Riverhead bids a final farewell to former supervisor Jim Stark (1936-2015)

Riverhead bade a final farewell to former supervisor James Stark this morning.

Stark, the town’s 57th supervisor, died March 18 at age 78, after a valiant battle with lung cancer. See obituary.

Snow fell as mourners, including numerous county and town officials past and present, filed into St. Isidore’s Roman Catholic Church this morning to pay their last respects to a man repeatedly described by others as “larger than life.”  The doleful sound of bagpipes played by Jim Flood accompanied the procession into St. Isidore’s, where the voices of the First Baptist Church Choir filled the cathedral-like sanctuary at the request of Stark himself.

Father Peter Garry, Stark’s longtime friend, officiated the funeral Mass at St. Isidore’s Church. He recalled meeting him for the first time at a basketball game where Stark and a mutual friend were referees.

“They were very entertaining,” the priest recalled. It was the beginning of a friendship that would last a lifetime, filled with many rounds of golf and a session or two “at a bar no one’s ever heard of,” he joked, referring to Stark’s well-known favorite watering hole on East Main Street, Cliff’s Rendezvous.

Stark was eulogized by his daughter Joanna Beall and granddaughter Kelsey Stark.

Beall described Stark’s hospitalization a few years ago in Hawaii, where Beall lives and where her parents have been wintering for many years. He was about to undergo surgery.

“The doctor was talking to him and said, ‘If this happens, you can die; if that happens you can die,’ and my father sat up and said, ‘Doc, tell me how I can live,’” Beall said, mimicking her father’s well-known gravelly voice and gruff demeanor and drawing laughter from the audience.

She described her father’s love for his older brothers, Bruce and Doug, and for his entire family. He was a “hopeless romantic” who whisked his wife off to celebrate their anniversary every year at Block Island or some other romantic hideaway, she said. She recalled watching her parents on the dance floor and how they entertained guests at backyard barbecues “on the pond.”

“My parents taught us how to have fun,” she said.

Stark by example taught his children and grandchildren to love deeply and love hard, Beall said.

Kelsey Stark said her “Pop Pop” was not just a grandfather but a father to her and her siblings. He helped his daughter Catherine raise them, taking them to their games and practices, helping them with homework, dispensing advice and discipline. He was always there to lean on, she said, recalling how, whenever they said, “I love you Pop-Pop” his answer would always be “I love you more.”

She concluded with the opening stanza of a song her grandfather loved to sing:

I see trees of green, red roses, too,
I see them bloom, for me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world.

The choir sent the procession out with a rousing rendition of the uplifting gospel hymn “I’ll Be Waiting Up Yonder” transforming the mood inside the church from somber to exuberant— a parallel to the transformation that had occurred outside.  Mourners emerged to find the gray clouds and snowfall had given way to springlike blue skies and bright sunshine.

What a wonderful world.

Stark was interred at St. John the Evangelist Cemetery.