Ted Conklin, owner of Sag Harbor's American Hotel, where musicians and literati gathered, dies at 77

Manhattan had Elaine’s. Paris has Les Deux Magots. And in Sag Harbor, musicians and the literati gathered at Ted Conklin’s The American Hotel.

There, that hotelier, restaurateur and sommelier held congenial court, where on any given night music stars like Billy Joel or Jimmy Buffett, writers like Robert Sam Anson or Bill Cardoso, actors like Bill Murray or Conklin’s close friend Keith Hernandez of the 1986 World Series champion Mets would drink and dine.

"He would greet people at the hotel with one hand thrust in his blazer pocket, a ... tie around his neck and a kerchief in his breast pocket," said his friend Bryan Boyhan, the retired editor and publisher of The Sag Harbor Express. "He was a generous, gregarious, social person. He was an ideal host."

"He didn't make anything of celebrity. He never did," said his wife, Susie Franklin. "Everybody had quiet there. ... If anybody started bothering a celebrity, he'd shut it down. He would take somebody by the arm and say, ‘Come on with me.’ "

Conklin died Sunday of complications from bladder cancer at a hospice near the couple’s home in West Palm Beach, Florida. He was 77.

"He had a patrician air about him," Boyhan recalled, "but to call him a hail-fellow-well-met is not exactly accurate. You'll meet people like that who are putting on an act or affecting a style. With Ted, it was very genuine. This was who he was," he said. "Even when he was becoming more and more ill and hadn't been to Sag Harbor in two years, I guess, he and Susie would go out to lunch on a regular basis and they would have people over. He enjoyed people and he enjoyed being a host."

Theodore Brigham Conklin III was born April 16, 1948, in Manhattan, the eldest of five and the only son of Theodore B. Conklin Jr. and Natalie Harkness O'Brien Conklin. When Ted was young, the family moved from Park Avenue to Manhasset. Their descendants had helped settle Greenwich, Connecticut; Pelham; and parts of Long Island as early as the 1600s, according to the family. One ancestor, Ananias Conkling, owned 200 acres in Sag Harbor by 1707, they said.

His father was heir to Manhattan’s T.E. Conklin Brass & Copper Co. as well, his widow said. "His family was involved with Standard Oil. He had a very strong relationship with his grandmother and we have pictures that he kept on his boat," the 75-foot yacht America, "and his grandmother [in one photo is] launching a Standard Oil boat, breaking the champagne" across the bow, Susie Conklin said.

After graduating from The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, Conklin enrolled at Babson College in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts. "Back in the 1960s, there were colleges where you needn't attend class if you just passed the exams," he recalled in a 2007 interview. "In sophomore year I enrolled and bought the texts. Then, for reasons that still puzzle me, I leased a space near my home on Long Island and proceeded to build a restaurant" — Magic’s Pub and the Artful Dodger in Westhampton Beach.

It thrived, he said, but at the end of his first summer season he sold it, went to Paris, married the first of several wives he would eventually divorce, including Janet LeMaak and Tara Newman, and ran a "gentleman’s farm" in upstate New York for two years.

Finds derelict hotel

"Upon selling the farm I did my due diligence to find a real job and a sensible career," he said in the interview. In 1971 he "discovered The American Hotel, a derelict vestige of the 1840s in the then-depressed old whaling port of Sag Harbor. Any 23-year-old should have known that this was less an opportunity than a sentence, but I decided I was up to the task."

Starting renovation that December, he opened the hotel and bar-restaurant on Independence Day weekend in 1972. He concentrated on building a quality wine cellar, which eventually reaped awards from Wine Spectator magazine and high-profile kudos in Playboy magazine.

Boyhan became an habitué, he said, after meeting Conklin at one of the themed dinners the hotel held "as a way for people to learn about wines. A delicious Portuguese meal, flights of wines accompanying each course, and at the end of the evening, rows of reds, whites and ports that you could help yourself to. A beautiful historic restaurant, all these wines lined up — I thought this is what heaven must look like."

Conklin met Franklin, a widow and business executive from Pittsburgh, in the mid-2010s when she and some friends were vacationing in Sag Harbor. A chance encounter led to email exchanges. A long-distance relationship followed, evolving when she’d needed a hip replacement and then emergency femur surgery.

"He came to take care of me for six weeks," she said. "The kind of care and attention he gave me, I thought, ‘This man really does love me.’ " They eventually bought a home in West Palm Beach together, and married last March.

In addition to Franklin, he is survived by daughters Samantha Brooks Conklin, of Connecticut, and Natasha Davey Conklin, of New York City; son Theodore B. Conklin IV, of Rhode Island; stepdaughter Katy O’Donnell, of Pittsburgh; sisters Natalie Jourdan Conklin, of Colorado, and Susan Spurgeon, Louise Cox Conklin and Kimberley Burnett Conklin, all of Florida; and five grandchildren.

Burial will be private. A public funeral service is scheduled for Feb. 24 at 1 p.m. at the Old Whalers’ Church in Sag Harbor, followed by a celebration of life from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Bay Street Theater in that village.

Donations may be made to the Sag Harbor Food Pantry or to the cancer-counseling center Fighting Chance in Sag Harbor.