated Feb. 3 at St. John the Evangelist Church. The Rev. Thomas Coby presided. Interment followed at St. John's R.C. Cemetery, Riverhead.
Memorial donations may be made to East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach, NY 11978-7048.
Raymond L. Schnebel
Raymond L. Schnebel of Riverhead died on Feb. 1, 2001 at Central Suffolk Hospital at the age of 81.
Born Oct. 25, 1919, in Queens to Charles and Frances (Tischner) Schnebel, he worked at the Riverhead post office for 28 years, retiring in 1981. He then worked part-time at the Riverhead branch of North Fork Bank.
His wife of 41 years, Elizabeth, described him as "a very good-natured and hardworking man, always doing something for others. He also enjoyed gardening," she said, and was an active member of St. John the Evangelist R.C. Church in Riverhead.
He is also survived by a brother, Richard, of Hicksville, N.Y.
Visitation took place Friday, Feb. 2, at Reginald H. Tuthill Funeral Home, Riverhead. A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated Feb. 3 at St. John the Evangelist Church, with the Rev. Thomas Coby officiating. Interment followed at St. John's Cemetery, Riverhead.
Walter Ried
Walter Otto Ried, the recently retired production manager of Times/ Review Newspapers in Mattituck, died of cancer in Estero, Fla., on Thursday, April 12, 2001. He was 61 years old.
Mr. Ried and his wife, Marge, who survives, moved to the west coast of Florida in March to live with their son, Michael, and his family. They lived in Calverton before the move, and previously resided in Riverhead and Flanders.
Mr. Ried had been with the newspaper company for 23 years when ill health forced him to retire last fall.
He was born in Wiesbaden, West Germany, on Feb. 27, 1940, the son of Emil and Erna Ried. His father was missing in action during World War II, and his mother later remarried when she emigrated to the United States following the war.
Walter Ried came to this country in 1953 and settled in Riverhead with his sisters. He attended public schools in Riverhead and graduated from Riverhead High School in 1958.
During his service in the U.S. Navy, from 1958 to 1963, he developed the typing skills that eventually led to his life's work. He got his start on a TTS teletype machine and was particularly proud of his service as a radioman during the early stages of the U.S. space program. He and members of his crew would fly from their home base in Norfolk, Va., to Cape Canaveral, Fla., where they coordinated ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communications until the space capsules were recovered, according to his widow.
Mr. and Mrs. Ried had known each other as children in Germany and started corresponding when they were 18, mostly because their sisters had remained friends over the years. He actually proposed marriage by mail without having seen his bride-to-be since the age of 4. Their engagement was formalized when he visited Germany in 1961 and she followed him back to Riverhead in November of that year. They were married a few weeks later.
By the time he left the Navy, Mr. Ried could type more than 120 words a minute. That skill led to jobs with RCA, Grumman, The News-Review and two other publications, The Senator and Traveler-Watch-man. He returned to The News-Review and its sister weekly, The Suffolk Times, in the fall of 1977 and went on to oversee the company's transition from old-fashioned typesetting machines to the sophisticated computers it uses today.
"Walter was an incredible man and a good friend," said Times/Review publisher Troy Gustavson. "He was one of the few production people from the old school who successfully made the transition to doing things the way we do them today. He was a self-taught computer expert, particularly when it came to the computers that help produce newspapers, and this company's growth over the past 24 years was due, in large part, to his ability to make that transition. And he always did his job - no matter how hard, no matter how pressing the deadline - with a smile and a diligence that none of us here will ever forget."
Mr. Ried's interest in computers extended beyond the workplace, according to his wife. He was an early advocate of the Internet and was sending and receiving e-mail long before it became fashionable. He also was an avid collector of classic rock and roll records and he enjoyed drawing with charcoal.
In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Ried is survived by a daughter, Charlotte, of San Luis Obispo, Calif.; two sisters, Charlotte Crews of Riverhead and Marianne Downs of Hendersonville, N.C.; and one grandchild. He was preceded in death by his parents and two other sisters.
A memorial service for family members is tentatively planned for this coming weekend at the hospice chapel in Fort Myers, Fla. His cremated remains will be spread on the Gulf of Mexico.
Memorial donations may be made to Hope Hospice, Blue Team, 9470 Health Park Circle, Fort Myers, FL 33908.
