Allan Abraham Retzky of Amagansett Dies February 10

Allan Abraham Retzky of Amagansett died on February 10 of congestive heart failure, at home, with his wife of 61 years, Susan, at his side. He was 86.

Retzky began his life and career on a traditional path, but ultimately pursued his creative passion, his family said, publishing his first novel at the age of 74, and having numerous works of fiction appear in the East Hampton Star and elsewhere.

Born in Brooklyn in October 1937, his mother Pauline was a homemaker and later a teacher, and his father Harold owned a business delivering supplies to bakeries around the city, Bronx Bakers Supply Company. He had fond memories of tagging along with his father on delivery runs and being handed soft, deliciously scented bread fresh from the oven at stops along the way, his family noted.

His journey of physical challenges began with a series of experimental surgeries to address a hip dislocated by a breech birth. He spent nearly a year with his right leg in a cast and didn’t learn to walk until he was 5 years old. He lived his life with that leg three and half inches shorter than the other, which led to many health challenges and decades of chronic pain.

At 12 years old, he faced deep loss when his father died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving his mother to raise him along with his older sister Laura and younger sister Barbara, just 3 years old. He persevered, his family said, becoming a stellar athlete, particularly excelling in football and baseball. He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, where he was a member of the Arista Club for exceptional students. He even had a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but with his shorter leg was unable to run fast enough to make the cut.

He was initially interested in studying architecture, but took a more practical route, attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, where he studied metallurgical engineering and, according to his family, had a great time making mild mischief with his fraternity brothers.

After working in New York City for a few years, he attended Harvard Business School. It was during that time that he met his future wife, Susan, at a friend’s wedding. He was immediately smitten, his family said, courting her while she was an undergraduate student at Tufts University and crossing the Charles River in more than one snowstorm to visit her. Within four months, he had proposed, and they married in New York in December 1962.

The couple made their home in Queens before moving to New Rochelle with their two young daughters, Deborah and Andrea. He worked at a metals trading firm in Manhattan, Primary Industries, which took him on travels around the world — from frequent trips to London, Japan, Moscow and Germany. Along the way, he often made close friends of his colleagues and their families. That sparked a desire to travel that he shared with his wife and daughters.

He led the first U.S. joint venture with an eastern bloc nation — a steel mill outside Budapest, Hungary. In his later career, he served in leadership roles for several nonprofits.

When their children were small, the couple spent summer vacations at the old Driftwood, a motel near Montauk. They fell in love with the beach and the light, their family said. In the early 1980s, they purchased land and built a home in Amagansett, where they lived full time for the past 25 years.

Known to family and friends as a tremendous storyteller and true raconteur, he retired early and decided to explore his longtime hobby of writing short stories. At 70, he received a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Southampton College. A few years later, he published his first novel, “Vanished in the Dunes,” a murder mystery set on the East End. He treasured the writing community, participating in many local writer’s workshops.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughters Deborah and her husband Bob Shaul, and Andrea and her husband Brian Lessig; his grandchildren, Anna Shaul, Daniel Shaul, and Jack Lessig; and his younger sister, Barbara Peppas.