Michael Harris Bromley, the son of Patricia H. and the late Stephen B. Bromley of East Hampton, died Monday of Burkitt's lymphoma, with which he was diagnosed last Christmas. He was 51.
Born on Oct. 19, 1958, Mr. Bromley grew up in Upper Nyack, N.Y., until his family moved here in 1970.
He played that year for the G&T Dairies East Hampton Little League championship team, and, at East Hampton High School, from which he graduated in 1976, he played varsity football and baseball. From the age of 15 he was an East Hampton Town ocean lifeguard, stationed at Kirk Park, Ditch Plain, and Nick's Beach in Montauk, and at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett.
He attended Sullivan County Community College from 1976 to '77, and Bethany College in West Virginia from 1978 to '80, receiving "an A," his older brother, Stephen Bromley Jr., said, "in football."
In the falls and winters of 1980 and ‘81 he worked on Dink Dankowski's potato farm in Sagaponack.
From 1981 to '83, he worked as an ocean lifeguard in Puerto Rico and Florida, and from 1978 to '83 he played with the Montauk Rugby Club as well as in the East Hampton Town men's slow-pitch softball league and in the Sag Harbor modified-pitch league.
The Minetree family and Charles and Karen Limonius, under the Team Michael banner, participated in July's Swim Across America's fund-raising open water swims here with Mr. Bromley looking on. Asked then about his rugby days, the early ones of the Montauk Rugby Club, Mr. Bromley said, with a smile, that it had taken a while to make the transition from football tactics. "For one year there we had one of the best teams on the East Coast. We beat the N.Y.A.C., Old Blue. . . . We only lost one game all season."
In 1984, Mr. Bromley began work as a ticket broker for the Rubin Ace Company in Manhattan with Michael Field, also of East Hampton. At the time of his death, he and Mr. Field were partners in that company.
An enthusiastic, self-taught golfer, with a handicap as low as seven, Mr. Bromley, who belonged at one time to the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett, and who was widely read in world history, traveled with friends to courses throughout the United States and the British Isles.
Mr. Bromley is survived by his wife, the former Lori Catherine Restivo of Sag Harbor, to whom he was married on April 22, 1995. He is also survived by their daughter, Julia Baldwin, and by his stepdaughter, Stephanie, his mother, his brothers, Stephen Jr. and Bruce Bromley, and by his sister, Leslie.
A memorial service at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton is to be held today from noon to 2 p.m. Burial will be private. J.G. East Hampton Star